posted 03-18-2004 09:17 AM            

In many areas of life, science is seen as the final arbiter of truth. We don't mean in areas of scientific research where it is a obviously a tautology. We are referring to other areas, either outside the purveyance of scientific research or within it, but where science is used as a club of authority without the research necessary to back it up. Many of these areas will evoke reactions where the rationalist, or the layman with a smattering of scientific understanding, is actually pre-judging the object up for discussion. Areas that are favourites for this a priori form of attack are UFOs, telepathy, astrology, and other subjects that fall under the larger rubric of the paranormal.

The ravings of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal are an example of of using science as a club. Under the guise of "doubt," not at all a bad thing in itself, these skeptical inquirers impose a materialist explanation of the world via the jackboots of their own arrogance, ignorance, and refusal to be truly open to anything they do not already know or understand.

The following dialogue, taken from Paul Feyerabend's book Three Dialogues on Knowledge, shows how this process works:

B: ... but you certainly acted as if you knew a lot when we began our little conversation. And the same is true of all scientists who make pronouncements about matters they have no idea about.

A: I doubt that there are many such scientists.

B: I am sorry to disillusion you. Just have a look at this paper. It is the October/November number (1975) of the American journal The Humanist (strange title for what turns out to be a superchauvinistic rag). There is a series of articles criticizing astrology. The articles are badly written and full of mistakes. One of the authors says: 'Astrology was dealt a serious blow since it is a geocentric system'. This was your first argument. Incompetent, as we have seen. Another author writes that astrology originated from magic. But modern science also 'originated from magic' if one wants to talk in such a general fashion. Well, you might say, there are always scientists who overstep the boundaries of their competence and make fools of themselves. But now look at the end of the general statement that precedes the more detailed arguments. There are 186 signatures of scientists. 186 signatures! Quite obviously the learned gentlemen were not so much interested in convincing by argument as in pushing people around. For if you have one good argument - what is the use of that many signatures? What we have here is therefore nothing less than a scientific encyclical: the popes have have spoken, the matter is decided. Now look at the names! There are not just a few scientists from the backwoods - the foremost stars of the scientific establishment point their fingers at astrologers and curse them. John Eccles, the 'Popperian Knight', a Nobel Prize winner; Konrad Lorenz, the ethologist (and a man I greatly admire), a Nobel Prize winner; Crick, the co-discoverer of DNA, another Nobel-Bigshot - and so on and so forth. You have Samuelson, the economist, Pauling with two Nobel Prizes and his controversial (though quite reasonable) claim of the efficiency of large doses of vitamin C against colds and even cancer - everybody who is anybody in science lends his name to support a document that is a sink of ignorance and illiteracy. A few months after the document had appeared an interviewer from the BBC wanted to arrange a discussion between some of the Nobel Prize winners and defenders of astrology but all of the Nobel Prize winners declined - some with the remark that they had no idea about the details of astrology: the learned gentlemen did not know what they were talking about. Now such illiterates decide what is and what is not to be taught at our schools; such illiterates proclaim with supercilious contempt that old traditions which they have not studied and which they do not understand must be eradicated no matter how important they are to those who want to live in accordance with them; such illiterates interfere with our lives, at birth, when mothers are shipped off to hospitals so that their babies may at once become acquainted with the splendour of the faceless technological society they are going to inhabit; in early youth when talents are carefully determined and curricula carefully set up to get a maximum of the scientific religion into the adolescents' brain and so on till a 'mortuary science' finally takes care of the tired, worn-out and pollution damaged body ...

A: Mortuary science?

B: Yes, a legitimate subject at many universities. Such illiterates also determine where and how we are going to use nuclear power, how our children are going to live, what is good medicine and what not, they waste millions of tax money on ridiculous projects and get up in arms when a better control of these moneys is suggested, these illiterates ...

A: Heaven help me - stop! How absurd can you get! You may be right about astrology - although I haven't yet conceded the matter ... [p. 68, Second Dialogue]
Here we see that the authority of individuals in areas such as ethnology, DNA, and economics, areas of expertise that are far from the issue they are pronouncing upon, astrology, is used to end any discussion on a subject for which these "experts" have no real knowledge and understanding and on which they have never done any research. Is this an expression of "scientific objectivity" or "rational criticism"?
What would the reaction be of these "men of science" if an astrologist starting making grand statements about their own areas? Wouldn't they be questioning the astrologist's credentials? Why is it forbidden to question the credentials of "scientists"?
Yet this is the mindset of the managers of our modern technological society. If it can't be read by a machine or seen on the bottom line of the spreadsheet, it doesn't exist. It seems appropriate in such a society to find people like Bush, who believes that Jesus is going to raise him to heaven on a cloud, or Tony Blair who was "rebirthed" at an Aztec pyramid, should be the puppets leading the sheep to slaughter.
Science has become a belief system and and ideology rather than a critical approach to understanding our reality. If science were reduced to those elements that make it the creative domain that it all too infrequently can be, we might discover that the "savages" we brand as backwards are fully capable of scientific activities, that is, they are able to look at their environments critically and formulate theories to explain events. These theories are then revised as necessary. Experiments can be conducted and results predicted.
One aspect that distinguishes this form of science from "Science" in its hardened, materialist, and ideological manifestation is the latter's high dependence upon technology to enhance our abilities to perceive events or "things" which fall outside of our senses, which raises an interesting point about our choice to externalise our perceptions through our technologies as opposed to attempting to extend our senses from the inside, that is, by changing our BEing. The Medicine Man or the Shaman was able to use his or her own internal abilities to communicate with the invisible. Today we manifest the invisible via readings off of meters, dials, computer screens, and the like. We think that to be "objective," data must be outside of ourselves. This reduces our data sets to that which can only be interpreted mechanically in some way. Data that do not fit are excluded from the start. Thus an organization such as the CSICOP can claim "scientific rigour" when, in fact, they promote ignorance masquerading as Science.
We have recently reported on the Bush administration's anti-scientific character. Once more we see a false polarity presented to us: Bush's Christian beliefs and corporate science on the one hand, ignoring or falsifying data and results that do not agree with their desired aims, and a materialist and anti-human science that also ignores human needs on the other. Scientists who attempt to break out of the straight-jacket of phony scientific rigour are herded back into the fold through various means from the rejection of their work to scientific journals until the offending materials are deleted to ad hominum personal attacks both in private and in public. It is not unheard of for scientific adversaries to come to fisticuffs at academic conferences when disagreements become heated. It appears that might makes right is also at times the final arbiter of scientific truth.

posted 03-18-2004 01:40 PM            

Check your local library. It is well worth finding and reading.

posted 03-18-2004 02:23 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by swamp gas:
Carl Sagan was one of the first people to acknowledge Global Warming as factual.

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Then read his book.

posted 03-18-2004 03:12 PM            

quote:

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He also perceived global warming as a growing, man-made danger and likened it to the natural development of Venus into a hot life-hostile planet through greenhouse gases.

Under the pseudonym "Mr. X", Sagan wrote an essay concerning pot smoking in the 1971 book "Reconsidering marijuana". Lester Grinspoon (the book's editor), disclosed this to Keay Davidson, Sagan's biographer. Sagan commmented that marijuana encouraged some of his works and enhanced experiences.

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So Wolfie's hero believed Global Warming exists, and he smoked reefer instead of consumming Wolfie's favorite narcotic drug...Booze.

As much as I respected Sagan, he did nothing to prove any of theories, on there being no interdimensional life and reality, contrary to some of the current Physicists and mathematicians like Michio Kaku and Robert Anton Wilson, who challenge Sagan's belief in Linear 3 dimensions. He should have stayed with the provable theories and facts like global warming, ozone depletion, nuclear winter, Venusian warming, and space science. When he got into "disproving" paranormal, he started looking rather foolish, and I likened him to an Inquisitioner rather than a scientist at that point. He became the PT Barnum of Science, rather than the next Einstein, Nikolai Tesla, John Wheeler, or Fiorela Terenzi.

