THE GRUMPY SKEPTIC - thegrumpyskeptic's Blog - Bakersfield.com http://people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/thegrumpyskeptic Trying to fight all the illogical whoo whoo in our city, and our nation. Trying to fight all the illogical whoo whoo in our city, and our nation. en-us Why God Wont Answer Amputee Prayers http://people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/thegrumpyskeptic/30320 http://people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/thegrumpyskeptic/30320 <p>&nbsp;</p> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="font-size: larger"><b>WHY GOD WON&rsquo;T ANSWER AMPUTEE PRAYERS??</b></span></div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="font-size: larger"><b>&nbsp;</b></span></div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="font-size: larger"><b>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </b>One of the many things that I often see, and hear (while watching T.V. in the wee hours of the morning) are infomercials with churches and televangelist&rsquo;s. I don&rsquo;t know how you all feel about them, or if you believe that god can cure all and any illness, but a question came to mind. &ldquo;Why wont god cure amputees?&rdquo; it didn&rsquo;t make sense, I ill try to reason.</span></div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="font-size: larger">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Well first reason could be that god, just doesn&rsquo;t like those poor guys who have lost an arm or a leg (not knocking on my fellow brothers in arms I happen to be a Army vet as well). For one reason or the other they have made it to the &ldquo;bad list&rdquo; of god since the beginning of our species, or as some would have it the &ldquo;creation of our species&rdquo;</span></div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="font-size: larger">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Second, maybe he&rsquo;s too busy answering all those prayers from those rich privileged children of wealthy parents to hear the ailing prayers of those injured. He can get pretty busy remember &ldquo;Bruce Almighty.&rdquo;</span></div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="font-size: larger">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Third god is &ldquo;testing&rdquo; them, or &ldquo;god works in mysterious ways&rdquo;. That&rsquo;s all too convenient but let&rsquo;s assume then that he is testing them or has plans unknown to us. Then not one single victim of amputation is worthy of his healing? Too bad, I&rsquo;ve known plenty of soldiers who, in my opinion are more than worth spontaneous limb regeneration.</span></div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="font-size: larger">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Lastly perhaps he&rsquo;s imaginary and doesn&rsquo;t exist. Now if we add that to the question of why he doesn&rsquo;t heal amputees, it all makes sense. An imaginary creature can&rsquo;t &ldquo;hear&rdquo; prayer, nor answer it. By saint George an imaginary creature can&rsquo;t even test us. So it makes sense as to why there is plenty of proof for that our friend God, Jehovah, Allah, and/or Jesus are imaginary.</span></div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="font-size: larger">&nbsp;</span></div> <p><span style="font-size: smaller">Oh PS. The reason I&rsquo;m so grumpy is not even god at all it&rsquo;s the lame quacks, and pseudoscience, and fake medicine that is infiltrating the medical system, but that&rsquo;s a topic for another time.</span></p>


Title: The Bible (convenient Edition)
Caption: Ah picking and choosing from the bible? This is your ultimate guide
Credit: thegrumpyskeptic


Title: The Bible (convenient Edition)
Caption: Ah picking and choosing from the bible? This is your ultimate guide
Credit: thegrumpyskeptic

 The Bible (convenient Edition) Ah picking and choosing from the bible? This is your ultimate guide thegrumpyskeptic Why Intelligent Design Isn't Science http://people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/thegrumpyskeptic/26182 http://people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/thegrumpyskeptic/26182 <p>Hey all, just another awesome day, well I was doing some research, on why ID isn't science, and well ran across an article at</p> <p><a href="http://www.naturalism.org/science.htm#whyintelligent">http://www.naturalism.org/science.htm#whyintelligent</a></p> <p>that was too good not to just post, so here it is, feast your eyes on this, and finally see why the new Ben Stein movie is dumb, and why our poor journalist was wrong. (Yipes I guess skeptics are grumpier at 4:37 AM. Enjoy you guys</p> <p style="margin-left: 45px; margin-right: 45px" align="center"><font face="Book Antiqua"><a name="whyintelligent"></a></font><font face="Book Antiqua" color="#400000" size="6"><big><big><big>Why Intelligent Design Isn&rsquo;t Science</big></big></big></font></p> <p style="margin-left: 45px; margin-right: 45px" align="left"><font face="Book Antiqua"><em>Contrary to the claims of some proponents of intelligent design (ID), science does not presume naturalism. So science doesn't reject ID because ID is supernatural. &nbsp;&nbsp; Nevertheless, science </em>does<em> reject ID because the ID hypothesis exemplifies none of the characteristics of legitimate scientific explanation.<span lang="en-us">&nbsp; For some basic characteristics of scientific explanations, click <a href="http://www.naturalism.org/science.htm#explanation">here</a>.</span></em></font></p> <p style="margin-left: 45px; margin-right: 45px"><font face="Book Antiqua"><font color="#ff0000" size="4">Some of those sympathetic</font> to intelligent design (ID) argue that science as it&rsquo;s currently taught assumes naturalism, and further that science tries to rule out ID as unscientific on the grounds that ID invokes the supernatural.<b><sup> <a href="http://www.naturalism.org/science.htm#Note 1">1</a></sup></b> But science makes no claims about naturalism. Scientists simply propose explanations which are accepted or rejected on the basis of their scientific merit. </font></p> <p style="margin-left: 45px; margin-right: 45px"><font face="Book Antiqua">Intelligent design fails as science not because science<i> a priori</i> rules out the supernatural (methodologically it doesn&rsquo;t need to do this, and in fact wastes no time on the matter), but because the intelligent design hypothesis has <i>no merit</i> as a scientific explanation.</font></p> <p style="margin-left: 45px; margin-right: 45px"><font face="Book Antiqua">Because science doesn&rsquo;t presume naturalism, there&rsquo;s no basis for supposing it violates any U.S. constitutional prohibition on states favoring or establishing a particular religious or philosophical view. So ID need not be imported into the science curriculum to provide &quot;balance&quot; or give non-naturalistic views &quot;equal time.&quot; Because ID conclusively fails as good science, it should not be presented or taught as a viable scientific alternative to Darwinian accounts of evolution. But ID could usefully be discussed as an example of pseudo-science, helping to clarify what science actually is, and does. </font></p> <p style="margin-left: 45px; margin-right: 45px"><font face="Book Antiqua">Below, I&rsquo;ve set out what I take to be some fairly uncontroversial, central characteristics of legitimate scientific explanation, and then list reasons why ID doesn&rsquo;t embody or exemplify these characteristics. I don&rsquo;t pretend that these are exhaustive, that they aren&rsquo;t redundant to some extent, or couldn&rsquo;t be improved upon in many respects, so I invite interested parties to improve upon them. But it&rsquo;s crucial to note that in characterizing science, <i>none</i> of the points below invoke the natural/supernatural distinction. By virtue of its aims and methods, science ends up producing a unified view of the world, but it doesn&rsquo;t start out with ontological assumptions that qualify it as a partisan philosophy.<a name="explanation"></a><strong><span lang="en-us">A first cut at some</span> basic characteristics of scientific explanation:</strong> </font> <p>Awesome article, and I can only close, if we must teach intelligent design next to evolution, why not fortune telling along side math, World War Two Denial in History class, or Prayer Healing along side GERM THEORY!!! or whatever a crazy person in a given subject wants to teach. hope you all enjoyed this is your grumpy skeptic going to get some sleep</p> </p> <ol> <li> <p style="margin-left: 45px; margin-right: 45px"><font face="Book Antiqua">Other things being equal, science seeks the <i>simplest and most parsimonious</i> peer-reviewed explanations, based on empirical, inter-subjective evidence.</font></p> </li> <li> <p style="margin-left: 45px; margin-right: 45px"><font face="Book Antiqua">Science tries to minimize the number of unverifiable or <i>ad-hoc assumptions</i> in constructing explanations.