Perpetual motion machines, psychic power, space aliens among us, dowsing,
N-rays, polywater, cold fusion, telepathy, levitation, anti-gravity, gods
and goddesses, Men In Black, Satanic rituals and conspiracies, demonic
possessions, haunted houses, Bigfoot, teleportation, spirit realms, crystal
power, faith healing and praying at deities, mystical magical medical
'breakthroughs,' Creationism, spoon bending, global floods, repressed
memories, lost continents, faster than light travel, life after death, and
the Trickle Down Effect... these days it seems everyone's got a pet belief
they pamper, fertilize, and water.
And yet no believer has any evidence for their pet beliefs. When asked
for evidence the response is usually mystifying silence or accusations
that those who are asking are "close minded" (ignoring the fact that
asking for evidence in the first place negates any such
accusations.)
When pressed the True Believer will usually issue reams and reams of
illiterate, ranting run-on sentences which, if one bothers to expend a
great deal of energy deciphering, ends up being nothing more than a
public exhibition of the individual's lack of science education and
dogmatic adherence to unfounded, unevidenced, and undependable religious
beliefs.
Here at The Skeptic Tank we receive a great deal of crackpot mail
from a broad spectrum of individuals who believe in a great many lunatic
things. Each and every one of them are convinced that their pet beliefs
are obvious and easily evidenced -- how dare I or anyone else question
the validity of the obvious?!
Most crackpot mail is not worth the effort to pick through. The degree
of illiteracy and lack of sentence breaks makes the effort too great for
any decoding and interpretation. A small percentage, however, is at
least readable and, let me tell you, it evidences a sad state of affairs
about the quality of education around the world today.
Some people don't seem to know anything about plate tectonics -- or at
least they pretend not to accept continental drift. This lack of
acceptance is motivated by the religious belief that fossils on top of
high mountains were deposited by a world-wide global flood, all evidence
of which is being suppressed by vague, undefined, un-named "scientists."
Some people don't seem to know even the simplest of physical laws. When
a believer in levitation, anti-gravity, or perpetual motion machines
launches into an "explanation" of their pretend process, they ignore the
existence of energy being applied to their pet devices, they forget that
there is a Sun in the sky, they ignore errors in their computations, they
invent unstable theories to explain phenomena which simply don't exist.
Believers in dowsing often demand that vague, undefined, unspecified "tests"
have proven dowsing works -- and when pressed for specifics, the claimant
always mysteriously disappears. When references for actual
scientific tests are provided with the findings that dowsing simply works
as well as flipping a coin, the claimant always shuts up -- a few with a
parting resentment-filled threat about how "some day" us evil scientist
types will get our comeuppance. Some day. Then we'll see, by the gods
of Atlantis.
Many of the most ignorant people claim to have evidence for the existence
of their deity constructs and yet when pressed for examples of such
evidence, they always either fall mysteriously silent else offer
fragments of their paper mythologies and religious beliefs all the while
demanding that "science" has proven the mythologies an accurate
representation of historic events. (All the while ignoring the fact that
their "evidence" is equal to every other deity construct they would not
care to name.)
And yet they all fail. Upon investigation we find that the claimant is
unthinkingly mouthing off something they were told or something they read.
If the claimant makes the mistake of offering references, they
always prove to be quoting from individuals who hold no discernible
credentials in the fields within which they are pontificating. They end
up being mathematicians, hydraulic engineers, social workers, or postal
employees speaking endlessly about biology or archaeological digs they've
never really been to, quoting journals which don't exist or are nothing
but religious tracts lacking in peer review. Often the references they
post end up being totally non-existent, fictional people.
An example of this was a claimant who demanded that a great deal of the
classical Christian mythologies had been proven as accurate history.
When pressed, two names were offered -- two names taken as the authors
of a religious tract or publication. Both were said to be world-
renowned archaeologists with a Ph.D. and academic publications to their
credit.
