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Showing posts with label magic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label magic. Show all posts

Wednesday, 5 October 2011

The Kalam Cosmological Argument 2.0

Posted on 05:51 by Unknown
Religious apologists are like magicians: they trick you into believing they're accomplished something philosophically profound and real (like 'proving' that some stone-age God exists), and then they pull a rabbit out of their magical hat (telling you exactly what that God does and doesn't want you to do, what kind of sexual activities it's okay for you to engage on, who you have to discriminate against, etc.). Jesus and Mo capture this lunacy hilariously:


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Posted in ethics, hilarious, logic, magic, philosophy, religion | No comments

Friday, 29 April 2011

Exposing the Supernatural in India

Posted on 08:23 by Unknown
If you enjoyed yesterday's documentary with Derren Brown exposing the tricks of faith healers, you'll be pleased to know that there is a group of people traveling through India also teaching the locals some basic critical thinking skills, and exposing in the process the cheap ploys used by scam artists who are only too happy to take advantage of the poor and the uneducated...



If you're a messenger from God, would you really need a team of bodyguards?
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Posted in corruption, Enemies of Reason, health, magic, religion | No comments

Thursday, 28 April 2011

Derren Brown - Miracles for Sale

Posted on 08:31 by Unknown
It's hard to come up with many examples of practices more cruel and exploitative than faith healing because its practitioners deliberately prey on the poor and sick by taking advantage of them in their greatest time of need and desperation. If your kid is diagnosed with an incurable and terminal disease, for instance, and science-based medicine can't help, it's understandable that you might try other 'alternative' methods. What parent wouldn't be willing to try anything to help their children?

And that's precisely what faith healers are counting on. They exploit the general population's lack of critical thinking skills by poisoning the well in such a way that no matter the outcome, it will somehow 'confirm' their doctrine: if you feel immediately better because you've been touched by one of these charlatans (while all the work is really being done by a temporary rush of adrenaline coursing through your body), that counts as evidence of a miracle; but if you don't feel better, or your symptoms come back later (as they inevitably do), it's your own fault for not having enough faith. It's a win-win... for the 'healer'. It's a lose-lose for you.

What kind of purpose drives these healers? No, it's not love for their fellow man... it's greed: you have to pony up a pretty penny to show that you have the requisite faith for the holy spirit to descend upon you (and it takes cash and credit cards... no checks, though).

But the problems don't stop with the healing session itself: because faith is hammered into your head as the cause of your improvement, it wouldn't show much faith on your part if you continue to take the real medicine that medical doctors have prescribed for you. As you might imagine, people stop taking their medication and the result is that they get worse, cancers relapse, medical conditions deteriorate, and some people even end up dying...

Luckily, Derren Brown has been working really hard to infiltrate this group of disgusting con artists and expose them for the frauds they are by training an ordinary man and turning him into a 'faith healer' and unleashing him somewhere in Texas. This documentary should be mandatory in the Bible belt...



And for more, check out The Enemies of Reason.
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Posted in corruption, documentary, Enemies of Reason, ethics, health, magic, Optical illusion, religion | No comments
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