And before I forget, here is another look at "Professional Debunkers", those who make a buck off of what they perceive as Pseudo-Science.

Ever see telepathy and pre-cognition in animals Wolfie? I didn't think so.

Take your time with this person's opinion. It's a long read, but I love debunking debunkers.

http://www.phact.org/e/z/problem3.htm

posted 03-18-2004 03:36 PM            

"Check your local library. It is well worth finding and reading."

I have it. As well as "Cosmos" and "Pale plue dot."

What's your point?

posted 03-19-2004 11:49 AM            

quote:

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This addresses one of my favorite groups of all: the professional skeptic crowd. I want to define my terms here. By
"professional" I mean those who do it for a living or spend much more time doing it than any healthy hobbyist would. James Randi is a professional skeptic. So was the recently-departed Carl Sagan.Those people literally made money, and lots of it, from their "skeptical" efforts. And then there is a whole population of people who almost without exception work for big power structure organizations, like James Oberg of NASA, or Isaac Asimov, who spent many, many hours of their lives being "skeptical." And while they don’t make money officially for their "skeptical" efforts, there are power structure awards aplenty showered on their heads (Like Randi winning a prestigious physics award for helping debunk an immunologist who apparently found evidence that water had "memory." An effect that is apparently getting more scientific confirmation today.), and I can only wonder how many in their ranks are like Bill the Hit Man, getting quietly paid for their efforts through either the large corporations or the CIA. And I happen to know what I am talking regarding that phenomenon of secret payments for dutiful work on behalf of the CIA or corporate America, and I won’t go further into it here to protect identities.

And I have a real problem with the moniker of "skeptic" that those groups have nearly appropriated. Most prominent is the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, abbreviated CSICOP. CSICOP publishes a quarterly magazine called The Skeptical Inquirer. I go into their particular contributions in my science piece a little, and here will be a more thorough job on it. In one of the back issues of The Skeptical Inquirer that I read I saw a little piece that took pains to define the word "skeptic." Well, I wish those people at CSICOP would evidence a little more skepticism where it really counted, like at their own cherished beliefs. I have yet to see one article in their pages that seriously challenges the power structure. And they even bless power structure hatchet jobs, like the one done on Reich, replete with a massive book burning.

Here is my take on skepticism. True skepticism is one of the more important qualities of the human mind. Virtually every breakthrough in thought that has ever occurred has skepticism to thank. Being skeptical is to look at something with no beliefs, with a fresh eye that takes nothing for granted. The greatest skeptical
breakthroughs have happened when the founding presumptions of a body of thought were looked at with a skeptical eye and questioned. Einstein’s rejection of Newton’s presumptions of absolute time and absolute space led to the physics we have today. Questioning the infallibility of the Pope and the Bible sparked all sorts of fireworks that led to the scientific establishment that we have today. True skepticism is an invaluable tool of discovery. In many, many cases it bears little or no resemblance to the CSICOP crowd’s efforts. In so many ways what they do is in spirit identical to what the Holy Office of the Inquisition did so many years ago, as it viciously defended its wealth and power. And I had better back some of that up with facts.

The recently departed Carl Sagan was the most famous and active member of the CSICOP crowd. Carl Sagan was a household word and I’m sure the eulogies are pouring in, as he
died two days ago as I write this. Carl was the big gun and hero of the CSICOP crowd, being the honored guest at their annual meetings, writing pieces for the Skeptical Inquirer, and lending his huge reputation to their cause. I have been aware of Sagan’s "skeptical" efforts for awhile now, like the past twenty years. In
1974 I took Silva Mind Control and found out that I and every person on the planet was inherently psychic, something the armies of professional skeptics can never take away with their proclamations. While I was exploring the nature of my consciousness, Sagan was forming an inquisition to wipe out any funding to any academic institution for exploring "paranormal" phenomena. My father apprised me of Sagan’s efforts twenty years ago.

Over the last several years I have read quite a bit about Sagan’s debunking efforts. In 1985 I read a piece by Carl Sagan regarding the Face on Mars issue. I write about it in some detail in my revised science section. Sagan’s effort was such a blatant piece of out and out lying on the issue that it eventually inspired Professor Stanley McDaniel to write his McDaniel Report, where he laid Sagan’s lies bare for all to see. McDaniel did it in very conservative language and scholarship, but for anybody who had read Sagan’s piece in Parade magazine in 1985 and McDaniel’s dissection of it, where the reader gets to find out the facts about it,Sagan is exposed as not only a huge liar, but one who used his lies to beat other researchers over the head very unfairly. Sagan abused his position as the nation’s most prominent scientists to savage research being done by other researchers, and he did it in a very mean-spirited and dishonest way. Get the McDaniel report if you don’t believe me, and round up that Parade magazine article of June 2, 1985.

In my science piece I go into the Velikovsky affair, and as I write this I am reading Ginenthal’s book on the Sagan/Velikovsky controversy. Ginenthal’s book is awesome. I cannot overstate how completely Ginenthal dismantles Sagan’s lying and bogus science on the Velikovsky issue. Sagan is completely demolished as a scientist in Ginenthal’s book, and his Grand Inquisitor’s hat is clear for all to see as he led the Inquisition against Velikovsky. And in The Skeptical Inquirer I saw the review on the hatchet job done on Velikovsky in 1974, where the organizer of the event even admitted that it was an attempt to discredit Velikovsky, and not a fair scientific forum. The Skeptical Inquirer didn’t exactly report all the facts. In fact there was a scandal shortly after CSICOP was formed in the 1970s, when CSICOP debunked research into some validity of astrological theory. CSICOP roundly debunked (By doing their own research) the statistical data that the original researchers came up with, by coming up some of their own. But when it was published, Dennis Rawlins, a CSICOP executive committee member and statistician for that particular debunking effort, could take it no longer and made public that the CSICOP had cooked their own numbers to fudge the data, and he resigned from CSICOP in disgust, and there were other scandals percolating under the CSICOP surface, but apparently covered up before too much damage to CSICOP’s credibility was done. Since then CSICOP does no real research of its own, but issues its proclamations on behalf of the scientific establishment.

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posted 03-19-2004 12:31 PM            

You will really like the one where they ream out John Edwards and the like.

posted 03-19-2004 01:09 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by swamp gas:
A quote from the link at the bottom of my last post. Man, does this sound like the people that infest this forum with their pseudo-science cornball debunkery:

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Oh yeah! I finally read that link last night - it was long but an excellent read! That article sounded like one person in particular and another that still pops in and out of here. When my mouth was not hanging open, I had myself a good laugh on top of the eye opening! Talk about BUSTED! hee, hee.

Since Swamp posted the beginning of the article here already, I'd like to add the rest that is helpful in spotting those PROFESSIONAL DEBUNKERS, DISINFORMANTS, SKEPTICS, etc. If this type of behavior is NOT for money, can you imagine this as a way of being? Even though it is beyond my level of understanding, I realize not everyone functions from a love based reality. I have to remind myself that even this serves SOME purpose. And for the rest of us, it is a good idea to be aware of these methods! It's not too long, please take the time to read it.

So after having studied the skeptical crowd at length, I have to say I seriously doubt the motivation of many in their ranks. In even the ones that are relatively honest, they often suffer from rigid beliefs and evidence a healthy regard for our nation’s propaganda systems, as they are true believers in the power structure, and have never seen and cannot seem to imagine the power structure abusing its power.

And in the "skeptic" world they have their own special buzzwords and attitudes. Two of their favorite words, in fact two that scarcely any article of theirs is missing are: pseudoscience and anecdotal. Pseudoscience means "false science," of course with the unstated "fact" that what the debunker is practicing is the one, true science. And "anecdotal" is even more charming. Anecdotal means that a human being reported a fact or phenomenon that the "skeptic" did not also witness. Anecdotal means that it is "not reproducible," and therefore not worthy to be entered into the scientific ledgers as actual evidence.