</font></p> </li> <li> <p style="margin-left: 45px; margin-right: 45px"><font face="Book Antiqua">Science is <i>conservative</i> in hypothesizing new explanatory factors: to the extent possible, explanations will be sought among phenomena already known to exist before positing other phenomena as explanatory factors. Science is not unnecessarily <i>inflationary</i> in its ontology.</font></p> </li> <li> <p style="margin-left: 45px; margin-right: 45px"><font face="Book Antiqua">Science seeks testable, verifiable, and transparently mechanistic or specifiable explanations for phenomena -<i> no mysterious or unspecifiable processes</i> play a more than a passing role in scientific accounts.</font></p> </li> <li> <p style="margin-left: 45px; margin-right: 45px"><font face="Book Antiqua">Entities accepted by science are either <i>directly observed or indirectly inferred via experiment or theory</i>, where such inference predicts <em>specific characteristics</em> of the entity that can be tested for in later experiments or that bear on other predictions. </font></p> </li> <li> <p style="margin-left: 45px; margin-right: 45px"><font face="Book Antiqua">Science seeks explanations which <i>connect</i> phenomena with one another, which <i>unify</i> different levels and domains of phenomena, and which <i>generate</i> testable predictions. Good scientific explanations are in these senses <i>productive</i>. </font></p> </li> <li> <p style="margin-left: 45px; margin-right: 45px"><font face="Book Antiqua">In science, an explanation can&rsquo;t simply be posited to match the target phenomenon in order to fill an explanatory gap - there has to be <i>independent evidence </i>of the features of the explanation. </font></p> </li> <li> <p style="margin-left: 45px; margin-right: 45px"><font face="Book Antiqua">Before positing explanatory factors that have no other empirical support besides their function of filling an explanatory gap, science will declare the target phenomena to be as yet not fully explained. </font></p> </li> <li> <p style="margin-left: 45px; margin-right: 45px"><font face="Book Antiqua">Science will put stock in a provisional, as yet incomplete<i> </i>explanation involving known processes and entities rather than in an explanation which claims completeness at the cost of invoking ad-hoc, disconnected, and mysterious entities and processes (see 2, 3, 4 above). </font></p> </li> <li> <p style="margin-left: 45px; margin-right: 45px"><font face="Book Antiqua">Science seeks explanations for <i>all</i> phenomena in its purview; it always asks what determines the characteristics of any phenomenon that figures in its explanations: how did <i>that</i> originate, what explains<i> that</i>? </font></p> </li> </ol> <p><b> <p style="margin-left: 45px; margin-right: 45px">&nbsp;</p> </b></p> <p style="margin-left: 45px; margin-right: 45px"><font face="Book Antiqua">&nbsp;</font></p> <p style="margin-left: 45px; margin-right: 45px"><font face="Book Antiqua"><b>Why intelligent design (ID) isn&rsquo;t science</b> (the corresponding points above are in parentheses): </font></p> <ol type="A"> <li> <p style="margin-left: 45px; margin-right: 45px"><font face="Book Antiqua">ID leaves the designing intelligence unexplained in the same way as ID claims that &quot;irreducible complexity&quot; is left unexplained by Darwinian selective processes, but worse, since it offers no specific hypotheses or mechanisms. ID hasn&rsquo;t produced an explanation, it simply pushes the demand for explanation back a step and so is <i>otiose</i>. Thus:</font></p> </li> <li> <p style="margin-left: 45px; margin-right: 45px"><font face="Book Antiqua">ID posits an extra entity unneeded for explanation, so violates <i>parsimony and simplicity</i> (1).</font></p> </li> <li> <p style="margin-left: 45px; margin-right: 45px"><font face="Book Antiqua">ID seeks explanations outside of well-substantiated, empirically-supported phenomena without fully investigating the adequacy of explanations which restrict themselves to such phenomena. ID is thus not conservative in its explanations, but is instead <i>inflationary</i><b><sup> <a href="http://www.naturalism.org/science.htm#Note 2">2</a></sup></b> (3, 8, 9).</font></p> </li> <li> <p style="margin-left: 45px; margin-right: 45px"><font face="Book Antiqua">ID doesn&rsquo;t specify how design is carried out: no mechanism or process is proposed, and further, no means of discovering this mechanism is proposed. The mechanism remains <i>unacceptably mysterious</i> with no hope of being clarified (4). </font></p> </li> <li> <p style="margin-left: 45px; margin-right: 45px"><font face="Book Antiqua">ID supplies <i>no observational or inferential evidence</i> for a designer that specifies or predicts its <em>specific characteristics</em>. (5).</font></p> </li> <li> <p style="margin-left: 45px; margin-right: 45px"><font face="Book Antiqua">Since no mechanism or process is shown by which intelligent design works, the designer posited by ID is left <i>unconnected to other phenomena</i> (6).