Why the darkness doesn't bother me anymore...

Back in 2004 when I decided to move to Finland for the sake of it, despite the incredulous stares I get when I mentioned this, I remember getting all excited about the coming winter (I moved by mid August), so excited I actually decided by virtue of my innocence to go to Lapland and do my school practice there for two months. There I got to know what would become 5 years latter, the name of my tattoo studio, that is the "Kaamos". A word with almost no human translation...but it basically means the sun will not rise from the horizon from a long period of time, and I mean loooooooooong!!!
Anyway, I have to say I was actually dissapointed because I thought that would mean 24 hours of total darkness! Well it wasn't, you actually get about 4-5 hours of pale light, really weak but enough to spoil my first nordic adventure. After just about 5 days (if I try to appear positive), I was hitting my head onthe wall for my great idea and finally understood why we animals depend so largely on the sun, at least most of us that is (animal species).....

I have to add though, that on my very first night there I got the incredible luck of seeing what according to locals, was the biggest northern light's display of the year!! That experience itself made the whole idea of coming to Finland worth it for the rest of my existence,

if you haven't seen the Auroras you shouldn't be allowed to die yet!!

But anyway, when I finally got back to Helsinki which I'm sure excited me more than Columbus when he saw land after months of sailing, the first thing that almost made me cry was being able to see that big fat reddish ball of fire on the sky!! And we are talking about the time of the year when it's dark at 9am and dark again at 4pm....still I felt I was going to pee my pants for being able to enjoy so "many" hours of light!!

Of course the magic disappeared when autum 2005 came out of nowhere, and from that, a long, heavy, shitty and antisocial depression hit me with no misery. From then till probably last year I expected and fear the next autum the way a smart kid who decides to watch Child's Play (me again) before he is ready fears to even watch under his bed. Everytime somebody asked me how do you like Finland? All I could spit out of my mouth was something like "yeah, well, if it wasn't for the darkness"....

Well fuck it! This year I just decided to ignore that fucker and learn to live with it. Definitely one of my latest addictions, watching the night sky and getting into astronomy and astrophotography more and more had helped, but seriously, I think I just got sick of listening to myself complaining about something upon which I have not the slightest influence. That kind of shit is being

bogging me my entire life and I think is wired deep down in our human brains, undoubtedly for survival and advantage (now the biologist me is taking control and I'm getting carried away...) anyway, the darkness, just as many other things around me that used to annoyed me, don't do it anymore because I don't let it do it!

I hear people complaining about stuff and doing a fuck about it, I of course do it on an everyday basis but I trying to get conscious about it and either change it or then ignore it. At least that formula has helped me with this almost suicidal darkness, worth giving it a try! Things we cannot control come along every minute of our dependable lives, is up to us how they end up taking control of ourselves....

R

Seems like reason is waking up on the face of absurdity

Whenever I feel it's time to stop my rants against religion and give up with the debates, something absurd comes out of it again and reminds me it's all worth the effort. This time the honors go the Finnish Church. Apparently some not very wise people (I say apparently because they are most likely very well-educated) happened to talk crap about homosexuals, the classic middle ages' brainless idea of them (homosexuals) not being normal, having some kind decease, childhood trauma, bla bla bla, all that retarded stuff that is not even worth talking off.

Anyway, that late display of stupidity costed the Finnish Church losing more than 10,000 (and counting) followers and members in only one week!!! This really made my year. If there is something I have to recognize about Finns is their love for honesty and their excellent ability to react and act immediately against the non-sense. This is the raw example of that!

At the same time, it raises the same arguments that have been going on for decades but that have become stronger only during the last years; that religion should be put under scrutiny and free inquiry. All other aspects of human civilization: sciences, philosophy, literature, even morality have evolved enormously during the last 2000 years, everything else but religious dogmas. What happened during the last week to the Finnish Church, which is supposed to be one the more open-minded out there (no I'm only trying to be possitive), is the unmistakable truth that once reason is put next to faith, the latter one falls on its own weight!

Just as any journalist's column, writer's book, scientific research, philosophical theory, political proposal or even your grandma's opinions are questioned, dissected and analyzed, so should be the case for any religious book out there, anyone! From the Bhagavad Gita to the Bible to the Quaran, with the same rigorousness and logic as just about everything else. Why should religions be over-respected to the point of denying free inquiry and reason which is the main advantage we have over the rest of the animals?

