Dear Jezebel

There’s a reason I promote atheism and skepticism coupled with feminism, and it’s not because I’m trying to foist a feminist ideology on skepticism. It’s because skepticism drives me to consider discrimination and injustice as wrong, not just in an abstract moral sense, but unjustifiable and invalid. If I am in any sense a feminist, it is because I am a skeptic, not vice versa. And I think the best way to achieve equality for women, and for minorities of all kinds, is to view the world rationally, empirically, and as objectively as possible. It’s the people who try to justify everything with their biases and gut feelings and falsified opinions that have gotten us in our current mess.

So it really pains me to see the website Jezebel take a big step backwards and publish a ghastly gullible bit of fluff that endorses nonsense, titled “Worth It: A Homeopathic Pain Reliever That Actually Works“.

Sorry, but it doesn’t.

The author thinks it does, but mild pain can be a highly subjective phenomenon, and a little delusion goes a long way in persuading someone to ignore a sensation. The stuff she was playing with is called Arnica, and it’s based on an herbal remedy that’s supposed to have pain-relieving qualities, similar to aspirin. homeopathic arnica has been tested in double-blind, controlled studies, and as you might guess, when the patient doesn’t have the preconception that the little pill will cure their pain, it doesn’t cure the pain. It’s indistinguishable from placebo.

These pills contain 30c arnica, lactose, and sucrose. 30c is the dilution: the arnica is diluted to one part in 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. This is the equivalent of 1ml of arnica dispersed into a cube 100 light years on a side. There ain’t no arnica in it. It’s a sugar pill.

The author also plugs arnica gel, which is not homeopathic, but it is a bit vague about the concentration; it’s a 7% solution of I-don’t-know-what. This could do something. Arnica contains thymol, which is fungicidal and antibiotic. It’s effect on pain has been tested in double-blind, controlled studies, with ambiguous results: one study finds a weak analgesic effect, but recommends it be used together with aspirin (which had a stronger effect). Another study found that arnica actually increased pain. This isn’t too surprising, either: “arnica” is a plant, the active agent, whatever it is, hasn’t been identified or purified, so what people are getting is a variable assortment of complex molecules in variable concentrations.

Maybe it actually works. I wouldn’t be surprised — after all, willow bark extracts were also found to alleviate pain. But science tracked down the active ingredient in that willow bark, acetylsalicylic acid, and have been able to work with the pure agent and also analyze the mechanism of action. Arnica? Who knows. Why people are willing to slather on a mystery mix of miscellaneous plant toxins, but get all squeamish at the idea of pharmaceutical chemicals, is a total mystery to me.

But that doesn’t matter. What we’ve got here is one author credulously and enthusiastically peddling a homeopathic nostrum on the basis of subjective personal anecdotes. An n of 1, no controls, no blind experiments, just one person pushing boxes of sugar pills at $8.29 each. And on top of all that, read the comments: lots of people are pushing back and explaining that homeopathy can’t work (excellent!), and others are complaining about “nasty comments” and “rude comments” and getting huffy that skeptics would have the effrontery to expect better analysis.

How do you like this excuse?

Oh for heaven sake. This is not Science, it’s Cassie telling us it works for her. I don’t care if homeopathy is a quack if it works for people and they are happy about it. It’s ain’t that easy making placebo these days. She’s not telling you to cure cancer with homeopathy (and even id she did – you know better don’t do it!) she’s telling us that this gel and pills work for her pain. It’s just popular advice .

Feminism is best served by embracing reality, by thinking critically, and advancing rational arguments. This sloppy Newage shit-slurry of ingenuous gullibility is pure poison to the cause.

Now that’s rudeness. There’s nothing even close in the comments there.

(via Templeton Koala’s blog)

(Also on Sb)

African Americans for Humanism

I usually gripe about the esthetics of atheist billboards here, but I have to come right out and say it: African Americans for Humanism did good. Their whole campaign is attractive, positive, and tasteful. Heck, I’m Minnesota Pallid*, and I want to join them.

They have a speakers bureau. If you’re building an atheist/humanist/secular conference, look. I’ve heard less than half of them speak, and next time I’m at a conference I’d like to hear more.

*True fact. I had a routine checkup today, and the first thing the doctor said to me was “Boy, you’re pale”…which is a major accomplishment in Minnesota in February, to have a complexion so white that it elicits comment. I’d go outside and see the sun, but I’m also teaching a cancer course which makes me fearful of everything.