</font></p> </li> <li> <p style="margin-left: 45px; margin-right: 45px"><font face="Book Antiqua">ID lacks any explanatory or predictive power; it is <i>unproductive</i><b><sup> <a href="http://www.naturalism.org/science.htm#Note 3">3</a></sup></b> (6):</font></p> </li> </ol> <ul> <ul> <li> <p style="margin-left: 45px; margin-right: 45px"><font face="Book Antiqua">ID <i>doesn&rsquo;t</i> <i>predict</i> biological features that arise as change occurs in organisms.</font></p> </li> <li> <p style="margin-left: 45px; margin-right: 45px"><font face="Book Antiqua">ID <i>doesn&rsquo;t</i> <i>explain</i> the particular biological mechanisms that are found in organisms.</font></p> </li> <li> <p style="margin-left: 45px; margin-right: 45px"><font face="Book Antiqua">ID <i>can&rsquo;t</i> <i>explain</i> patchwork, jury-rigged, or sub-optimal organic &quot;designs.&quot;<sup><b> <a href="http://www.naturalism.org/science.htm#Note 4">4</a></b></sup></font></p> </li> <li> <p style="margin-left: 45px; margin-right: 45px"><font face="Book Antiqua">ID <i>doesn&rsquo;t</i> <i>suggest</i> any experiments to prove the design hypothesis.</font></p> </li> <li> <p style="margin-left: 45px; margin-right: 45px"><font face="Book Antiqua">The designer assumption does <i>no real explanatory work</i>; it simply pushes the question further back (1, 3).</font></p> </li> </ul> </ul> <blockquote> <ol type="A" start="8"> <li> <p style="margin-left: 45px; margin-right: 45px"><font face="Book Antiqua">ID provides <i>no independent evidence</i> for the designer beyond its purported explanatory function (i.e., to fill the explanatory gap), so the designer is just an <i>ad-hoc explanatory posit</i>, like <i>elan vital</i>, phlogiston, etc. (7). </font></p> </li> </ol> <ol type="A" start="9"> <li> <p style="margin-left: 45px; margin-right: 45px"><font face="Book Antiqua">In leaving the designer unexplained and its characteristics unspecified, ID <i>fails to treat the designing intelligence as a possible object of scientific explanation</i> (10).</font></p> </li> </ol> </blockquote> <p style="margin-left: 45px; margin-right: 45px">&nbsp;</p> <p style="margin-left: 45px; margin-right: 45px"><b><font face="Book Antiqua">Additional points:</font></b></p> <p><i> <p style="margin-left: 45px; margin-right: 45px"><font face="Book Antiqua">On proving a negative</font></p> </i></p> <p style="margin-left: 45px; margin-right: 45px"><font face="Book Antiqua">: In general, ID is a <i>negative</i> thesis - that standard evolutionary explanations cannot, however well elaborated, account for some particular phenomena, e.g., &quot;irreducible complexity.&quot; The plausibility of the design hypothesis is thus only a function of the purported failure of selectionist explanations. But there is no argument to support the idea that selectionist explanations will not or cannot be completed, especially as biological mechanisms become better understood, and indeed many selectionist explanations <i>are</i> complete to the satisfaction of many scientists. This means, if selectionist explanations are completed and filled out to a reasonable degree (what&rsquo;s reasonable is of course a bone of contention), then the intelligent design hypothesis loses this sort of support. The same goes for the origins of life: once a plausible mechanism is established, then ID becomes otiose.</font></p> <p><i> <p style="margin-left: 45px; margin-right: 45px"><font face="Book Antiqua">On falsifiability</font></p> </i></p> <p style="margin-left: 45px; margin-right: 45px"><font face="Book Antiqua">: It is often supposed, although not universally agreed, that scientific hypotheses and conjectures are at least in principle <i>falsifiable</i>, if not directly testable. In contrast, ID is <i>unfalsifiable</i>: no experiment could prove or disprove it. ID simply says that what selectionism or other science can&rsquo;t explain is explicable by appeal to design, so ID can always fill the gaps left by science: thus there&rsquo;s no way to prove it wrong. (This point is taken from Larry Arnhart&rsquo;s piece&quot; Evolution and the New Creationism: A Proposal for Compromise,&quot; <i>Skeptic</i> V8#4, 2001, p. 48.)</font></p> <p><i> <p style="margin-left: 45px; margin-right: 45px"><font face="Book Antiqua">On low probability events</font></p> <p style="margin-left: 45px; margin-right: 45px">&nbsp;</p> </i></p> <p style="margin-left: 45px; margin-right: 45px"><font face="Book Antiqua">: Science accepts the possibility that certain events and conditions may have been extremely low probability occurrences, but doesn&rsquo;t draw any ontologically inflationary conclusions from this. In contrast, ID draws the inference that since (let us concede for the sake of argument) it&rsquo;s highly improbable that the universe has constants which are favorable to life, or that life arose at all, there must have been an intelligent agent that chose the constants and/or created life. But this inference simply begs the question of the prior probability of the existence of the designer. </font></p>


