Anti-Science

> I find it disappointing that so many scientists want
> to rule out the existence of god, rather than keep an
> open mind, as surely to be a good scientist you should
> be willing to consider all possibilities.

You completely misunderstand the nature of science.

Science is a process of putting forward a hypothesis on the basis of logic or some observational evidence, then collecting further evidence, comparing it to the predictions of the hypothesis being tested, then either modifying the initial hypothesis or discarding it, then proposing a new hypothesis.

The scientific process is not about treating all possibilities, however ridiculous and unsupported by logic or observational evidence, as being equally valid and only discarding a possibility when evidence is found that does not support it.

When theologians can provide unequivocal evidence that an aspect of the Universe, or a process operating within it, is the work of a divine supernatural being, then science will examine that evidence against the predictions of the "god" hypothesis and accept or reject it. Thus far no evidence has been found that requires a supernatural explanation of the phenomena or process, not even creation of the Universe.

The persistence of those that believe in a god or gods in the face of an absence of evidence for divine actions is what characterises religion and distinguishes science from dogma.

Thus far science has found no need to invoke the existence of a god or gods as an explanation of the Universe, what exists and happens within it.

The problem I call "accommodationism" is increasingly widespread in the U.S. It's the view that science and religion are buddies. They answer different kinds of questions but in different spheres but they can be harmonious, and maybe they can help each other or mutually reinforce each other. I think that's completely bogus.

...

Why is there widespread opposition to evolution? We don't have widespread opposition to black holes or gravity or antibiotics. It's because evolution hits you in the solar plexus if you're religious. It attacks the most powerful argument for god that ever existed, which is the design argument.

...

... The false idea is that religion can produce knowledge. Religion doesn't increase any kind of knowledge. Science does. ...

...

... Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. That's the way religious people "know" stuff. They just find it in their heads through intuition. Or they're taught it by their parents.

Religious ideas don't change by finding out more stuff about nature. Religion does not progress in its understanding of the divine, if there were a divine. Theology or religion changes because of two things: Science shows it's wrong, which is what happened with evolution and Adam and Eve and the flood stories. Or secular morality forces religion to change because they just can't stand up against secular ways of morality ... Things like gay rights and rights of women have been pushed on churches by changes in secular views, not by religious people themselves.

In science, faith is a vice. In religion, faith is a virtue. In science, there are ways of knowing that you're wrong. I could give you a list of evidence that would convince me that evolution was wrong: fossils in the wrong place, adaptations in one species that are only useful for another species, a whole list of them. None has ever been found.

...

... there are scientists, good scientists, who are religious ... This doesn't show compatibility in anything more than a trivial sense. What it shows is that as humans we have an amazing ability to hold two different contradictory concepts in our mind. ... It shows cognitive dissonance. It doesn't show compatibility.

...

The incompatibility rests then on three things. First is the methodology. In science we are wedded to nondivine explanations for a natural phenomenon. We don't sit there and pray for an answer. We go into our labs or out in the field and look for stuff. And that works! We actually find things out, like antibiotics and how to fly to the moon. We can make predictions.

...

[Second is the philosophical] view that since assuming there's nothing supernatural has helped us make so much progress, then there must not be anything supernatural, because assuming there is a supernatural hasn't helped us one iota in understanding anything about the universe.

...

[Third:] When science and religion interrogate nature, you get different results.

Some examples of things that are religious truths are the creation myth, the great flood, the efficacy of prayer, the afterlife, etc. Science doesn't support the existence of these things. ...

... It could be scripture did give us an accurate scientific understanding of the world, but it didn't. If it's inspired by god, then you have to ask yourself "why not?"

The answer from theologians to what I just said is invariably this: But the bible isn't a textbook of science; it's not meant to tell scientific truth.

When you hear that, you have to reinterpret it as this: The bible is not true. That's what they mean when they say it's not a textbook of science.

...

There is another palpable difference between science and religion. What do you do when you make an assertion about the world that you know turns out to be false? In science it goes into the dustbin of discarded results like cold fusion or any number of falsified theories.