Why should we give them so many privileges when they have historically being (and still are) the source of so much suffering and misery for human kind? Why defend so eagerly old writings that would fail a kindergarden-level test? Why give so much, even own lives, for dogmas which are totally based on faith and exclude evidence despite the available technology and capacity we have for finding it? Just as Sam Harris argues in his book The End of Faith (2004), that's why religious tolerance is a doble-edged sword, because it's hard to draw the line, and because by tolerating and respecting religion so much, we are opening the door for extremism.

What most of the people don't realize is that there is no room for tolerance in religious books, from the Old Testament to the Quaran to the Book of Abraham, all of them are crystal clear in exposing their God's almost psycopath tendency to anihilate whomever doesn't follow His sayings (why is it always a He is an entirely different topic of discussion) the way is it's been commanded.

If a Jew, a Christian or a Muslim (just to keep with the 3 biggest ones) follows his religious book dogmatically, then the words "tolerance to other religious views" shouldn't even have a coherent meaning to him, because by doing so, would mean disrespecting what God has commanded him to do. Jews are supposed to be the people selected by God, the chosen ones. For Christians (and all its different divisions) Jesus Christ is the messiah, the son of God Himself, sent to earth in order to liberate us from all our sins, any other option is just not the truth for them. Muslims on the other hand, believe Christ was just another messenger of God, and that the Old Testament (which is the only one Jews take as valid also) is just the incomplete revelation, being the Quaran the only and sacred truth there is to be, all the rest just don't know it, and once you know it you are not allowed to abandon it, otherwise it is consider a crime (apostasy) of which only death could spare you.

So it doesn't really matter which one you want to take, the point is, as long as you choose one, you are supposed to invalidate all the other ones, leaving no room for tolerance. By being tolerant you are allowing intolerance in one hand and on the other hand, you are not following scriptures the way you should, which at the end doesn't really make any sense. That's why it is such a misconception to think that religious tolerance is something benign, it really is not. I obviously do not mean that we should treat this matter with violence, that is the whole point of this, as rational animals, we should use that reason to allow free inquiry, and by really allowing it, religious ideas are doomed to remain fantasies and not part of your every day decission making plans.

Allowing tolerance to the Church allows this kind of shit to happen!! Allowing tolerance to religious views allows basically tolerance to anything as long as it is in the name of God, Ala, Shiva, Zeus, Jehovah or any other imaginary friend of the kind. OPEN YOUR EYES!! I would like to finish this post with a quote from Sam Harris from his "Letter to a Christian Nation",

"Religious moderation is the direct result of taking scripture less and less seriously. So why not take it less seriously still? Why not admit the the Bible is merely a collection of imperfect books written by highly fallible human beings." - Sam Harris -

Let's give human reason the place it deserves..

Well, there's been a series of rather high-temperature discussions in my Facebook wall-post due to some quotations and thoughts from atheist, secular and pantheists authors with whom I naturally agree at least in the sense of those quotations (otherwise I wouldn't quote them of course). Anyway, the same kind of weak visceral rages keep coming my way and I would like to talk about them a little bit here, not to ridiculeanyone in particular but rather to make a point on how important it is to think before you speak.

So first of all, I have neversaid that I think people who believe are stupid, that would be actually stupid itself, believeing in things, real orunreal has (or had) a purpose since the beginnings of evolution, is wired deep in the inner and most primitive part of our brains as a mechanism that served a survival purpose at the beginning of human history. If you study the meaning and origins of consciousness a little bit you will find thisexplanations much better developed than what I can do (I suggest reading Dennett, Baruch Spinoza, Harris, Zizek or even Freudfor example). So my objection has never been against people believing in a superior being, force, energy or whatever they want to call it, though I still argue they are not necessary anymore, but that's just my way of seeing it which is as valid as yours.

What I don't agree

with is that religion has been used (and is still used) throughout history to commit the worst attrocities that one could imagine. Religions are full of rage, murder, ambitions, racism, intolerance, misogynism, solipcism, etc. With the threat of finding hell at the

end of our days, crimes are allowed against followers

of other religious views, things such as the crusades, the burning of "witches" in the middle ages, the conflicts in the Balcans, the Irsrael-Palestinia war, the Northern Ireland conflict, the Holocaust, 9-11, the London and Madrid terrorist attacks....would have never happened on the first place.