Title: 1797503847_d4480402fb.jpg
Caption:
Credit: thegrumpyskeptic


Title: 1797503847_d4480402fb.jpg
Caption:
Credit: thegrumpyskeptic

 1797503847_d4480402fb.jpg thegrumpyskeptic Marylee Shrider dumber than she looks http://people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/thegrumpyskeptic/26100 http://people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/thegrumpyskeptic/26100 <p>hello all, well I haven't had time to write too much, with babies, possible deployment to iraq, and a very busy work schedule, i can't seem to find the time to write. Every now and then, some moron, comes out to piss me off, this time it happens to be one of our local journalist's Marylee Shrider, she's obviously dumber than&nbsp; she look (hard to believe I know) so i took the time to write her, hope she writes back</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in">Hello Mrs. Shrider,</div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt">This is your neighborhood grumpy skeptic, while reading the newspaper, I came a cross your article about one of the worst movies ever to plague mankind, that is of course expelled. In any case the more I read the more it became apparent that you are indeed dumb and or you do not understand what the whole reason people are fuming mad about this movie, so let me quote you .</div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt">&nbsp;</div> <div><i>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s the message, of course. It&rsquo;s the message that there&rsquo;s room in the scientific community for those who can make a case for intelligent design, the theory that living things are too complex to be accounted for by Darwin&rsquo;s theory of evolution and that a higher intelligence may be responsible for those complexities. </i></div> <div><i>The film isn&rsquo;t so much about ID, as it is about the freedom to debate ID in academic and scientific circles. It&rsquo;s about the exchange of ideas and the freedom to question anything and everything, which is what science is supposed to be about. </i></div> <div><i>Isn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo;</i></div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt">First of all, micro evolution is proven, macro evolution is the system of change that&rsquo;s too long for our life times to observe. Secondly, do you not know that &ldquo;ID&rdquo; (by ID I mean Intelligent Design) is not, I repeat IS NOT SCIENCE. Therefore it has no place to have a debate in a science realm. You cannot falsify an intelligent Designer. If it indeed is a theory, then what would a unintelligent designed world look like? When was the last time you took a biology class? Or any science course for that matter? Obviously you don&rsquo;t understand what evolution is, if you did you could understand that no things are not too complex to evolve given the right evolutionary pressures.</div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt">&nbsp;</div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt">Then you go on to name people with degrees and not what. Sorry to burst your bubble but yes even people with degrees can believe in really stupid things. I mean if you liked the film it even shows you don&rsquo;t have to have much of a brain to get your stuff published in the newspaper.</div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt">&nbsp;</div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt">The only thing Mr. Stein and you seem to be hung up on is the fact that we don&rsquo;t know how life began YET. We have plenty of evidence to prove that evolution happened. There have been plenty of times in the world of science where we didn&rsquo;t understand how something happened, but we could see that it happened. In fact pretty much every science has been shrouded in darkness till the light of science forced the secrets out. Like lets say Germ Theory, we at first couldn&rsquo;t really grasp why people got sick, mostly we thought it was demons, but we knew that they indeed got sick and died, slowly we figured out it was tiny microscopic organisms.