When a religious claim is falsified like creation or Adam and Eve, [religious people] simply turn it into a metaphor. "We didn't really mean it, folks. It wasn't meant that way. It means something else completely."

...

... religion doesn't tell us anything about reality. It tells us what's imagined or desired, not what is out there.

Does religion produce truth? No. I've interrogated readers on my website about this for three years by asking them "Give me one example about the truth of the universe that religion has produced." I should start offering a prize for that. There's never been an answer, at least one that makes sense.

People often have discussions about whether scientific theories like evolution are compatible with religion. The answer is that it depends on the religion. But if you were to ask if science is compatible with faith, then the answer is simply, "No". It isn't.

...

Science and faith are incompatible, because they are diametrically opposite methods for determining truth.

...

When science finds a question that it cannot answer, it honestly says "I don't know". It doesn't end there, because an "I don't know" is an invitation to exploration, examination and discovery.

This refusal to make assumptions is the opposite of faith. Faith looks at an unanswered question and pretends to know the answer to it. It asserts much about things we don't actually know. Sometimes it even makes assertions in the face of contrary evidence.

Let's define faith. Faith is claiming knowledge of something not because you have evidence for it, but because you really want it to be true.

...

The problem with faith existing as one of many methods in a search for truth is that faith is just speculation without the need for investigation or evidence. It's just the assertion of fact without the proof to back it up.

...

[Science has given us both dangerous knowledge and beneficial knowledge. But:] Faith-based thinking is in the exact same place that it was in the Dark Ages, where its best achievements are comforting lies about things that no human being could possibly know.

...

While astrology may bear a superficial resemblance to science, it is a pseudoscience because it makes little attempt to develop solutions to its problems, shows no concern for the evaluation of competing theories, and is selective in considering confirmations and dis-confirmations.

...

Contemporary science considers astrology a pseudoscience. Criticisms include that astrology is conjectural and supplies no hypotheses, proves difficult to falsify, and describes natural events in terms of scientifically untestable supernatural causes.

...

Astrology has repeatedly failed to demonstrate its effectiveness in controlled studies, according to the American Humanist Society. The group characterised those who continue to have faith in astrology as doing so "in spite of the fact that there is no verified scientific basis for their beliefs, and indeed that there is strong evidence to the contrary." One well-documented and referenced paper, for instance, which conducted a large-scale scientific test, involving more than one hundred cognitive, behavioral, physical and other variables, found no support for astrological accuracy.

...

In 1953, philosopher Theodor W. Adorno conducted a study of the astrology column of a Los Angeles newspaper as part of a project examining mass culture in capitalist society. Adorno concluded that astrology was a large-scale manifestation of systematic irrationalism, where individuals were subtly being led to believe that the author of the column was addressing them directly through the use of flattery and vague generalizations.

...

... Shawn Carlson's double-blind chart matching tests in which he challenged 28 astrologers to match over 100 natal charts to psychological profiles generated by the California Psychological Inventory (CPI) test. When Carlson's study was published in Nature in 1985, his conclusion was that predictions based on natal astrology were no better than chance, and that the testing "clearly refutes the astrological hypothesis".

Studies have shown that
(1) astrologers trying to deduce someone's personality from his chart do no better than chance;
(2) astrologers studying the same chart come to opposite conclusions as often as not;
(3) the birth dates of people with occupations linked to certain signs (e.g., politicians, scientists, soldiers) are in fact randomly distributed throughout the zodiac; and
(4) couples with "incompatible" signs get married and divorced at the same rate as compatible couples.

The fact is, people who want to believe in astrology will convince themselves it works no matter what. In one study of 22 astrology buffs, half were presented with their real horoscopes and half were presented with fake charts saying the exact opposite. Both groups said their horoscopes were 96 to 97 percent accurate.