One of the arguments of religious people against atheists is that even though religion has created suffering through our history, it has brought more happiness, consolation, charity, etc. I argue against this point. Good people are good by nature, if they have done good

to others and have claimed

to do so because of their religion, this might be true, but it doesn't mean they wouldn't have done it otherwise, exactly because they were good people they would have found equally or even better reasons.

On the other hand, people who have gone to extremes

of even killing people in the name of a creator, have not necessarily been bad people!! Think about it, probably the suicide highjackers of the 9-11 aircrafts had been children taught to give up their own lives in the name of Ala, even

if they were to kill people (who are of course sinners and enemies of their God) because this is the only way they could go to heaven. I have no doubt the highjackers were absolutely convinced they were going straight to heaven after the attacks (see Dawkins for more on this particular topic). Does that make them bad

people? I think is much more complicated than that. But my point is, if they were not brain-washed since childhood the would never have even thought of it. They were the consequence of a long chain of bull shit and lies, not the source of the problem.

And what about the irrational

hate against homosexuals, the baseless and ignorance-founded arguments against abortion, euthanasia, contraception etc!!?? I could go on and on but I think you got my point and I have mentioned some good sources that are more knowledgeable on the topic than me. Nevertheless, I feel people who share my views, which are only a continuous chain of others' views who vet on reason rather than absurd out-of-date beliefs, should speak out, because only then will we be able to give that reason the place it should have claimed long ago!!

Why does it seem we always act against our happiness?

Huuuh! I think this is going to be long, but I hope I can make it worth reading...Well, I have just finished a superb book from author J.D. Trout called The Empathy Gap. This has made me think a lot about many issues that impact every one's life, such as the role that the surroundings have in the majority of decisions that we make and that ultimately shape ours and other people's fates.

A major emphasis is placed on a logical fallacy that we all (at least in the majority of western societies) posses, an almost sacred but unrealistic characteristic called free will. The concept of free will holds the romantic idea that we, as individuals, have the power of choosing what we want to do, exactly the way we want it, when we want it and that ultimately shape the road of our lives. With this being said, the idea basically tells us that whatever happens in our lives, good or bad, is due to the way in which we execute that power. Some societies stress this factor with more importance than others.

The truth is, if you think about it, we are really not that free, putting it in Trout's own words "We are just as free aswe can, not as free as we want". The thing is, the environmet in which we grow up, in which we carry on with our daily activities, the policies that govern us, natural disasters, weather, language, demographics, our parents, etc, all have a tremendous impact in the way we have been shaped as human beings, much more than what we want to admit, and therefore, in the way we function (or malfunction) as a society. The problem is -or rather the problems are- that we are so cognitively fully biased that we don't realize this aspect, and this gets on the way of reaching a true happiness as well as helping others in more need to achieve that same (and ultimate) goal of life.

Free will is a very romantic and poetic idea in deed, yet it fails miserably in becoming a tangible reality, but our overconfidence, big fat egos and self-denial trick us to believe that we

actually have the absolute power of deciding on which road we will take our lives. We are all full of these biases, and therefore, the leaders of our World too, making weak policies based on inside strategies and taking equally weak decissions that have a great impact on our societies. But since we fail to realize -and many times to recognize it- we live in a kind of bubble believing we are some type of special individual to whom these bias-based decisions won't affect.

We then fail forward when it comes to help others in need, believing falsely that we have nothing to do with it, despite having that feeling of empathy when we look at pictures of children dying of hunger in Somalia or Haiti (to give some examples). The thing is, as it usually goes, nothing is black and white, but our poorly-based, bias-blinded cognitive processes force us to believe that only the rich should help, or we then find justifications such as "I can't save the World on my own" which paralyzes us to take on actions.