</div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt">&nbsp;</div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt">In closing, the film is not about freedom. It&rsquo;s about spreading religious ideas, and trying to get god thought in school. I hope that we never see a day when religion and science are hand in hand. I doubt you would know, as it seems your education is mediocre, but for the rest, we can remember that as the Dark Ages. You can catch me at my blog at <a href="http://www.thegrumpyskeptic.blogspot.com/">www.thegrumpyskeptic.blogspot.com</a></div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt">&nbsp;</div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt">&nbsp;</div> <p><span style="font-size: 12pt">PS. Please pick up a book, ignorance is bliss, but come on, you can&rsquo;t be that dumb</span></p> <p>hope she does, I'll let you all know what she says if she indeed responds, have a good day yall...........ugh working nights.....tough</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> Dam Ouija Board http://people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/thegrumpyskeptic/24412 http://people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/thegrumpyskeptic/24412 <p>Hello all, seems I can't find the time to write anymore in my blogs so i can only hope to continue to write. Either way, last night, while having a poker night having a few drinks, Ouija Board came up, and someone swore up and down that it works. After I stated that there is no way that Ouija Board works we ended up a long night trying to convince each other of the plausibility of it.<br /> In my humble opinion I don't see any plausible way of seeing how this happens. I have seen very plausible explanation, it's known as the Ideomotor effect described below</p> <p><a href="http://skepdic.com/ideomotor.html">http://skepdic.com/ideomotor.html</a><br /> ideomotor effect</p> <p>The ideomotor effect refers to the influence of suggestion or expectation on involuntary and unconscious motor behavior. The term &quot;ideomotor action&quot; was coined by William B. Carpenter in 1852 in his explanation for the movements of rods and pendulums by dowsers, and some table turning or lifting by spirit mediums (the ones that weren't accomplished by cheating). Carpenter argued that muscular movement can be initiated by the mind independently of volition or emotions. We may not be aware of it, but suggestions can be made to the mind by others or by observations. Those suggestions can influence the mind and affect motor behavior.</p> <p>Scientific tests by American psychologist William James, French chemist Michel Chevreul, English scientist Michael Faraday (Zusne and Jones 1989: 111), and American psychologist Ray Hyman have demonstrated that many phenomena attributed to spiritual or paranormal forces, or to mysterious &quot;energies,&quot; are actually due to ideomotor action. Furthermore, these tests demonstrate that &quot;honest, intelligent people can unconsciously engage in muscular activity that is consistent with their expectations&quot; (Hyman 1999). They also show that suggestions that can guide behavior can be given by subtle clues (Hyman 1977).</p> <p>The movement of pointers on Ouija boards, of a facilitator's hands in facilitated communication, of hands and arms in applied kinesiology, and of some behaviors attributed to hypnotic suggestion, are due to ideomotor action. Ray Hyman (1999) has demonstrated the seductive influence of ideomotor action on medical quackery, where it has produced such appliances as the &quot;Toftness Radiation Detector&quot; (used by chiropractors) and &quot;black boxes&quot; used in medical radiesthesia and radionics (popular with naturopaths to harness &quot;energy&quot; used in diagnosis and healing.) Hyman also argues that such things as Qi Gong and &quot;pulse diagnosis,&quot; popular in both Traditional Chinese Medicine and Ayurvedic medicine as practiced by Deepak Chopra, are best explained in terms of ideomotor action and require no supposition of mysterious energies such as chi</p> <p>so either some spirit is controlling the planchette or, someone is unconsciously moving it, <br /> I find it rather silly that this ancient belief is still in existence but oh well I can only try and do my best to educate the world lol. So in closing i will try any supernatural game or thing to prove it doesn't work.</p> <p>sincerely <br /> your grumpy skeptic<br /> &nbsp;</p>