So if an alien spaceship landed on your lawn and you told a scientist about it, or particularly the "skeptic" world, your report would be chalked up as "anecdotal" and dismissed. If a million of you witnessed a UFO on your lawn, that would sure be a lot of anecdotes, but not really convincing evidence. And if about a hundred thousand people witnessed the "miracle of Fatima" earlier in this century where an apparition of apparently Jesus’ mother appeared in the sky for quite some time, that is one heck of an anecdote, or a mass delusion, where a hundred thousand people somehow convinced themselves that they all saw something in the sky that looked pretty amazing. But if the UFO did land on your lawn, and you had a chat with the little green men, yes, you would be laughed at by the "skeptics," but you would be the one living in reality and they would living in the fantasy world, thinking they have reality all figured out. Because you can’t "prove" it to them, doesn’t mean they are right or know what they are talking about. I know for a fact that James Randi has no idea what he is talking about with his arrogant boasts, but I can’t "prove" his reality to him.

In the world of the "skeptic," human testimony is inherently suspect, not really something to hang your scientific hat on, or really consider seriously at all, because in the scientific view of the world, what goes on between your ears is the illusion, and what is real is what is going on "out there." But don’t ask those scientific authorities where that idea came from, because they will point between their ears, and we all know that what goes on in there is some accidental byproduct of chemical reactions, an illusion at best. And don’t tell them that attitude is somewhat akin to a snake eating its tail. They won’t like that analogy.

And if you somehow produce a Polaroid photo of the UFO that landed on your lawn, that also can be faked, so a "skeptic" also knows that is inadmissible as evidence. And if you have spectacular video footage of it, or if hundreds of people take video footage of the same crafts, like what happened in Mexico City during a total eclipse of a few years ago, man oh man, the faking factories sure must have been working overtime to churn out so much bogus footage.

And if NASA’s cameras themselves photograph a spectacular space sequence of an apparently intelligently-piloted craft making a greater-than-right- angle turn at speeds no human made craft has ever been observed to attain, to avoid an apparently ground-based "shotgun blast" that ripped through the atmosphere, right above a super-secret American military base in Australia, why the CSICOP bunch simply gets their NASA buddy James Oberg to analyze the footage and conclude that what you were seeing was a combination of illusion and coincidence. The "craft" (And there were more than one of them in that infamous footage.) is actually not a light hundreds of miles away, as appears obvious, but actually are floating ice crystals a few feet from the viewer, and them making their right angle turns was because they were being blown by a rocket firing on the space shuttle. See, it is all so easily explained away!

And what about the "shotgun blast" ripping through the atmosphere right where that illusionary ice particle appeared to be sitting a few hundred miles away? Well, Mr. Oberg doesn’t see fit to mention that little anomaly. If pressed, I’m sure he can come up with another "rational" explanation to explain away that phenomena. And isn’t it weird that the ice particles were getting blown sideways mere instants before that as-of-yet unexplained "shotgun blast" ripping through the atmosphere? Man, what a coincidence! That phenomenon is what I call the "Rodney King Beating Phenomenon," where by enough "analysis" people can be convinced that their eyes didn’t really see what they saw.

It isn’t fun to read the work of the debunkers. Their bag of tricks can be a very unsavory bag indeed, and it can get nauseating to read Carl Sagan’s very dubious tactical inventions in the debunker game. And here is something to really enrage the "skeptical" crowd. There is another group out there who is lifting the "skeptical" tactics right out of the CSICOP handbook, and using them in a way that recalls Carl Sagan at his best: The Holocaust Deniers. You should read their work. It is very enlightening. All the testimony of the death camp survivors is dismissed as "anecdotal" and unreliable. And because the Nazis took great care to keep their genocidal activities out of the evening news, and also because neither the German people nor any of the other Western Nations really cared that Jews were getting murdered by the millions in the death camps, little actual undeniable physical evidence of the genocidal activity actually survived. So the Holocaust Deniers get to nearly "legitimately" put forth their arguments. Debunking the Holocaust is nearly an industry in the Far Right circles. CSICOP should perhaps consider admitting them as honorary members.