We don't take a moment to think that the environment in which they happened to grow, shaped in a major way the course of their lives. How guilty is a 5 year old girl that happened to be born in a misogynistic society such as Saudi Arabia? Or a 3 year old boy dying of hunger in Haiti? Or how guilty are you of being born in a rich European Country or at least in a country and a family of such economic level that let you develop so far as being able to buy a computer, pay the internet bill and drink a beer while reading my blog rants? The truth is, we were lucky, very lucky just as much as the little girls and boys from other extremely poor and unfavorable environments were unlucky.

I mean, think about it, how many times did you see those scenes from Haiti and thought, "poor people, hopefully they'll carry on, I wish I could help". Now, what did you do about it? I'm not trying to preach here because I didn't do anything either, I just scrached my balls and thought "oh man, that's fucked up!" Actually I used to make fun out of my wife for donating blood every six months that will help people she most likely never meet. That shit happens when we let our biases take over our lives.

How would our personal economy be affected by donating E50 out of our pockets to poor children based in underdeveloped, miserably destroyed-by-war-and-religion countries? Why the fuck should I care to whom my blood donation is going to help? But then again, we fail to think, why should I help them, it's not my fault that the earthquake stroke! Why should I give my blood up for somebody who might decide to speed up in his motorcycle despite the risks of an accident (which is by the way another symptom of a cognitive bias)? But the problem is not only about helping others, we also fail to help ourselves, over and over again we give priorities to immediate self rewarding actions even when knowing with certainty they will badly affect our futures, or the futures of the ones we love.

The book gives various examples such as retirement plans, not wearing a helmet when driving a motorcycle (in regions where is not enforced which is not the case in Finland), abusing our bodies by eating unhealthy. We prefer spending the money we have now rather than placing it for our future despite knowing we might have nothing when we retire which might bring much bitter consequences (also not the particular case in Finland where a retirement plan is not an option but an enforcement), we decide we feel more freedom by riding a motorcycle without a helmet despite the astonishing statistical evidence that indicates you have 40% more probability of dying if an accident strikes, or we eat to the extreme to ease our gluttony despite the scientific, indisputable evidence of the negative effects on our health.

We erroneously believe that these decisions only concern us and will have consequences also only on us. But this is our biased-base way of thinking, because if we fail to save for our

futures, other will have to pay their taxes so that the government can subsidy our errors, or to pay for the costs of hospitalization prior to our deaths as a result of negligence, either to wear a helmet or to live a healthy life. So is not only affecting us at the individual level but also others and as a society. But it all comes from a background, were circumstances have failed for one reason or another to present us with the evidence of why we act the we we do, as counterintuitive as this might be. I urge you to think for example, the next time someone approaches you begging for money, you don't have to give anything of course, but at least remember they might not have any other options than that, they might also do, but that we cannot know, so let's try not to judge people without knowing what lies behind their present.

So the book explains one by one the biases that drive us to this behavior. I won't obviously expand as the book does so I just rather mention them quickly, but I hope I did a good enough job to at least stimulate your curiosity and further research on the subject, as understanding these issues are a cataly

st toward a better life for each one of us as well as for the ones most in need.

So these are some of the cognitive biases --our systematic cognitive tendencies toward error-- mentioned in the book:

Base-rate bias - When we ignore available statistical data (as clear it might be) in favor of our own.

Internal approach bias - When we blindly believe our strategies will work by relying only on our power of will (inside strategies).

Overconfidence bias (conceit) - Needless to explain, overconfidence is almost never positive, actually it can be dangerous.

Framing bias - When we have an approach of an issue or situation that is too narrow.

Omission bias - When judging harmful actions as worse when omissions or inactions present an equally harmful effect (i.e, it is worse to bring about harm than to let harm occur).

Status Quo bias - The tendency to like things to stay relatively the same despite having better options at hand even when knowing it.

Availability bias - The tendency to judge jarring, unusual, and otherwise salient events as representative (like believing we are more likely to die in a terrorist attack than in a car accident).

Hindsight bias - The tendency to find past events more predictable than what they really are in order to avoid deception.

Anchoring - The tendency of setting a range of an entire decision-making process based on a random (and usually inaccurate) number.

There are more but I will stop here. Thanks again for reading!!

R.

Why is Homeopathy such a crap?

Well, I am feeling a bit weak today, so much work, or perhaps my new-born baby is making me sleep lot less than before, maybe I should stop by the homeopathic pharmacy, they must have something that could help me more than conventional medicine, after all, all those big pharmaceutical companies are just after my money, and homeopathy is nature right? I hear my grandpa saying it could even cure cancer, so I guess a tiny headache should be no challenge for this amazing natural science........... except of course, we are not talking about science at all but rather about pseudo-science. Actually of all the stupid "alternative medicine" (as if that term would hold any validity) homeopathy is in the number one stupidity-spot for the majority of REAL conventional medicine practitioners. You might say I am too harsh on the term, after all, what harm could it do to anyone right? Well, actually there are more implications than what you might think.

But let's give a bit of background as always. Homeopathy was first formulated at the end of the 1700s by a German physician named Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843). The word "homeopathy" comes from the Greek "homoios" (similar) and "pathos" (suffering or disease). Hahnemann was concerned about the medical practices of his time which were in turn doing more harm than good. These practices included bloodletting, bleeching, purging, etc. He thought those treatments were intended to balance the body "humors" by inducing opposite effects, so he came up with the idea of a "law" called the "law of similars". The idea was basically that any disease could be cured by administering extremely small amounts of substances that produce similar symptoms in healthy people when administered in larger amounts.

Hahnemann and his early followers carried out a series of "studies" where they administered to themselves and to other healthy people different herbs, minerals, etc, and took notes of the effects produced. Hahnemann believed that diseases were only obstructing the body's own capabilities to heal itself and that with only small stimulus a healing process could be started. He also claimed that chronic diseases were manifestations of a suppressed itch (psora), which meant a form of evil spirit. This already starts sounding like no-sense to me, but there is more.

He began by using smaller amounts of accepted medications until he started diluting substances massively thinking that the more diluted, the bigger the effect, which is of course a non sequitur. These logical fallacy is called the "law of infinitesimals" and goes against everything scientific medicine has demonstrated.

Homeopathic remedies do not come from modern scientific testing but rather from old (1800s) "provings" of thousands of substances that do not even identify themselves with particular symptoms or diseases, that is decided by the homeopath or manufacturer. Substances can be sometimes sooooo diluted that what they are basically giving you is water, along with the magical natural-remedy idea, something like a placebo. For instance, there are substances labeled as 30X. This means that the original substance has been diluted 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times. Assuming that a cubic centimeter of water contains 15 drops, this number is greater than the number of drops of water that would fill a container more than 50 times the size of the Earth (www.quackwatch.org). Does this really sound logic?

Homeopathy worked well back then because it was actually less dangerous than the medical prescriptions of the time. As medical science advance, more and more people started abandoning the idea until almost 100 years ago, the last Homeopathy school closed its doors in the U.S.

Moreover, there is something practitioners called "constitutional remedy" which is even more stupid than what mentioned earlier. This is an idea that works a bit like Astrology. The difference here is, we are talking about your health, not about how you think your week will develop love wise according to your horoscope. So this is in practice more alarming than Astrology. But let's go forward. So the idea is that certain remedies will work better with certain people, depending on your personality, physical features such as hair color...(??). There is for example a type of people called the "Sulfur Type" who are very independent people....? Yep, that's how they base the kind of treatment you should get, very reliable in deed.

Going back to the dilution problem, there are certain rules in chemistry that said that when a certain limit is exceeded, the dilution has lost its properties regarding the original substance, this corresponds to homeopathic dilutions of 12C or 24X (1 part in 10²⁴). Hahnemann himself realized that there is virtually no chance that even one molecule of original substance would remain after extreme dilutions. But he believed that the vigorous shaking or pulverizing with each step of dilution leaves behind a "spirit-like" essence—"no longer perceptible to the senses"—which cures by reviving the body's "vital force." Modern proponents assert that even when the last molecule is gone, a "memory" of the substance is retained. This notion is unsubstantiated. Moreover, if it were true, every substance encountered by a molecule of water might imprint an "essence" that could exert powerful (and unpredictable) medicinal effects when ingested by a person (www.quackcast.com).