When I searched archaeological organizations, clubs, groups, and journals,
I found that the two names were phonies. The claimant had been lied to
and, swallowing the lies, went on to perpetuate the lies. When I presented
my findings to the claimant, a sullen and resentful silence was all
anybody heard. (Which is sad as I rarely intend for claimants to fall
silent; I would rather they learn from their debunking just as the rest
of us learn from our own mistakes.)
What I've found over the past six years is that even the minimalist
amount of effort to verify a paranormalists claims has always
debunked the claimant. Always! I have found that no paranormal
claim has ever been scientifically verified. Proper controls
always negate a believed-in phenomena or claim. Always!
If there comes a time when any paranormal phenomena becomes testable
and verified, it will be a first and I, like all other skeptics, will
accept the validity of same. It's never happened, however, and we're
not about to hold our collective breaths waiting.
Why do True Believers most often fail to provide evidence for or even
specifics about their claims? Why is it we all get to hear endlessly
about claims of the paranormal and yet no scientific evidence or research
supporting their claims is ever offered for proof?
Why are there millions of dollars available from educational organizations
to any self-professed "psychic" who can demonstrate their abilities in
front of magicians, conjurers, and scientists? James Randi's foundation
has well over one million dollars alone for anyone to take... and
yet no one wants it for some mysterious reason.
Why do believers in deities feel the need to lie about even the most
simplest of mundane things when they're so easily caught and the truth
so easily exposed for all to see? They know evolution is a directly
observed phenomena; they know that there are many examples of speciation
having taken place within the lifetimes of humans; they know that the
fossil record is further evidence -- and yet they cast-side all reason
to pretend otherwise.
It's because True Believers don't care about the truth. They know that
they're full of what-else so they won't take tests, won't accept
challenges, won't provide testable, verifiable, falsifiable specifics;
won't do anything which will nudge them from that comfortable self-imposed
ignorance. And they get angry and resentful when someone forces them to
try to defend their already-lost position.
Where's the proof? There is none: And True Believers know it.
The mail here at The Skeptic Tank (at least the mail that is
readable) is evenly divided between educated academic types who do research
on a broad variety of subjects and between True Believers. Whereas the
academics usually always express support for the effort to debunk claims
of the paranormal and the effort to reduce willful ignorance and
superstition, the True Believer will often express mock bewilderment at
why debunking paranormal claims is even important.
Academics and other educated people understand that the quality of life
within a society is dictated by the beliefs, prejudices, and preconceived
notions of the individuals within said society. As the year 2,000
approaches, the lunacy which affects us all gets steadily worse as the
believers in wide venues of the paranormal seek to associate their pet
occultism and superstitions with the coming of the new millennium (never
mind the fact that the Gregorian calendar is only one of several different
year-dating methods employed by humans and that the Gregorian calendar
is a minority among the world's population.)
In the United States we have an untold number of "psychic hotlines" where
the gullible and the ignorant may spend their money and be told comfortable
lies they're willing to pay to hear. We are a society suffering greatly
under the oppression of religious organizations. The students leaving our
public schools are illiterate, unwilling to read, spell, or perform even
the simplest of mathematical calculations. Alpha Male Primate behavior
rules the streets where even false perceptions of slights can often result
in the murder of innocent people, guilty only of being in the wrong place
at the wrong time.
And belief in the paranormal is the pivotal pinion point of all of it.
The inability to think critically -- or, even more accurate, the inability
to discover why critical thinking is even desirable over occult
thinking -- is the cause for a great percentage of the woe that a
society experiences. The lack of desire to learn the truth about things
keeps the populace ignorant. And when the ignorant have children and
are emotionally and socially incapable of imparting a quality education
upon them, the family falls apart and the perpetuation of the problem
continues unabated.
Dark Ages are darkest when the populace is the most pious and religious.
The height of tyranny is attained when religious beliefs are at their
highest.
We get television pseudo-documentaries such as Sightings,
the Discovery of Noah's Ark, the Mysterious Origins
of Man, Mysteries of the Bible, and no end of
bogus tripe -- all of it touted as scientific fact when in fact even the
most simplest of investigative research proves it's all crap and
unfounded belief.
We have tax money being spent to investigate flying saucers, psychic
powers, deity sightings, huge conspiracies... We have thousands of
families torn apart by unscientific claims of repressed memories and of
"Satanic" rituals... we have junk science in the public justice system
where even irrefutable DNA evidence is denied as mere opinion...
All of it craps on society. All of it harms and degrades the quality of
life for untold millions of us. And all of it is avoidable.
Lately I've begun to notice that claimants have started to demand that
they don't need to provide evidence for their claims. Routinely they
demand that their beliefs are "self evident" and that anyone who can't
see the "truth" of the matter is "close minded." If something doesn't
work for a skeptic it's because they don't believe it'll work and thus
it's the fault of the skeptic, not the claimant. Either they're not
praying at the right deities or not praying hard enough or they're not
relaxed enough or "open" to the paranormal belief. If the crystal
doesn't cure one of a bad back, it's because they just don't believe.
Neither cop-outs are effective. When a claimant makes a demand which
includes the unaffected, they must provide evidence else offer a
disclaimer which excludes the unaffected. If the claimant demands
that everyone is a "sinner," they must provide evidence for that
claim otherwise either retract the claim or modify it to exclude those
who don't believe in the occult superstition. And paper mythologies
won't do; that's evidence that the claimant believes, not
that what the claimant believes is true.
When a claimant demands that the paranormal trick fails because the
skeptic is "close minded" or must first believe, the claimant must
provide an explanation on the mechanics behind the requirement for prior
belief. If the claimant demands that all people born on August 17'th
are Leos and that Leos are generally aggressive and dominate a group,
the claimant must provide a scientifically testable mechanism which would
explain how the position of planets upon someone's birth reflect upon
that someone. The claimant must also explain why most Leos don't fit
the behavioral attributes astrologers associate to Leos.
Ignorant cop-outs must not be permitted. All must be questioned.
Another thing we see from time to time here at The Skeptic Tank
is the complaint that debunking deeply-held, highly-cherished beliefs
detracts from people's quality of life, removing from them the comfort
of their rose-colored beliefs, providing nothing in return.
I doubt it. The real world is far more mysterious and exciting a place
to have to invent nonsense to put into it. We have the supreme beauty
of biological conglomerates, ranging from the fascinating phenomena of
self-replicating molecular arrangements to the evolutional complexity and
specialization of living organs.
We have super nova which explode in titanic violence casting shells of
dense materials into the void at amazing speeds.
We have sent several spacecraft to Mars and even set a 22-pound solar-
powered vehicle to drive around!
There is beauty in both observing and understanding the fluid
dynamics which shape cloud formations.
There is beauty in understanding the physics behind particle annihilation
and creation/transmutation.
There is magic and wonder in contemplating hypergravitational black holes,
quasars, pulsars, nebula, binary star systems, red giants and white
dwarfs.
There is so much beauty and wonder in the real world that it is stupid
to manufacture insane nonsense simply because one wants to and for greed
and because it makes one feel good.
It would be nice to be able to pretend that the stars and planets control
our destiny; that there are forces beyond our control upon which we may
divest ourselves of responsibility for our own failures and our own
actions. There is comfort in pretending to know the future or to pretend
that one won't really have to die like everyone else just because one
believes in deity constructs. But there is far more comfort in science
and technology, without which our populations would not be supportable,
our water undrinkable, our jobs unreachable, our diseases crippling
and incurable. Superstitious beliefs don't feed people, science does.
Yes, science and technology have their evil sides just as any tool has
yet no other methodology has the history or even the ability to come close
to the successes and benefits of science and technology. Things believed
in have no power to enrich humanity's lot -- science does and has; and
scientific method will continue to enrich us all even though at times it
seems we're destined to destroy ourselves.
If one suggests that the wonder of the real world isn't enough, the one
simply hasn't looked or understood the spectacular wonders that reason,
truth, and reality has to offer.
If one suggests that belief in the occult, gods, and the plethora of
other superstitions is anything but unhealthy and historically evil,
then the one has no knowledge of the history of humanity's ignorance.
A couple of other traditional cop-outs that we get here at The Skeptic
Tank are the claims that nothing is known for certain with scientific
method and that "some day" technology will prove the impossibility of
things today to be possible in the future.
Both claims are wrong.
A great many natural phenomena are known certainties. It is a myth that
scientific method can only derive the closest approximation of truth
possible but that Truth can't be attained. Truth is obtained when there
is so much evidence to back a theory that it becomes an absurdity to
not accept the evidence or the phenomena explained by the evidence. The
term "absurdity" is an important one to understand and looking up the
contemporary usage of the term in the dictionary should go some distance
toward understanding why uncertainty in science is a myth. Many things
are scientific certainties backed by unavoidable truths which have been
tested to exhaustion.
We're not talking Quantum uncertainties, by the way... The Heisenburg
Uncertainty Principle and the Copenhagen Interpretation of 1927 have
nothing to do with the macro world. Schrodinger's Cat can't translate
into the realm of the macro world no matter what Quantum device you can
imagine to contrive. We live in a Newtonian world, not a relativistic,
Einsteinian world or a Quantum one. Your triangle has three sides with
120 degree angles no matter how much you accept Quantum Weirdness.
This complaint about how science doesn't deal in absolute truths is
often used as an excuse to believe in claims which purport to offer the
True Believer certainty in an uncertain world. According to those who
find complaint with a perceived uncertainty, even though science tells us
that a body in motion tends to stay in motion unless acted upon by an
outside force, there remains the possibility -- however slight -- that
the law is wrong.
Nonsense! It is an absurdity to suggest that for no reason at all a
planet will wobble -- if only for an instant -- due to the temporary
suspension of one of the most tested natural laws known to science.
And as for the other cop out? This one often comes up when claimants
demand that faster than light travel or anti-gravity will "some day" be
possible. "After all," they claim, "people said heavier than air
aircraft would never fly." Many will also say, "They also believed
that no one could fly faster than sound, too!"
This fallacy is the typical confusion of technological difficulties
with physical impossibilities. Damn few people
claimed that heavier-than-air flight wasn't possible simply because most
people were capable of observing winged flight in animals and projecting
the possibility to mankind. Where there were technological difficulties,
there was skepticism in ever resolving them, not problems in overcoming
physical laws. Kites (of the traditional rhombus shape) fly due to a
differential in air pressure between the top half and the bottom half,
the bottom half being given greater surface area and thus greater lift
than the top half. The principles of heavier-than-air
flight have been known for centuries and kites reflect that knowledge.
The difficulty of heavier-than-air flight started with a materials
problem and the lack of a gasoline engine light enough and powerful
enough to provide any kind of sustainable thrust.
The difficulty in surpassing the speed of sound was likewise a difficulty
having to do with materials, not laws of physics. No one in aerospace
ever believed that there were physical laws preventing speeds greater
than sound; it was buffeting, vibration, and uneven heating of flight
surfaces and aerodynamic surfaces which was the problem. Even with our
contemporary materials if a missile's shape is altered slightly in high-
speed flight it is easily destroyed.
The ability to exceed the speed of light, however, is a difficulty having
to do with the laws of physics, not with a failing of today's technology.
There are a few things which appear to exceed the speed of light: There
is a phenomena known as "tunneling" and then there is synchronotron
radiation emitted by rotating hypergravitational black holes. These
exceptions, however, are not true exceptions to the law; nothing can
travel faster than the speed of light in a vacuum. Tunneling
requires a boundary layer to overcome and synchronotron radiation doesn't
appear to exist in vacuum.
This physical law difficulty deals with the inertia of a massful particle
reaching infinity as it approaches the speed of light. With infinite
resistance to acceleration, it would take an infinite amount of push to
acquire more speed. Obtainable speeds, however, are 99.999999 etc.
percent of the speed of light yet nothing is capable of going faster.
(Even at that speed the energy required to reach and sustain it is truly
huge. Erosion would be a problem as would usually innocent particles
being boosted into the deadly gammas.)