In my science section I stated that there are some CSICOP members whom I actually respect, and that not all of their work is garbage. I won’t paint them all with the same brush. And many CSICOP members actually resigned from CSICOP when the numbers cooking scandal erupted a generation ago, so at least some CSICOP members get points in my book.

In the McDaniel Report, in the appendix is an abbreviated course in debunking, a tongue-in-cheek effort by Daniel Drasin. It is an abridged version of his full course, and it is reproduced in its entirety in Zen in the Art of Close Encounters, edited by Paul David Pursglove. Mr. Drasin also evidences long study of the "skeptical" club, and many of his pointers for aspiring debunkers are right on the mark. I will just give you some of his pointers and some of his more astute observations.

Before commencing to debunk, prepare your equipment.

Equipment needed: one armchair.

Put on the right face. Cultivate a condescending air that suggests that your personal opinions are backed by the full faith and credit of God. Employ vague, subjective, dismissive terms such as "ridiculous" or "trivial" in a manner that suggests they have the full force of scientific authority. {I believe we should add the word SILLY to this list!}

Portray science as not an open-ended process of discovery but as holy war against unruly hordes of quackery-worshipping infidels. Since in war the ends justify the means, you may fudge, stretch, or violate the scientific method, or even omit it entirely, in the name of defending scientific method. {QUACK, QUACK}

Keep your arguments as abstract and theoretical as possible. This will "send the message" that accepted theory overrides any actual evidence that might challenge it - and that therefore no such evidence is worth examining.

Reinforce the popular misconception that certain subjects are inherently unscientific. In other words, deliberately confuse the process of science with the content of science. (Someone may, of course, object that science must be neutral to subject matter and that only the investigative process can be scientifically responsible or irresponsible. If that happens, dismiss such objections using a method employed successfully by generations of politicians: simply reassure everyone that "there is no contradiction here.")

Arrange to have your message echoed by persons of authority. The degree to which you can stretch the truth is directly proportional to the prestige of your mouthpiece. {Oh yes – you can always count on those government agency emails to pose as gospel!}

Always refer to unorthodox statement as "claims" which are "touted," and to your own assertions as "facts" which are "stated."’

Avoid examining the actual evidence. This allows you to say with impunity, "I have seen absolutely no evidence to support such ridiculous claims!" {That’s right – dismiss everythingl!}

If examining the evidence becomes unavoidable, report back that "there is nothing new here!" If confronted by a watertight body of evidence that has withstood the most rigorous tests, simply dismiss it as being "too pat."

Equate the necessary skeptical component of science with all of science. Emphasize the narrow, stringent, rigorous and critical elements of science to the exclusion of intuition, inspiration, exploration and integration. If anybody objects, accuse them of viewing science in exclusively fuzzy, subjective or metaphysical terms.

Insist that the progress of science depends on explaining the unknown in terms of the known. In other words, science equals reductionism. You can apply the reductionist approach in any situation by discarding more and more evidence until what is left can finally be explained in terms of established knowledge.

Maintain that in investigation of unconventional phenomena, a single flaw invalidates the whole. In conventional contexts, however, you may sagely remind the world that "after all, situations are complex and human beings are imperfect."

Although science is not supposed to tolerate vague or double standards, always insist that unconventional phenomena must be judged by a separate, yet ill-defined, set of scientific rules. Do this by declaring that "extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence" - but take care never to define where the "ordinary" ends and the "extraordinary" begins. This will allow you to manufacture an infinitely receding evidential horizon, i.e. to define "extraordinary" evidence as that which lies just out of reach at any point in time.