Most astrology systems rely on "houses", basically chunks of sky corresponding to each constellation. When a planet moves through a particular house, it's supposed to have a meaning different from when it's in another house. Unfortunately, there are all sorts of varying systems for defining where these houses are (Campaneus, Regiomontanus, and Placidean are the most popular methods in Western astrology), and every astrology system around the world has a completely different interpretation of what the houses mean.

But these only scratch the surface. Most astrological systems are extraordinarily complex, requiring years of study to master, and take many details into account ... While it's possible for astrologers to precisely codify exactly how their system is to be used, there are so many different systems, and so many different schools of thought within each, that there are probably as many different ways of doing astrology than there are astrologers. Every single school of thought contradicts another, and every overall system often profoundly contradicts the others. The question "How is astrology done?" has only one right answer: It depends on who your astrologer is.

Ah, the morning horoscope.
"Today will be a day like every other day"
D'oh! It just gets worse and worse.
-- Homer Simpson

On Friday morning, my horoscope didn't say anything about unpredictability or romance. Instead, it told me I was creative and resourceful. It was nice to hear, but I prefer my horoscopes to tell me the future, not offer me insights into my personality. I rely on fortune cookies for that.

Tips to spot questionable health providers:

• They claim to have cures no one else knows about.
• They claim that others are trying to suppress their discoveries.
• They want cash upfront.
• The treatment is only available outside the USA, such as in Tijuana, Mexico.
• They make amazing claims.
• They rely on testimonials.

[Apparently, there was some discussion before this part.]

> please, tell me why a mushroom CAN'T contain medicine?
> Tell me why a mushroom CAN'T contain unique
> polysaccarides that your body will use? Tell me why
> it MUST come from a white pill. You will be wasting
> your breath to tell me that NONE of the compounds
> we use for health can be found naturally and all
> must be synthesized.

We can talk about medicine from mushrooms. The most famous example is penicillin from the fungus Penicillium chrysogenum. The first attempts at mass production of penicillin were done with large fermentation cultures of the fungus, and then the penicillin was purified out. This article was written more than 10 years after the first large scale productions for the Army. Skimming through the data, you'll notice that the peak penicillin production of a fungal culture was 2,000 units/mL at 8 hours. A normal dose of I.V. penicillin for an adult is anywhere from 2,000,000 to 24,000,000 units per day, depending on the sensitivity of the bacteria being treated. A normal course of antibiotics is 10-14 days. Do that math. So, now you know why, at least for penicillin, how the fungus itself is worthless to medicine, but mass producing one of its chemicals in a laboratory has made a global impact on human health.

I'm not having this discussion with you to tell you that you are wrong and to rub your nose in it. I'm talking to you as a skeptic. We are not skeptical enough. If you question everything and accept nothing without reproducible evidence, you won't be had.

For example, did you know that your anti-medicine/pro-alternative health is not actually a stick-it-to-the-man grassroots movement that you probably believe it is? The natural medicine ideal in this country was not only marketed to the American public, but bullishly protected in Congress by lobbyists paid for by the largest nutritional supplement companies (e.g. Rexall/Sundown, Nu Skin, etc). The result of their public propaganda campaign and millions of lobbyist dollars resulted in the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994. Thanks to the propaganda campaign the act gained a great deal of public support, and was thus passed. Misguided Americans successfully fought for, and won, their right to be sold unregulated potentially harmful 'supplements' that promised to cure any and every condition not strictly defined by the FDA (i.e. Energy supplements are marketed as "alertness aids", because "fatigue" is an FDA-defined condition).

I just wanted to clarify that the "Big Pharma - money/greedy/evil" attitude is equally valid for the "Big Supplement" companies that push these worthless remedies. And, I say worthless now, and a tentative truth, as none have been proven through scientific methods (ie. clinical trials) to show any significant impact on any sort of disease process.

You touched on the idea that medicine comes from nature. You are 100% correct. Medicine as we know it today, originated from the folk medicine still practiced today by "alternative practitioners". The reason that Saw Palmetto has been used for hundreds, if not thousands, of years in folk medicine, but it is not used in Medicine today, is because it doesn't actually do anything. If you are interested in a systematic review of current available data for any of the "huggaballoo", as you called it, you should look at the Cochrane Collaboration. It's an independent non-profit that tries to assess the effectiveness of any 'medicine' available worldwide.

As for not being able to patent novel therapies, that's simply not true. A folk medicine plant can't be patented, but if anyone actually found a compound or family of compounds in a plant that had some medicinal qualities, you bet your bum they would patent it. Big and small pharma/biotech companies do exactly this. They take a 'medicinal plant', use different extraction solvents, and screen their extracts for medicinal compounds. Even known and previously patented compounds can be re-patented for a different purpose. Fluoxetine is the drug in Prozac, which was patented and FDA approved for depression. After the drug went off patent, it was later FDA-approved to treat menopausal symptoms, and re-patented under the brand name Sarafem. The point here is that, if something works provable (ie. randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled clinical trial), someone is going to patent it and make money.

The brilliant political stunts that the 'supplement' industry pulled off is similar, in that they are selling a product that is making billions per year, but with two big exceptions: (1) They don't have to prove their product is safe. (2) They don't have to prove that their product is effective.

Think about what that means.

Thanks to the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994, I can put dry grass clippings in a capsule with a bottle that reads, "Ingredients: Organic Bermuda, aerial parts", and sell it to you, because it will cure your breathing problems.

I write "breathing problems", but because you have asthma, you read "asthma", or you have emphysema, so you read "emphysema".

My Bermuda grass cures asthma. It cures emphysema. It cures lung cancer. If you were born without lungs, my Bermuda grass would make you sprout fully functional lungs.

I don't need to prove any of that. But, who needs a clinical trial, when we have the living proof of Ms. Laney Dickinson from St. Louis, MO. She had been suffering from asthma since she was 2 years old. She was on every medication there is, was hospitalized for numerous asthma attacks throughout her life, and was being managed by a whole medical team, including Allergists, Immunologists, and Pulmonologists. Nothing was helping her asthma. So she stopped with Western Medicine, and turned to TheSciNerd's Bermuda grass. After 3 doses her symptoms subsided, and she now takes my Bermuda grass every day, and she lives asthma-free.

Sound familiar? Complete Bullsh*t, and 100% legal.

Additionally, my neighbor might have sprayed some toxic fertilizer and pesticides on my Bermuda grass. Luckily, I don't need to prove it's safe before I sell it to you for consumption.

I don't understand how consumers are not more disgusted with supplement companies than pharma companies.

So, let's talk about diet. I am a firm believer in preventing disease with a healthy lifestyle. That includes diet, exercise, stress reduction, not smoking, not drinking excessively, etc. I think you'll find it difficult to find a trained health care professional who disagrees. There are mountains of data supporting healthy lifestyle choices being positive determinants of health, in terms of disease-free life, quality of life, and longevity. The problem is that the benefits of diets that prevent disease are being extrapolated into the realm of treating diseases without any evidence of effectiveness. Is there a place for a modified diet in certain treatment plans? I wouldn't be surprised if diet could serve to improve outcomes of a disease treatment. Can diet alone cure cancer, as in the two stories you told me? No.

I say, no, because I have never seen any documented evident of a single person being cured of stage 4 lung cancer by eating nuts and berries.

Additionally, if a special diet was curing cancer, the evidence would be literally everywhere – in the news, in peer-reviewed science/medical journals, being discussed in classrooms all over the world.

It would only take a small proof-of-concept clinical trial to demonstrate that a certain diet can shrink cancer. It would be so easy, and all of humanity would benefit. There are 'clinics' and 'practitioners' all over the world that will swear by their diet, and tell you how many patients they have cured. The patients of those clinics will even tell you that they are cured! However, not one of them has tried to publish their findings under the scrutiny of peer-review. This is when you should be asking all of those experts why they don't want to prove to the world that their diet is real. There are two possibilities, either the diet doesn't work, and they don't want to lose their revenue when the diet is proven false, or their diet works, but they don't want to share their secrets so that they keep all the revenue! The latter is unlikely, but either way, screw that guy. He's a money-grubbing jerk.

