UK Homeopathy Funding Cut

The Homeopathy ban I talked about has just made the news again. It's not very accurate to call it a ban, so I'll just refer to it as a funding cut. The British Medical Association has voted to stop providing homeopathic treatments on the National Health Service. The BMA has also said that all homeopathic products should be labelled as 'placebo' when sold in pharmacies. The post on the funding cut from the Telegraph has an excellent way of describing how homeopathy works.

Without wanting to go into it in too much detail here, it is based on:
• a) a mistaken idea that substances that cause a symptom can cure that symptom (e.g. poison ivy causes skin rash so it can cure eczema, or onion causes running eyes so it can cure hay fever) and
• b) that the more dilute a remedy is, the more potent it is – without limit. So – with not a trace of irony – homeopaths offer “remedies” diluted so far that you could reasonably expect to find one molecule in a sphere of water several times larger than the Sun. I am not exaggerating, incidentally.

They also mention an incident in Australia last year where a couple were jailed after they treated their 9 month old daughter's eczema with homeopathic remedies rather than taking her to a doctor. Needless to say, placebo's do not work at all for some conditions and most certainly do not work on 9 month old children who aren't aware they're being treated for anything. Their daughter died of septicaemia as a result of the non-treatment of her condition.

Anyway, here is the link to the post on the Telegraph.

Doctors vote to drop homeopathy on the NHS – and about time

Creationism De-motivator

From http://www.picselate.com/creationism

Potential Homeopathy Ban in the UK

Hat Tip: Humanist in Canada

So this is incredibly good news,  medical practitioners are calling for the UK government to stop funding homeopathic remedies saying that they have "no place in the modern health service" which I couldn't agree with more. The suggestion to cut them from funding comes from the fact that the British National Health Service is being forced to make £20 billion worth of budget cuts in the next few years. So proven ineffectual sugar pills and water bottles that cost just as much as real medicine are naturally the first thing to go.

Unfortunately homeopathy has some support from within their government, which I hope doesn't affect the outcome of the ban. Homeopathy supporters were supposedly protesting the ban this past tuesday.

If you have a look down at the comments section on the Telegraph website, some homeopathy supporters are on the brink of claiming that this ban is all a big conspiracy and that the pharmaceutical companies are trying to eliminate the competition. This notion, even if true wouldn't change the fact that homeopathy is a steaming pile of crap that has no effect except the placebo.

Comic: God Prefers Atheists

I saw this comic posted over on the blog Atheist Physics Teacher and had to share it with everyone. It's basically a funny comic version of the Marcus Aurelius quote that I posted a few weeks ago.

The Scientology Creed

I was just having a read through the Creed of the Church of Scientology, much of which is actually quite honourable, but some statements were absurd, and others were dangerous.

Here are some examples from the creed, which starts out saying "We of the Church believe"

- That all men of whatever race, color or creed were created with equal rights.
- That all men have inalienable rights to their own lives.
- That all men have inalienable rights to their sanity.
Enough with the decent statements, lets have a look at something humorous.

-That all men have inalienable rights to think freely, to talk freely, to write freely their own opinions and to counter or utter or write upon the opinions of others.

So let me get this straight, the same organization that is famous for filing lawsuits against anyone that sheds unfavourable light onto them, states in their own creed that free speech is an inalienable right? Oh that is just far too ironic to be a coincidence.
Scientology vs. the Internet


-That all men have inalienable rights to the creation of their own kind.

This is probably just strangely worded, but it sounds to me like Scientology is in the business of 'creating' artificial people. They should have just avoided any confusion and said something like "all men have inalienable rights to sex". They would probably run into problems there, as sex is not a right recognised by any real human rights manifesto. In fact, with that wording it actually sounds quite misogynistic.

-That the souls of men have the rights of men.

Uhh.. What??? This is rather ridiculous, even if the soul could be proven to exist, does this mean that Scientology would have us give rights to the souls of the deceased?

-That the study of the Mind and the healing of mentally caused ills should not be alienated from religion or condoned in nonreligious fields.

This is where they step away from being a fairly innocuous religion to being something dangerous. They are suggesting that mental health care should only be provided by religion. Any science-based mental health care  should be abolished in their belief system, because the E-meter solves everything. As long as you have several million dollars to give to the Church of Scientology, they'll fix all your mental health problems! Yeah right. This kind of medical quackery is dangerous and should always be regarded as so, it is in the same vein as alternative medicine and praying for cures. We all know how effective those are.... So effective that children die, and then their parents are charged with negligent homicide.

-And that no agency less than God has the power to suspend or set aside these rights, overtly or covertly.

What gives 'god' the right to suspend our rights anyway? Is Scientology unknowingly teaching that Might = Right?

To finish off their creed they end with this statement.

And we of the Church believe
That the spirit can be saved.
And that the spirit alone may save or heal the body.

It is quite obvious that Scientology is an enemy of modern medicine and an enemy of science reading a statement like that. The spirit alone may heal the body? What spirit are they talking about? The one that has never been shown to exist?

Blocked Dennis' Primary IP

I've used a free internet service called Toolator  IP Address Blocker, and I've redirected Dennis' traffic from his main IP to www.shutupwomangetonmyhorse.com.


EDIT: It seems I can't redirect to custom URL's unless I use the paid service, so he's just going to see a nice website selling some clocks for now.

Shocking News

I've found a website with scientific evidence of evolution being a hoax and for the existence of god!!!1!!!!?!?!!11!11!

Check it out.

Creationist Astronomy Propaganda Debunked

Youtube user AndromedasWake has made an excellent video taking apart the creationist "fine tuning" argument. Here it is.