'We$tern Medicine just treats the symptoms of disease.
Whereas ___ (homeopathy, naturopathy, mystic herbalism etc.) addresses the fun-da-men-tal nature of illness."
“A cure for cancer already exists. But the big drug companies and greedy doctors have suppressed it!”
"It’s safe and natural.
My (woo-woo) principles of healing do not have to conform to your double-blind research protocols.
These moments of irrationality are brought to you by Cut, Burn and Poison LLC, Oncologists Extraordinaire.
Roland Orbizal
Maybe you can help educate me, Roland but I am one of those ‘hard atheists’ who deny the existence of God outright. Way I see it, I don’t have to inspect every dusty little corner of the Universe to see if God is huddled there. The mainstream conception of God is so internally inconsistent and illogical that such a being simply can’t exist. Take the ‘Problem of Evil’, for example: According to theologians such as St. Anselm, God has certain characteristics. Among these are omnipotence, omniscience and omnibenevolence. That is to say, God is superlatively powerful, knowledgeable and good. However, since evil exists in the world he can’t be all three. Since evil exists, God must allow it, in which case he is not all good, doesn’t know about it, in which case he can’t be all knowing or just can’t do a damn thing about it, in which case he is not all powerful.
Yeah there’s the whole free will defence and everything but that doesn’t account for busloads of nuns boiled alive during a volcanic eruption or such other unsavoury natural happenstances.
You don’t need to factually prove that God doesn’t exist. His nature as it is taught by religious institutions is incompatible with observable reality. He cannot exist. Unless he’s an evil bastard, of course, in which case I must wonder what all the fuss is about.
The point of agnosticism is not so much that you don’t know if there is a God, but more that you can’t know if there is a God. Any position one way or the other is based on faith.
I don’t care what any of you say, but since becoming a father, “Because I said so!” is a perfectly valid argument. 
here’s the handiest thing I saw on how to decide where you fall on the agnostic/atheist line (wish I could find that site again)
Is there a god?
There’s not enough information out there. I can’t know the truth. Soft Agnostic
There’s not enough information out there. Nobody can know the truth and nobody will ever know for 100% sure. Hard Agnostic
No. The burden of proof has not been met. I remain open to new information on the subject Soft Atheist
No. The burden of proof will not be met. ANY proof offered will always be nonsense, hoaxes, mass hysteria or hallucinations. Hard Atheist
This one has always grated on me too. If you truly had faith then the correct saying should be “God said it, that settles it whether I believe it or not!”
Okay, well I don’t like to talk religion, so I’m going to change to another happy subject: racism. My personal favorite:
“There are black people and there are n*****s.”
Every time I hear someone say that I want to fucking puke. I’ve been in more arguments with people who should know better than to say this that it’s fucking ridiculous. In my experience, there are white people, black people, Asian people, and all kinds of other perfectly nice, normal people, and then there are assholes. People who insist on spewing the above-quoted ignorant bullshit are in the second group.
Thanks for the chance to mini-rant, tdn!
I can’t possibly be the only one here who has absolutely no idea what a “woo woo argument” is…can I? :o
Nevah hoid of it either, Jadis. I’m guessing from the clues in this thread, it’s an unsubstantiated stance.
I’d be happy to give them equal weight in schools. It’d actually be really educational.
“Evolution is a theory. It’s simple, elegant, makes clear predictions from simple assumptions, is pretty falsifiable, and is about as confirmed as any theory dealing with the past can be. I believe evolution occurs subject to convincing evidence otherwise. Almost all scientists do too. I describe this mindset by saying “The theory of evolution is true.” ID is a theory. Some versions are not falsifiable, some directly contradict the evidence. The only advantage ID has as a theory over ‘magic sky pixies did it’ is that it ties in nicely with lots of people’s superstitions. There is no scientific reason to believe ID. I describe this as ‘ID is false.’ However, billions of people do.”