And, that is really what ALL of this comes down to. Money.

Everybody wants to sell you something.

When it comes to disease I can choose a treatment that has to be proven safe and effective, or I can choose a treatment that does not need to be proven safe nor effective.

Both of those treatments are being sold by someone who wants my money.

Guess which one I'm choosing.

The major causes of cancer are: 1) smoking, which accounts for 31% of U.S. cancer deaths and 87% of lung cancer deaths; 2) dietary imbalances, which account for about another third, e.g., lack of sufficient amounts of dietary fruits and vegetables; 3) chronic infections, mostly in developing countries; and 4) hormonal factors, which are influenced primarily by lifestyle. There is no cancer epidemic except for cancer of the lung due to smoking. Cancer mortality rates have declined 19% since 1950 (excluding lung cancer). Regulatory policy that focuses on traces of synthetic chemicals is based on misconceptions about animal cancer tests. Recent research indicates that rodent carcinogens are not rare. Half of all chemicals tested in standard high-dose animal cancer tests, whether occurring naturally or produced synthetically, are "carcinogens"; there are high-dose effects in rodent cancer tests that are not relevant to low-dose human exposures and which contribute to the high proportion of chemicals that test positive. The focus of regulatory policy is on synthetic chemicals, although 99.9% of the chemicals humans ingest are natural. More than 1000 chemicals have been described in coffee: 30 have been tested and 21 are rodent carcinogens. Plants in the human diet contain thousands of natural "pesticides" produced by plants to protect themselves from insects and other predators: 71 have been tested and 37 are rodent carcinogens.

There is no convincing evidence that synthetic chemical pollutants are important as a cause of human cancer. ...

The reality boils down to six points:

1. You can't lead a chemical-free life.
2. Natural isn't always good for you and man-made chemicals are not inherently dangerous.
3. Synthetic chemicals are not causing many cancers and other diseases.
4. 'Detox' is a marketing myth.
5. We need man-made chemicals.
6. We are not just subjects in an unregulated, uncontrolled environment, there are checks in place.

Theists deny Evolution on the grounds that an evolved man is one without the Garden of Eden and/or the fall of man.

And a world with no original sin, is a world with no need for a personal Savior.

So Evolution is an assault on a central building block of the faith. Every argument against it comes from this starting position.

Nagel's teleological biology is heavily human-centric or at least animal-centric. Organisms, it seems, are in the business of secreting sentience, reason, and values. Real biology looks little like this and, from the outset, must face the staggering facts of organismal diversity. There are millions of species of fungi and bacteria and nearly 300,000 species of flowering plants. None of these groups is sentient and each is spectacularly successful. Indeed mindless species outnumber we sentient ones by any sensible measure (biomass, number of individuals, or number of species; there are only about 5,500 species of mammals). More fundamentally, each of these species is every bit as much the end product of evolution as we are. The point is that, if nature has goals, it certainly seems to have many and consciousness would appear to be fairly far down on the list.

Similarly, Nagel's teleological biology is run through with talk about the "higher forms of organization toward which nature tends" and progress toward "more complex systems." Again, real biology looks little like this. The history of evolutionary lineages is replete with reversals, which often move from greater complexity to less. A lineage will evolve a complex feature (an eye, for example) that later gets dismantled, evolutionarily deconstructed after the species moves into a new environment (dark caves, say). Parasites often begin as "normal" complicated organisms and then lose evolutionarily many of their complex traits after taking up their new parasitic way of life. Such reversals are easily explained under Darwinism but less so under teleology. If nature is trying to get somewhere, why does it keep changing its mind about the destination?

...

... science, finally, isn't about defining the space of all formally possible explanations of nature. It's about inference to the most likely hypothesis. And on these grounds there's simply no comparison between neo-Darwinism (for which there is overwhelming evidence) and natural teleology (for which there is none). ...