Another piece of this myth is anti-gravity. The first highly-published
anti-gravity yarn was H. G. Well's A Trip to the Moon. In
this story the spaceship contains a material which shields it from the
gravity wavicles of the Earth and, later, the Moon when it comes time to
take off again.
This story is unworkable for the same reasons that traveling faster than
the speed of light is: physical laws simply prevent it; technology
doesn't factor into the equation.
In order for anti-gravity to work there would need to be a particle which
negates or transmutates the graviton gluon. One can envision such a
particle... gravity works (just as all forces work) through the exchange
of gluons. The electromagnetic gluon is the photon -- a bundle of light.
Gravitation is also caused by the exchange of a gluon -- the graviton and
the gravitrino.
For anti-gravity to work there would need to be another particle which
carries the force capable of negating or transmuting the particles which
carry the gravitational force. If, for example, an anti-gravity particle
could cause a gravity particle to split into a hadron and a Pi-Meson,
an anti-gravity drive would expel neutrons and protons and Pi-Mesons
and gobble-up gravitons and gravitrinos.
But the fact is that there are no particles capable of negating the
gravitational gluon. Gravity, in fact, works accumulatively with no
mechanism at all provided for negating it. You can build spaces which
have equal gravitational pull from any number of directions yet one
can't negate gravity.
And technology has nothing to do with it. It's not a conspiracy.
Skeptics have often been accused of having no "soul." And by this the
claimant is talking about the ability to enjoy a good yarn; to suspend
disbelief long enough to enjoy science fiction and play pretend for just
a while.
Every single skeptic I know is a rabid Star Trek fan, reads Heinlein as
much as Stephen Hawking, watches James Bond wipe SMERSH, and enjoy a
good yarn. Even the FOX Television Network show The X-Files
is enjoyed by most of the skeptics I know.
There's no reason for us to believe something to get carried away with
the story. Though many people don't believe in ghosts
Poltergeist still has the ability to scare us,
Star Trek still has the ability to make us dream and hope for a
bright future. Many of my atheist friends like to pretend that when
someone adopts a theism they give up a bit of their humanity -- and that
may be true if they elect not to think -- yet it's no more true than
the suggestion that die-hard skeptics give up anything when they demand
evidence for outrageous claims.
I don't believe in anything. Many of the messages that come into
The Skeptic Tank allude that I must believe in something even
if it's not the paranormal or gods. But that's not true, I don't believe
in anything. I do accept the evidence of things observed and
the reasonable theories which explain them.
Outrageous claims require outrageous evidence. Mundane claims require
only mundane evidence. If someone tells me that the Sun will appear to
rise from the East in the morning, I am inclined to accept that possibility
as all of recorded history provides evidence that it does in fact appear
to rise from the East.
If someone tells me that a dead person ever got up and walked away,
however, I would expect a great deal of evidence to support that position
since all of recorded history shows that dead people are incapable of
getting up and walking away. History does provide many examples
of people thought to be dead becoming well enough to get up or fully
recover. There was, in fact, a society some two hundred years ago which
was specifically created to perpetuate information on how to bring people
apparently dead "back to life." It's done on a daily basis in ambulances
around the world today, in fact.
The differences between outrageous claims and mundane claims is clear:
if a claim goes against the laws of nature, observed history, or is simply
contradictory and unevidenced, outrageous evidence is required before I'll
accept it. If someone tells me they ran over my cat with their minivan,
I'll accept that mundane claim, probably with no evidence since if the
cat fails to come home for dinner, I'll know that something
happened to the damned thing.
So no, I don't believe in anything. I know of several people who have no
problem stating outright that they don't believe in anything, too. Dr.
Marty Leipzig, a petroleum paleontologist who frequents the FidoNet
HolySmoke forum has no problem making the statement and, what's more, he
(as does myself) exhibits no beliefs anyone can point toward and claim
otherwise.
When accused of believing in something, I usually ask why I
need to believe in anything. I can't think of a good reason. It's not
as if belief is an evolutional requirement of the human
species, after all. Anyone who's comfortable with "stark reality" will
probably not find it stark at all but wildly exciting and filled with
adventure. I see no need to believe in anything.
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