Autism Street

Alternate Title: Skeptical of the so-called skeptical of the skeptics  

The world of so-called Complementary and Alternative Medicine never ceases to be creative. Although the argument presented is a classic “Other Ways Of Knowing” fallacy among others, an essay by the “Health Ranger“, Mike Adams did catch and keep my attention.

You can read the entire article over at NewsTarget.com, without interruption of my comment. I recommend reading it through once first, then come back and read my comments. If you’re a true skeptic, you’ll find it entertaining, well-written, and an overall good read. After all it can’t hurt to question your own skepticism can it? If you’re a “believer” it’s going to stroke you in all the right ways, make you feel justified in making decisions based on your emotions and all that kind of stuff. Is reality really all it’s cracked up to be anyway? Uh, yes, yes it is.

Here’s the link to the original article:

Skeptical about the skeptics: The Health Ranger answers the skeptics on natural medicine  

The Health Ranger says:

Whenever I really want to be amused, I spend a few minutes reading the latest admonishments and retortments from the extreme skeptics of natural medicine. By “extreme skeptics,” I don’t mean actual critical thinkers who apply genuine open-minded curiosity to the world around them, I mean the pseudoscientific zealots who berate anyone who believes in acupuncture, massage therapy, homeopathy, herbal medicine, sunlight therapy, breath therapy, meditation or any number of other natural healing modalities. They think vitamins are useless, acupuncture is quackery, and that all medical treatment should be limited to drugs, surgery, radiation and chemotherapy.

Berating of anyone is unnecessary and an emotional attack that is not an intrinsic part of real skepticism. Beliefs in the “healing” modalities have zero bearing on their efficacy and are irrelevant. The generalization of “extreme skeptics” as thinking that all medical treatment should be limited to drugs, surgery, radiation and chemotherapy is baseless and oversimplified. Many dyed-in-the-wool skeptics would welcome other proven treatment modalities that include, but are not limited to: nutrition, exercise, education, and allowing healing without intervention if such healing is proven to be likely. The characteristic one can generalize about such extreme skeptics is that they’re not going to take your word for it; you’d better be able to provide proof.

These extreme skeptics are truly impressive in the depth of their knowledge: There is nothing true in the universe that they don’t already know. All science has already been discovered, they proclaim, and therefore all new “whacky” ideas about vibrational healing, energy medicine or nutritional therapy are based on nothing but quackery. That’s why they’ve constructed an intellectual moat in order to keep all such bad ideas out of the Church of Logic.

This is utterly false and uninformed. An admittedly hardcore skeptic will tell you that there is likely far more that is unknown, and that science will never be finished. No true skeptic would ever claim that science has all the answers. You may have seen terms like “wacky” or “woo-woo”, but they essentially all boil down to the same thing - based on belief, and not proven. If such things were proven, they’d be considered mainstream (and might even qualify for the JREF million dollar prize, depending on the nature of the claim). If there is an intellectual moat, as suggested, there’s a giant drawbridge and it’s always open to evidence.

I’ve also learned from these omniscient rationalists that there is no such thing as mysterious, invisible energy vibrations. I’m not sure how radios work, then, or magnets, or nuclear medicine, or the subatomic weak nuclear force, or quantum computing, or even the vibrating piece of crystal that governs the clock on my computer’s CPU, but I’m pretty sure it’s only because I’m too stupid to understand genuine “scientific thinking,” which is apparently based on learning how to invoke obfuscating scientific-sounding incantations to support conclusions you have previously committed to.

This is a fallacious argument from ignorance. Just because one doesn’t understand it, doesn’t mean it cannot be explained. This view of scientific thinking, is ignorant of the basic premises of science, and the author employs the very fallacy of complicated words he suggests defines scientific thinking. One could try wikipedia for some real basics on the Scientific Method.

More importantly, I’ve also learned from these skeptics that the universe operates in pure Newtonian fashion like a giant pinball machine, and that free will, creativity, love, intuition and faith are merely illusory notions invoked by chemical balances in the brain that should be treated with psychiatric drugs. Because, of course, people who actually FEEL anything are obviously irrational and have no place in our pinball machine universe.

It’s a free country, believe or have faith in whatever you want. If it’s intended to be sold as science or medicine, be prepared to prove it.

Many of these extreme skeptics, I’ve also learned, don’t even believe in their own free will, since consciousness (they’ve explained to me) is merely a fleeting projection of a physical brain that operates like a wondrously complex Turing machine. This has me pondering an important question: Who does a skeptic think is offering the opinions of skepticism if that same skeptic does not believe in the existence of his own consciousness?

Consciousness is not a matter of belief. A true skeptic does not “believe” anything. True skeptics think. Consciousness and existence could be defined by that thinking.

By definition, then, the opinions of all such skeptics are of no greater consequence than two billiard balls bouncing off each other because even they do not believe they exist as conscious beings capable of creating inspired thought. Thus, if you take their word for it, extreme skeptics have the same level of consciousness as, say, your average armadillo. They self-admittedly have none, in fact, making such skeptics about as intelligent as a brass doorknob, but far less useful. A doorknob, at least, can open something. But extreme skeptics remain forever closed to new ideas.

By this malformed definition, I can see how it could be interpreted this way, but opinions are of little relevance to reality. Taking a skeptic’s “word for it” is directed to “believers” and would be discouraged by true skeptics. Even the most die hard of the skeptics are open to new ideas, but they have to be testable and falsifiable. True skeptics do remain forever closed to new ideas that are unfalsifiable - those are for the faithful.

I once asked a skeptic how he could be sure there was nothing else in the universe besides the physical, and he gave me an answer that basically translates into, “I intuitively felt so.” Normally, I would call such a person a complete idiot, but most skeptics are actually well educated. They are clearly not idiots. Rather, they are purveyors of self-aggrandizing reductionism who suffer under the cult-like illusion that hyper-rational, compartmentalized, Descartian logic is the one and only way to arrive at any sort of truth.

He asked one skeptic and translates the generalization to all? Skeptics are not concerned with just “any sort of truth”; they aim for scientific reality with replicable proof. This reality is subject to revision, change, and refinement at all times. If the author has a better way of knowing to offer, a better way to get to the truth, I’m all ears. Don’t forget to bring some proof, otherwise this claim is about as vacuous as they get.

Their belief in the superiority of selective logic bounded by preordained conceptual blinders is as zealotistic and pompous as any fanatical religion, but far less believable because to become a member of the Church of Logic, you have to pledge exclusive faith to a system of philosophy that disavows the concept of faith altogether. What the members of this church are missing is the idea that metaphor, or meditation, or storytelling, or dreaming is often far truer and a whole lot more interesting than mere logic. Or that food, sunlight and water are powerful medicine. Certainly logic is one way to look at the universe, and it is a useful way for many things, but it is hardly the only way. In fact, for the things that really matter (like happiness, compassion, or love), logic is practically irrelevant.

I can see how it might be interpreted as pompous or fanatical, true skeptics can appear “obsessed” with reality. And he’s correct that faith is definitely not an intrinsic part of science or skepticism. To conclude that this detracts from truth or interest depends on how one defines truth or interesting - it’s purely subjective. To conclude that logic is practically irrelevant to emotional constructs like happiness, compassion, and love appears like the author may be implying a false dichotomy (that one can only espouse logic or emotion, but not both). While it’s true that skeptics would not use emotion to evaluate science, to suggest that logic is irrelevant to happiness is another argument from ignorance. Just because he doesn’t understand it, does mean it is not possible. Read just about anything from Carl Sagan for more on happiness within reality, or ask a real skeptic.

Of course, skeptics may disagree with this assessment, but even that would require some original thought, which violates the beliefs of skeptics in the first place. If you’re an extreme skeptic, you can’t fathom the meaning of any of this because you have no consciousness and you don’t possess any original ideas whatsoever, according to your own Church of Logic. So if you’re perturbed by this essay because you’re a self-admitted skeptic, then don’t sweat it: Your negative emotion is just a side effect of the giant pinball Turing Machine in your head. You’ll get over it.

“Beliefs of skeptics” - if ever there was an oxymoron, this one is it. I guess I’m not a so-called “extreme skeptic”, because this makes perfect sense. It’s a very well-written fallacious appeal to other ways of knowing. I’m definitely not that extreme, because I wasn’t perturbed at all, in fact this essay kept my attention, and was very entertaining.

Everybody else, on the other hand, does exist, which is why we are all laughing so hard at the skeptics — the only group of people in the history of human civilization to vehemently argue for their own irrelevance, and then to prove it through pompous babble aimed not at any effort to discover real truth, but rather to protect their own fragile egos and hollow philosophical scaffolding.

Hey good for him, laughter from the Alt Med world seems pretty harmless and irrelevant.

A mind is a terrible thing to waste. It’s a good thing, then, that extreme skeptics don’t believe in the mind at all — only in the brain, a physical organ they say merely creates the illusion of consciousness and has no ethereal existence whatsoever: No spirit, no soul, no mind. By their own definition, then, extreme skeptics are mindless, soulless walking water bags that are no more “alive” than the DNA sequence of a virus. Unfortunately, they still manage to spout words from time to time, probably due to some sort of linguistic reflex action, and annoy the rest of us who actually do have consciousness.

He’s right; believers can get pretty annoyed by the skeptics. It’s often much more comfortable for human beings to remain in denial, or seek communal reinforcement of beliefs, as a form a validation in place of understanding, or in the face of great challenge. It’s also a classic straw man argument.

So the next time a skeptic annoys you with blathering syllables that sound like arguments against alternative medicine, just remember: A chicken can still run with its head cut off, but that doesn’t mean it knows where it’s going. It’s only a reflex that appears to resemble conscious intention. Don’t mind it.

That’s it? A simple fallacious appeal to other ways of knowing? Alternative medicine should not be ignored, because skeptics are annoying or unemotional? There might be a better way of knowing, but it was not detailed, and no evidence was provided? Definitely not written for a skeptical audience AT ALL. I enjoyed reading it though. Thank you health ranger.

The next time a believer makes unproven claims for alternative medicine, just remember: A chicken can run with it’s head intact, that doesn’t mean it “knows” where it’s going.

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[Edit/Erratum: 3May2006 - Changed title from S.C.A.M. to sCAM to reflect better accuracy in acknowledging the existence of legitimate research into Complementary and Alternative Medicine.  Changed first paragraph from "So-Called Alternative Medicine" to "so-called Complementary and Alternative Medicine". Thank you Abel PharmBoy. A few minor spelling corrections as well.] 

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Important notices:

The contents of Mike Adams’s essay were reprinted here with permission from Truth Publishing - NewsTarget Network, who I must say, has a wonderful policy about reprint rights. These people have the “sharing the information” down pat.

It’s also important to note the following portion of the disclaimer from their website: ”Truth Publishing sells no health or nutritional products and earns no money from health product manufacturers or promoters. The information on this site is provided for educational and entertainment purposes only.”

Don’t forget, Mike Adams’s original article came from http://www.newstarget.com/.