Possible addenda include “Those are all facts. I am also required by law to tell you that ID is a fact. OK, ID is a fact.” and “However, believing ID seems to correlate with being christianly forgiving, and several of the most compassionate people I know believe it, so maybe being true isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.” or “Of course, science is more complicated than that - it’s possible that the unsupported theory is true and the supported theory is false. However, science is choosing to believe the supported one until other evidence comes along. If you have any suggestions on hwo to live otherhow, please tell me later.”
I’d love to give that lesson 
However, I don’t think that’s what people mean when they say they want ID taught. They want the teacher to lie to the students and say it’s scientific when it isn’t.
I have a friend who is passionately opposed to ID and Creation “science”, and while I agree with him, I don’t get that upset about creationism, I am just amused by it… I have asked him to explain why, forgetting what is true, why Creationism is “bad,” like, who does it hurt? His answer is related to medical technology and viruses, but I don’t think creation scientists are really preventing people from researching viruses as evolutionary beings, so I’m not sure it’s really proof that creationism is bad…
On the other hand, stupid arguments are annoying. So are lies.
What I hate as much as fallacy, or perhaps more, is the layman who has a handful of terms like “fallacy” and “strawman,” and throws them about with no sense of what they mean. I.e., reading the above explanation of the difference between evolution and creation, the moron says, “that’s a strawman,” and when you say, “you don’t know what a strawman is,” they say you’re making a personal attack because you “lost” the argument. That makes me so mad I want to throw up blood and green stuff.
I admit, I can’t think of anything specific that knowledge of evolution helps with. But it seems like a bad way to start. Would you be ok with it if they taught kids that the planets orbit the sun because of gravity, except pluto, that one orbits the sun because the Lord of the Underworld says so. Imagine the majority of the population believed that. Once you start thinking it’s science to believe anything you fancy, you don’t do any science. The reason I find it so annoying is that it’s such a common belief. Though it could be true, believing it isn’t science, and it’s lying to say it is. Saying dinosaur bones are traps for the unbeliever is one thing. Saying they’re fakes is another. Saying they’re from leviathons drowned in the flood is something. But saying “There are no dinosaur bones. You dreamt that visit to the museum” is pathological, but equivalent to what some people do.
Where tdn, Shade, and skutir said ID, are they referring to Sigmund Freud’s ID or about something else?
Any argument or piece of ‘reasoning’ offered in favour of astrology.
In the course of my so-called ‘work’ I’ve dealt with all kinds of different beliefs from all over the world, and I can respect and understand why people believe lots of different things. But I am truly defeated by the widespread popularity of astrology among otherwise seemingly intelligent, educated people, especially those who endlessly recycle the pro-astrology ‘arguments’ that are so transparently weak and often manifestly absurd.
I believe with a burning faith of a thousand suns that they are referring to Intelligent Design. The idea that they universe is the way it is because and intelligent god designed it.
Sorry. Here, ID=Intellegant Design. I get muddled exactly what theories that covers, but basically the idea that God took some active role in making the current species.
I could be wrong about this, but I generally think of Creationism as the fundamentalist belief that God created the Bible in 7 days, exactly as it is explained in the bible, while ID might be a more liberal (and common) belief that there is a God who set everything in motion, but that Genesis is metaphorical and shouldn’t be taken at face value.
The moon landing was fake, I saw a documentary about it on TV; something about the shadows and the flag flapping in the breeze - oh I can’t remember the details, but it was definitely fake, they said so on TV.
“if we allow gay marriage what’s to stop people from marrying a dog/horse/pig/what have you” yeah because there’s no difference between a person that wants to have a recognized relationship with another person and share the same laws and benefits that other couples do and someone that wants to marry a beast.
“I wasn’t racist until I lived around Mexicans/Blacks/etc” Yeah because I’m sure you were such a model of non-judgmental behavior before.
This is the one “Woo Woo argument” that bugs me the most! If someone says that something is against children… all argument stops. It is the ultimate “shut the fuck up, you” This is bullshit! Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a POS, I think we should do everything we possibly can to nurture our children. But you tell me! Someone harms Stephen Hawking… someone harms a random X child… WHERE is the greater harm done??? :rolleyes: