Cancer is a disease

Barbara Ehrenreich had breast cancer, and ugly and frightening as that disease is, she found something else that was almost as horrible: the ‘positive thinking’ approach to health care. People are stigmatized if they fail to regard their illness as anything other than an uplifting, positive life experience, an opportunity to examine their lives and identify what is most important to them…and also, most disturbingly, if they fail to appreciate that the attitude that they bring to the problem will determine whether they live or die. It’s the Oprah-zation of medicine.

In the most extreme characterisation, breast cancer is not a problem at all, not even an annoyance – it is a “gift”, deserving of the most heartfelt gratitude. One survivor writes in her book The Gift Of Cancer: A Call To Awakening that “cancer is your ticket to your real life. Cancer is your passport to the life you were truly meant to live.” And if that is not enough to make you want to go out and get an injection of live cancer cells, she insists, “Cancer will lead you to God. Let me say that again. Cancer is your connection to the Divine.”

Well, doesn’t that just make you all want to rush out and take a bath in some carcinogens? We healthy people are missing out on enlightenment!

We’re also missing out on an opportunity to be bilked. That’s what this is really all about: con artists who can’t really do anything to fight the cancer can at least tell you to smile, be cheerful, pray, buy my super-duper vitamin supplements, and pay the cashier my consulting fees on the way out … and if it doesn’t work, it’s not my fault. You’ve got a disease that’s ripping through your guts and causing pain, yet if you feel a moment’s doubt or worry, you’ve invalidated the charlatan’s prescription, and your relapse is all your fault.

This is where the feel-good phonies prosper. Look at how Deepak Chopra treats his ‘patients’.

Besides, it takes effort to maintain the upbeat demeanor expected by others – effort that can no longer be justified as a contribution to long-term survival. Consider the woman who wrote to Deepak Chopra that her breast cancer had spread to the bones and lungs: “Even though I follow the treatments, have come a long way in unburdening myself of toxic feelings, have forgiven everyone, changed my lifestyle to include meditation, prayer, proper diet, exercise, and supplements, the cancer keeps coming back. Am I missing a lesson here that it keeps reoccurring? I am positive I am going to beat it, yet it does get harder with each diagnosis to keep a positive attitude.”

Chopra’s response: “As far as I can tell, you are doing all the right things to recover. You just have to continue doing them until the cancer is gone for good. I know it is discouraging to make great progress only to have it come back again, but sometimes cancer is simply very pernicious and requires the utmost diligence and persistence to eventually overcome it.”

The poor woman has a metastisizing cancer that has spread to her bones and lungs, and Chopra is telling her that diet, prayer, and not thinking ‘toxic’ thoughts will lead to a cure! I don’t know how that quack has avoided arrest.

I much prefer the honesty of Ehrenreich (I also like the connotations of her name). This is the truth:

Breast cancer, I can now report, did not make me prettier or stronger, more feminine or spiritual. What it gave me, if you want to call this a “gift”, was a very personal, agonising encounter with an ideological force in American culture that I had not been aware of before – one that encourages us to deny reality, submit cheerfully to misfortune and blame only ourselves for our fate.

I’m really in the wrong business

I told you yesterday that it was amazing that a religious crank could serve an adoring audience with 55 radio stations, all pumping out Grade A Prime lunacy. It was a bit depressing that all an old fool needs to do is babble about God and the Bible and people will throw money at him.

But then I’d also pointed out that another phony, Rick Warren, had suffered a major financial shortfall of almost a million dollars, and was begging for more donations. That makes you feel a little better, right? Stupidity is not a smooth road to riches, at least.

Despair some more, people. Warren put out his call, and his flock of sheep answered with donations adding up to $2.4 million over one weekend. And he’s bragging that most of these were small donations from many people, not the largesse of a few rich individuals, and calling it a “miracle”.

It’s a bit ironic that initially he’d said the shortfall was due to a poor economy and people having little to give. It’s revolting that he would then proceed to put the bite on the financially stressed members of his congregation, and that they’d then dredge up more of their money to hand over to the Saddleback simpleton. It wasn’t a miracle: a better word would be a fleecing.

Winnipeg next week!

Next Saturday, 9 January, I’ll be driving up to Winnipeg to talk with the local humanists. You can come, too! There’s a bit of a warning there, though:

Myers will speak at 7 p.m. at the CanadInns Club Regent Casino Hotel in Ambassador Room B.

Admission is free but because seating is limited, attendees are being asked to register. Email to ham_librarian@yahoo.ca or phone 792-0931.

Reserve a seat today!

I conquered! Now try a poll that I am not on

I sicced you on this poll to identify the most vocal atheist of 2009: don’t be surprised, I won. Of course, the real problem there was that the winner was determined in an open online poll — if it had been a poll to determine the most vocal Christian of the year, I also would have smashed into it hard.

Now try something a little less biased: a poll to determine the most influential female atheist. My name is not on it, so I’m safe from messing this one up.

Ophelia Benson 7% (76 votes)
Greta Christina 21% (237 votes)
Annie Laurie Gaylor 6% (68 votes)
Tracie Harris & Jen Peeples 3% (29 votes)
Sikivu Hutchinson <1% (2 votes)
Susan Jacoby 2% (26 votes)
Lyz Liddell 1% (12 votes)
Heather MacDonald 1% (6 votes)
Amanda Marcotte 1% (10 votes)
Melissa McEwan <1% (3 votes)
Ashley Paramore 1% (8 votes)
“Surly” Amy Davis Roth 4% (51 votes)
Eugenie Scott 13% (145 votes)
Ariane Sherine 16% (184 votes)
Julia Sweeney 9% (99 votes)
Rebecca Watson 14% (160 votes)
Other (say who in comments) 2% (19 votes)

Oh, no! There’s an “other”! Don’t write my name in!

What’s really interesting here is how easy it is to make a long list of female atheists…and note that people in the comments are already mentioning all the women who were left out. Maybe this list ought to be shared around to various godless conference organizers as a little hint…

All right, people…you’re writing my name in. Stop it, or Jen is going to make me send her a photo of me. In a dress. While I could pull that off when I was 18, I don’t think it will work any more.

Danish cartoonists proven wrong!

Oh, yeah, but they screwed up. Probably the best known of the inflammatory anti-Islam Danish cartoons was the work of Kurt Westergaard, who drew the prophet Mohammed with a bomb for a turban. It was a very misleading portrayal of a Muslim, which was demonstrated lately when a Somali fanatic tried to break into his home and kill him while yelling “revenge!” and “blood!” …with a knife and an axe, not a bomb!

I’m sure Westergaard will be publishing an apology and retraction now. Or maybe he’ll just have to admit his error and redraw Mohammed with more personal nasty weapons of death and destruction bristling from his turban.

The poor oppressed Muslim man was shot and received some minor wounds, and has been arrested. Westergaard is fine; for some mysterious reason, he had security alarms all over his house and a safe room where he and his 5 year old granddaughter, who has probably learned something from this encounter, could hide. All signs of a guilty conscience, no doubt.

(Danish source, and horrible google translation, if you’re interested.)

Deeeeeepaaaak!

Deepak Chopra recently gave a talk in which he rattled off all of the amazing assertions below.

The essential nature of the material world is not material; the essential nature of the physical world is not physical; the essential stuff of the universe is non-stuff.

Western science is still frozen in an obsolete, Newtonian worldview that is based literally on superstition — and we can call it the superstition of materialism — which says you and I are physical entities of the physical universe.

This is a fundamental misunderstanding – that perception is in the brain. It’s not in the brain; perception is in consciousness. All our thoughts are in consciousness, all our imagination is in consciousness, all our cognition is in consciousness. Everything that we call reality is in consciousness. Everything! There’s nothing outside consciousness. And no one can find this consciousness. And the reason they can’t find consciousness is because they are looking in the wrong place.

Past, present and future are actually one phenomenon, one picture, one reality, one consciousness.

Every cell instantly knows what is happening in every other cell, in fact, in the whole universe.

I am particularly amused by the topsy-turvy claim that modern science is all superstition, since this talk was given at a funny venue.

Deepak was speaking at an Indian Astrology Conference.

My comment: Bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haaaaa! Hee hee. HAAAA ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ho, ha, ha <choke> ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Hee.

That guy. What a joker. I wish I were dishonest enough that I could make the kind of money he does marketing himself as a clown. He doesn’t understand physics, the brain, consciousness, or cells, yet he can still make big bucks standing up in front of a professional society of frauds and telling them a set of lies that they want to hear.

By the way, parts of India experienced an eclipse on New Years — and the astrologers and priests were full of worries.

But astrologers took the eclipse seriously. “Eclipses do influence people’s lives just the way stars do. Those who came in direct contact of the eclipse between 12.22am and 1.24am should have been careful. But since most of the New Year parties were planned indoors due to the cold weather, there was not much reason to worry,” said Vinay Kumar Dubey, a city based astrologer.

Temples in the city, however, closed early in wake of the eclipse. Mythology says that a lunar eclipse generates negative energy. “It is inauspicious to invoke the deities during an eclipse. The idols are covered by organic materials like grass, neem leaves, vila trees or raw silk shroud to prevent the natural aura from being destroyed,” said a priest at the Hanuman temple on the University Road.

Those were Chopra’s people! Of course, if you read the whole article, you’ll find that India also contains many sensible people who deplored the superstitious nonsense, and saw it as an interesting astronomical phenomenon, and nothing more. I guess in Chopra’s terms, they were the superstitious ones…not the buffoons covering idols with neem leaves.

We’re doomed.

The world will not end in 2012.

Harold Camping lets out a hearty chuckle when he considers the people who believe the world will end in 2012.

Yeah, it’s ridiculous, but you knew that all along. This nonsensical 2012 date for an apocalypse is pure numerology: one of the great cycles of the Mayan calendar comes to an end in that year, but it simply means that if you were a Mayan, you’d flip the page on your calendar then (or start carving a new symbol on your stone tablets). Only a loon would attach so much significance to an arbitary magical date that they would think it implies the world will end.

Harold Camping must be a very sensible person.

“That date has not one stitch of biblical authority,” Camping says from the Oakland office where he runs Family Radio, an evangelical station that reaches listeners around the world. “It’s like a fairy tale.”

The real date for the end of times, he says, is in 2011.

Oops.

Camping is completely bonkers: his calculation is more idiotic numerology.

The number 5, Camping concluded, equals “atonement.” Ten is “completeness.” Seventeen means “heaven.” Camping patiently explained how he reached his conclusion for May 21, 2011.

“Christ hung on the cross April 1, 33 A.D.,” he began. “Now go to April 1 of 2011 A.D., and that’s 1,978 years.”

Camping then multiplied 1,978 by 365.2422 days – the number of days in each solar year, not to be confused with a calendar year.

Next, Camping noted that April 1 to May 21 encompasses 51 days. Add 51 to the sum of previous multiplication total, and it equals 722,500.

Camping realized that (5 x 10 x 17) x (5 x 10 x 17) = 722,500.

Or put into words: (Atonement x Completeness x Heaven), squared.

Camping has made thes kinds of apocalyptic predictions before — he apparently thought Christ was going to return on 6 September 1994. The amazing thing is that in spite of his record of failure, in spite of the patent inanity of his calculations, the guy has a following and owns 55 radio stations that are spewing out his drivel to a gullible audience.

And that, I think, is perhaps the only legitimate evidence of the imminent demise of the human race.

A sudden influx of Young Earth Creationists

I’ve been hearing a few complaints lately that there has been a shortage of creationist cretins around here — you all need an occasional fool to gnaw on to keep your fangs sniny and your pelts glossy, I know. Well, aren’t you lucky: Carl Wieland, head of the Australian contingent of global wackaloons, put up an irate reply to the atheist rejection of his offer to debate us. We’re getting a sudden surge because it included this summary of my dismissal:

PZ Myers’ “in your face, Christians” response

PZ Myers, however, while not giving the courtesy of a direct reply, did so firmly and unmistakably on his widely accessed blog. Not surprisingly, it, too, involved a rejection of the invitation to debate, with all the usual excuses trotted out. Readers who are not used to some of the anti-Christian vitriol on such sites need to be warned, but we think seeing the response may be useful for some of you who may have thought that this issue is primarily about science—it’s not. That much should be obvious just from the emotionalism of this response alone. There is a palpable disdain, even hatred, of Christianity and the Bible. Myers concludes his rejection with a “Here’s my answer to Carl Wieland … “, followed by an image which has a common depiction of the Lord Jesus, with the image of the hand manipulated so as to be giving a rude gesture. For the whole response by PZ Myers, bearing all the warnings in mind for younger members of the family in particular, you can see

scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/12/a_reply_to_carl_wieland.php

Curiously, although I’m not shy about expressing my contempt for all religions, that particular post doesn’t say anything rude about Christianity at all — it does plainly state that Young Earth creationists are not worth wasting time on.

Anyway, it has drawn in some fresh meat. Enjoy it while you can — the new kooks will turn tail and run away soon enough, if experience is any guide.

A good way to start the new year

The Foundation Beyond Belief is a new humanist charitable and educational organization that can be the focus of your godless giving. They’ve got an interesting approach: they set up 10 categories (education, the environment, poverty, human rights, etc.), and you pick what percentage of your donation you’d like to go to each category. They also highlight a reputable charity within each category that will receive your donation: read the FAQ for details on how it works.

One of the major virtues of this foundation to the humanist and atheist movement is that it can be (if many of us cooperate!) a center point that makes godless donations more prominent; it can also make the community of unbelievers a desirable group for charitable organizations to court. So join up! They do have a $9 annual membership fee, but it’s also a group that emphasizes the efficient distribution of your money to the people who need it most.