Title: Ouija Board
Caption: This ancient form of entertainment is still in existance
Credit: http://www.brainjar.com/dhtml/ouija/graphics/board.jpg


Title: Ouija Board
Caption: This ancient form of entertainment is still in existance
Credit: http://www.brainjar.com/dhtml/ouija/graphics/board.jpg

 Ouija Board This ancient form of entertainment is still in existance http://www.brainjar.com/dhtml/ouija/graphics/board.jpg Any Skeptical Groups or Clubs in Bako? http://people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/thegrumpyskeptic/19984 http://people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/thegrumpyskeptic/19984 <strong><font size="6"> <p>Is there a Skeptical Club in Bakersfield??</p> </font><font size="4"> <p>Well, not sure if this counts as a real entry, but is there a skeptical club, or group that meets regularly? If there is can someone shoot me the info? If not I would like to start one, so if there are peeps out there who would love to meet up, and discuss topics in our world today dealing with skepticism, let me know so we can hash out dates, and meeting places. I would be more than happy to arrange everything. Lets meet up all you (as Bush SR. put it the &ldquo;reality based community&rdquo;) people. Who would have thought that reality needed defenders, but hit me up, you can also email me at josecardenas3@gmail.com to send me some input. SEE YA</p> </font></strong>


Title: Question Mark)
Caption:
Credit: thegrumpyskeptic


Title: Question Mark)
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Credit: thegrumpyskeptic

 Question Mark) thegrumpyskeptic Why Don't You Believe in God Mr. Skeptic http://people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/thegrumpyskeptic/19818 http://people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/thegrumpyskeptic/19818 <strong><font size="4"> <p>Why Don&rsquo;t You Believe in God Mr. Skeptic?</p> </font> <p>I get asked this question quiet often, while an answer may seem to be quite simple, to that question it is not. There are plenty of underlying issues that come from that one question. Many that I will try and answer here today. </p> <p>I find it odd that some people are perplexed, almost as if they can&rsquo;t believe that someone doesn&rsquo;t believe in god. It&rsquo;s really difficult for some people to realize this concept. They&rsquo;ve grown up all their lives believing that there is some sort of deity, while most people my age twenty two and above, do not believe in the standard Christian god they do believe that there is some sort of god around.</p> <p>My first defense to the question of why I don&rsquo;t believe in god, lies within a question one must think about to understand my position. That question is &ldquo;Why don&rsquo;t you believe in RA? Why don&rsquo;t you kneel east and pray to Allah? Why don&rsquo;t you believe in Odin?&rdquo; Well it&rsquo;s several questions all wrapped up into one, lol but you get the picture. If you realize why you don&rsquo;t believe in all the other deity&rsquo;s than you can start to see why I don&rsquo;t believe in god.</p> <p><em>The other gods are false</em>, is often an answer I hear. Well ok, whose to say that the god in the bible isn&rsquo;t false? Because the Bible is god&rsquo;s inspired word. Well prove it. Until then it&rsquo;s just a book with words in it. That&rsquo;s most people&rsquo;s defense for Christianity. Well how can someone combat something if it&rsquo;s unfalsefiable? You can&rsquo;t, just like you can&rsquo;t prove that my spaghetti monster god created life. </p> <p><em>Without god life is meaningless</em>. Some people are truly afraid of living in a world where there is no creature that you can pray to and make your wishes come true. I disagree this life is even more meaningful, because it&rsquo;s the only one we have! There are no continues, no retries, no replays, this is it, and we as a species, and a society must make every effort to make this world our &ldquo;heaven&rdquo; if you will. The loss of ones religion is a very sad one, I went through all the stages of grieving, first trying to make sense and find &ldquo;my religion&rdquo; and soon, the veils we&rsquo;re slowly lifted from my eyes. </p> <p><em>I don&rsquo;t believe in these other gods cause that&rsquo;s silly</em>. We&rsquo;ll not much to say here other than, people who have faith, just cannot fathom it being wrong. Because I can easily say, I don&rsquo;t believe in god because that&rsquo;s silly.</p> <p><em>I jut have faith that god (Christian God) is real.</em> Again there&rsquo;s not much to say about it. If someone has faith, than all other beliefs and world views that do not support their religion are false. That&rsquo;s why we have people who believe the earth is six thousand years old, or why some people think that we used dinosaurs for brute farm labor.</p> <p>All in all it&rsquo;s a pretty easy concept to see, look into your own beliefs, and ask your self &ldquo;why don&rsquo;t I believe in all the other gods?&rdquo; Maybe we absorb religion, that&rsquo;s native to our region? Could you say that if you we&rsquo;re born in the middle east, and thought from birth that the Muslim faith was the one true faith would you believe in that? Or born hundreds of years ago with the Norse, would you have believed in Odin? Once you do a true examination of your beliefs, and why you can better understand my position. As for the true believers, I&rsquo;ve found you cannot show them logic, how can you reason someone out of an idea that they didn&rsquo;t use reason to get to?</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <font size="2"> <p>&nbsp;</p> </font></strong>


Title: Flying Spaghetti Monster
Caption: If ye understand why you don't believe in the spaghetti monster ye can see why I don't believe in your God
Credit: http://people.bakersfield.com/home/PostNow/Blog/


Title: Flying Spaghetti Monster
Caption: If ye understand why you don't believe in the spaghetti monster ye can see why I don't believe in your God
Credit: http://people.bakersfield.com/home/PostNow/Blog/

 Flying Spaghetti Monster If ye understand why you don't believe in the spaghetti monster ye can see why I don't believe in your God http://people.bakersfield.com/home/PostNow/Blog/