Practice debunkery-by-association. Lump together all phenomena popularly deemed paranormal and suggest that their proponents and researchers speak with a single voice. In this way you can indiscriminately drag material across disciplinary lines or from one case to another to support your views as needed. For Example, if a claim having some superficial similarity to one at hand has been (or is popularly assumed to have been) exposed as fraudulent, cite it as if it were an appropriate example. Then put on a gloating smile, lean back in your armchair and simply say "I rest my case."

If a significant number of people agree they have observed something that violates the consensus reality, simply ascribe it to "mass hallucination." Avoid addressing the possibility that the consensus reality, which is routinely observed by millions, might itself constitute a mass hallucination.

Ridicule, ridicule, ridicule. It is far and away the single most effective weapon in the war against discovery and innovation. Ridicule has the unique power to make people of virtually any persuasion go completely unconscious in a twinkling. It fails to sway only those few who are of sufficiently independent mind not to buy into the kind of emotional consensus that ridicule provides.

By appropriate innuendo and example, imply that ridicule constitutes an essential feature of scientific method that can raise the level of objectivity, integrity and dispassionateness with which any investigation is conducted.

Trivialize the case by trivializing the entire field in question. Characterize the study of orthodox phenomena as deep and time consuming, while deeming that of unorthodox phenomena so insubstantial as to demand nothing more than a scan of the tabloids. If pressed on this, simply say "but there’s nothing there to study!" Characterize any serious investigator of the unorthodox as a "buff" or "freak," or as "self-styled" - the media’s favorite code word for bogus.

Remember that most people do not have sufficient time or expertise for careful discrimination, and tend to accept or reject the whole of an unfamiliar situation. So discredit the whole story by attempting to discredit part of the story. Here’s how: a) take one element of a case completely out of context; b) find something prosaic that hypothetically could explain it; c) declare that, therefore, this one element has been explained; d) call a press conference and announce to the world that the entire case has been explained!

Ask unanswerable questions based on arbitrary criteria of proof. For example, "if this claim were true, why haven’t we seen it on TV?" or "in this or that scientific journal?" Never forget the mother of all such questions: "If UFOs are extraterrestrial, why haven’t they landed on the White House lawn?"

Be selective. For example, if an unorthodox healing method has failed to reverse a case of terminal illness you may deem it worthless - while taking care to avoid mentioning the shortcomings of conventional medicine.

Fabricate confessions. If a phenomenon stubbornly refuses to go away, set up a couple of colorful old geezers to claim they hoaxed it. The press and public will always tend to view confessions as sincerely motivated, and will promptly abandon their critical faculties. After all, nobody wants to appear to lack compassion for self-confessed sinners.

posted 03-19-2004 01:29 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by Wolf_Larson:
Have you caught the Penn & Teller show "Bu11 Sh1t" on Showtime yet?

You will really like the one where they ream out John Edwards and the like.

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HA!!!!! HA!!!! LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!!!!

Wolfie is now refering to Penn and Teller, the two biggest hucksters and phonies in entertainment.

John Edwards may or may not be a phoney, but taking Penn and Teller's word for it is like taking Wolfie's word that there were no planted explosions on the WTC.

Here's a little story about Penn Gillette. I saw The Residents play in Los angeles back in 1982, in a performance called "The Mole Show". Gillette was a complete unknown at the time, and was acting as "emcee" for The Residents. We saw him, and he was very humble, and anxious to be recognized. Years later, we met him in New York, and now with fame, he did not want to talk to to any people, except the babes, a complete snob. I said, A**hole to everyone with us, and we all agreed.

Then he says he is backing up War and Bush, ala Dennis Miller, the Viagra and Rogaine damaged Little Crap. The final nail in Penn and Gillette's smoke and mirrors show.

Wolfie, quit while you are behind. Join a skeptics club, and debunk everything that does not fit into your 3 dimensional linear reality.

Oh, I forgot, JerseyBlueyz, thanks for putting the rest of that opinion piece on skeptics!!