webbunny tumblelog

“ You’re entitled to your own opinion — but you’re not entitled to your own facts.

Michael Specter

ReBlogged from cocknbull

“ All natural” and poisonous items (just to name a few) include; arsenic, cyanide, black widow spiders, jasmine berries, mistletoe berries, oleander leaves, strychnine, hemlock, jellyfish, scorpions, belladonna and pufferfish. Certain parts of potatoes and even too much nutmeg can kill you.

All natural doesn’t mean better for you.

Skepchick » Top 10 Words and Phrases Ruined By Alt Med

“ The word “skeptic” has negative connotations for some. But it is really a positive, inquisitive, reality-based approach to all aspects of life. A skeptic is a person who asks for evidence before accepting a belief and who asks if there could be another explanation other than the first one that is offered. Scientists are skeptics. Skeptics think scientifically.

Harriet Hall

BBC News: When sceptics fight back

Conspiracy theorists have used the internet to co-ordinate increasingly slick attacks on the accepted versions of events, but now a group of scientists and sceptics has decided it’s time to organise and fight back.

“ All the great truths which have been established by the experience of all ages and nations, and which are taken for granted in all reasonings, may be said to be theories. It is a theory in the same sense in which it is a theory that day and night follow each other, that lead is heavier than water, that bread nourishes, that arsenic poisons, that alcohol intoxicates.

Speech on Copyright extension by Thomas Macaulay to Parliament, 5 February 1841.

“ Well, science doesn’t know everything.” Well, science knows it doesn’t know anything, otherwise it would stop… But just because science doesn’t know everything doesn’t mean you can fill in the gaps with whatever fairytale most appeals to you.

Dara O’Briain

“ If you’re not using logic and reason, you’re being illogical and unreasonable. The opposite of skeptical is gullible.

Cubik’s Rube

Wikipedia: List of common misconceptions

This is an absolute goldmine of common misconceptions — many of which I already knew but some I had taken for granted. Fantastic!

via david

ReBlogged from david

Simple Belief

ruminator:

Just because you believe something, that doesn’t make it true. Just because you don’t believe something, that doesn’t make it false.

Penn and Teller made this point in an amusing way: they voted on the gender of a rabbit. After voting, they concluded “Voting on the sex of the rabbit will not change the sex of the rabbit.” Facts are facts, and cannot be changed by public opinion.

ReBlogged from ruminator

Skeptics

“ Think about it. Astronomers, both amateur and professional, are constantly viewing the sky. There are tens of thousands of amateurs out observing all the time: a large sample population, and far larger in observing man-hours than the regular population. If UFOs are so common, then why do we not see an unusually large number of reports from astronomers?

Good point! (Slamming the astronomers-should-see-UFOs myth)

“ It occurs to me that there are those of a religious bent who have said that skeptics, particularly atheistic ones, do not have a moral code to live by. And yet I spent four days in the company of skeptics who have proven that they live by the most basic moral code of all, the one most others are based on and without which would be useless: do good things on a daily basis, be kind to other people, and enjoy the time you have to spend with them. Sure, you could add another 635 rules and regulations on top, but what it really boils down to is what I witnessed. Do good. Be kind. Enjoy life.

The Amazing Meeting sounds… well, amazing. Wish I could have gone.

Reflections on TAM 7

Natural Mythology

There is nothing more powerful than an idea, and nothing more potentially harmful than a false idea that everyone “knows” is true and therefore does not question. “Natural” remedies are now a…

“ …but believing something sincerely, without finding out if its true, is actually a little worse than lying - it shits on the very idea of truth.

To lie, you have to understand how to find out the truth, and then chose to fake it. To be sincere, you don’t have to know anything, you just say whatever makes you feel good and spin in smug circles in your tiny fucked up little head, happy, as long as you’re true to yourself.

In other words, Sincerity is bullshit!

Penn Jillette

Top 12 Oprah Mistakes, Lies and Embarrassments

Oprah Winfrey has legions of faithful followers across the country, but they’d do well to keep a careful eye out as they tread the trail that Oprah blazes.

“ Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don’t know because we don’t want to know.

Adlous Huxley

webbunny tumblelog

Simple Belief

about shaun…

extras

contact me