Home School Science Fair this NEXT weekend

Aaargh, I think I’m going to have to miss it again. Our local creationist organization is having its yearly creationist science fair at the Har-Mar Mall near Minneapolis on 18-19 February. You can check out photos from a few years back and see that it is typical grade school science stuff, mostly not very interesting with a few that look like the kids are actually thinking. That’s not to knock this fair; you could say the same of most of the secular science fairs.

The difference is 1) this fair requires you to have a Bible verse on your project, and 2) the purpose of the fair isn’t to promote science, it’s to evangelize Christianity.

1) To promote home schools,

2) To show that Homeschool students can do good science.

3) To present our science fair project to non-Christian people. This should be a great Gospel outreach.

We heard about one lady who saw the Science Fair displays at the Mall. She began to read some of the verses on the displays and was convicted to start attending church and get right with God. There are probably other stories like this we have not heard but it shows the power of God’s Word through our program.

Seriously? Look over their examples and their fair ideas. Do any of them look at all like they might convince you to follow Jesus?

Well, if they answered the question “What is God made of?” or better yet, “Why do we have pimples? Did God goof?”, maybe.

Worst valentines ever

Valentine’s Day has always been a cheesy, awful little holiday. I remember the ‘parties’ in grade school — the ones where you were expected to give a cheap paper card to everyone, which made expressions of affection totally meaningless, and the way just neglecting to give one to the unpopular kids in class was a way to do a major snub. I learned all about the true meaning of passive aggressive on 14 February in second grade.

And sometimes, they were freakin’ racist. I remember the generic Native American caricatures in that linked post; I was swapping those cards in the 1960s, so I probably wouldn’t have seen anything wrong with portraying Native Americans as hatchet-wielding, pidgin-speaking, buckskin-wearing Caucasians, and the only thing that spares me from direct personal guilt is that I don’t think I would have bought valentines that didn’t have comic book superheroes on them (which was also kind of racist, too: they were all white, except for the one guy, who was emerald green.)

But this…this transcends awful. There was someone who once upon a time thought this was cute, and gave it to children.

Because lynching is adorable.

Holy christ, but the United States is a screwed-up country with an ugly history.

Why I am an atheist – Jonathan Judd

I would credit my atheism to an excellent education. I have had the opportunity to have been taught by many excellent teachers and professors who passed down to me the ability to think critically, ask questions, and to complete wide research to find answers. While I am not a scientist, my education provided me with a background in the scientific method, and a basic understanding about how the sciences can explain our natural world, and sometimes what others may call the “unexplainable.”

Because I was not as gifted in the sciences / mathematics areas, I chose study literature and writing. I found that through literature, there is a great deal of information and as that contributed to my atheism. I believe my first foray in to questioning the existence of god came about after reading Greek mythology in the 6th grade. After learning about all the myriad gods, goddesses, titans, nymphs, monsters, and super-powered heroes the Greeks once believed in, that they used to explain their world, I thought it might not be a stretch that in modern times, “god” was used by humans to explain our modern world. The Greeks once believed the titan Helios pulled the sun around the earth on the back of his flying chariot, when we now know that the Earth actually revolves around the sun.

My English teacher introduced our class to “Elmer Gantry” and “Inherit the Wind” in our freshman year of high school. I learned about the hypocrisy of believers, and how people can twist the Bible to fit their own needs and agendas. I found this was not only the case in modern times, and in reading Voltaire, I discovered that hypocrisy and religion have been travelling hand in hand for centuries. I discovered that promoting belief in a god or gods was also a route to power of those that promote dogma.

In college, I was introduced to Freud, and psychology. By reading further into the subject matter, I became aware of why people have a need or desire to believe in god, an afterlife, angels, or a higher power, why they have a need to feel some connection to the world around them. It can be difficult for the human brain to accept “not knowing,” and god and religion try to comfort those “discomforting” thoughts and feelings. I found that religion was there to soothe and coddle those who feel uncomfortable with life’s most difficult questions.

I am truly grateful for having been exposed to great teachers, who in turn exposed me to new ideas. Not telling me which may to go, but arming me with a variety of viewpoints to help me choose my own direction. I continue to use my educational experience to find new questions, and new answers, some that confirm thoughts, and others that help me to answers questions that others have.

Jonathan Judd

Somebody won the Superbowl!

I’m celebrating that it’s over. Yay!

Post-game chatter about the game, the half-time event, the commercials, all go here. I’ll stay out of it, not knowing anything about it.

I guess the biggest news about the football game was Madonna’s performance at the half-time. Here it is.

It was cheesy, overblown, grandiose pop. She delivered exactly what was expected of her, competently and with talent. I don’t quite understand all the hating that’s been going on — is it just that women over 40 are always going to get slammed for not being women under 20?