There are plenty of other equally stupid examples regarding this practice, but I guess these are good enough. The scientific community is trying to eliminate this non-sense and potentially harmful practice by means of law, but perhaps starting from education could be a first step, because as I will talk on my next post, what we do as a society is vastly influenced by our environments, is important to start at the individual level. The problem with this pseudo-science practices is that they have become beliefs for plenty of people, and as I have exposed before, beliefs are hard to let go because it exposes our ignorance and therefore directly touches on the sensitive fibers of human ego and our and conceit. But once we learn that accepting our ignorance is a liberating step, not only do this process is made easier, but it also enhances us as a society. So before you get seduced by these practices, think first it they really make any sense. Remember, if it sounds magical, it's probably crap!!

Watching a video is always funnier than reading stuff, so check out James Randy talking about this, very educational.

Rode

The Crap...I mean...Secret...

Well hello again!

Ok so after some criticism and interesting chatting in Facebook for expressing some of my anti-religious ideas, here I am again about to do the same with another "sweetheart" of many out there, I'm talking about Rhonda Byrne's (Australian writer and producer) book and movie "The Secret".

Well, where should I start from......? Really a hard task, not that there is nothing you can criticize, in fact that's the problem, that book is full of soooooo much non-sense and dangerous pseudo-science crap, yes, dangerous, that it makes it a pain in the ass to figure out where to start from. Anyway, I must do this because it's been in my system for long enough and I feel the need of spitting it out.

So let's talk about the tirelessly mentioned and main propel of the book, the "Law of Attraction". Rhonda seems to be very fond on that fancy-sounding term which is nothing else but.... how can I put it nicely?......?... bull shit!!! (that's the nicest I could do). So she says that by making use of this law, we can attract all the positive stuff that surround us only by using our positive thinking... and also the other way round with the negative stuff... right, ok, let's suppose that, as unreal and childish as this sounds, this wouldn't harm anyone, actually it might be good if people take on a positive approach to most of the things they do right? Well, this is actually true, but the problem with this crap is that its stuff gets actually more complicated and even alarming and as I said before, DANGEROUS!! Because she goes on to say that if you wish hard enough, you can actually be cured of serious illnesses such as cancer tumors or things like that.

She bases this obnoxious claims using the term "quantum physics", of which Rhonda Byrne has a Ph.D...oh no! sorry, she doesn't.... I bet almost 100% (if not that) of you who are reading my rant, don't understand a damn about quantum physics (not that I do either), because it's really a hard one to grasp. There is a saying, "if you say you understand quantum physics, that means you don't understand them" (though there are different versions of the saying). But anyway, quantum physics, as chaotic as they are, are still science, yes, science, meaning they have absolutely nothing to do with metaphysical shit, which is nothing else than an invention from philosophers and I would say nowadays an industry itself.

Quantum physics deal with the small world, the extremely small world in deed, the sub-atomic particles where everything gets really chaotic, where electrons start interfering with themselves and not making any sense, they become extremely unpredictable and governed by probability mostly, the possibility of infinite parallel universes where all the different alternatives of what happens in this one actually exist. Actually it gets much more complicated than that, imagine that we are all made out of atoms, that for some reason stay together and stable enough so that we don't suddenly become something else or just vanish in the blink of an eye. But at the same time, the smaller particles that compose those atoms, get extremely unstable, unpredictable and chaotic, now put them together and make sense out off it..

Nice try Rhonda! But now, could anybody explain me how the hell can you relate that to the "Law of Attraction"? Well, actually very easily, because since it is a branch of science (quantum physics) very few people in the World understand thoroughly, you can basically make any impressive-sounding crap up and very few will dispute it, moreover, by using that fancy word (quantum physics) you sound as you would really know your shit.

Well, she doesn't. Actually she has no fucking clue what she is talking about. Similar forces attract each other...? Like..where? I thought opposite poles are the ones that attract each other. Anyway, if that is not enough argument, I have a lot more, I'm just warming up.

So the "Law of Attraction" was mentioned for the first time (James Allen) at the beginning of the last century (1902), which take us to more meaningless claims from the book such as the important people in history who were supposed to

know (and use) this law and therefore, became crucial figures of human history. Well, the thing is, most of the people sh

e mentions were already death when the law came to existence for the first time i.e, Leonardo Da Vinci, Buddha, Aristotle, Plato, Sir Isaac Newton just to mention a few.

Nevertheless, what a crap that is, really, you wish it and you get anything you have ever dreamt about, without an effort, just ask the Universe and dara!! There you are! So the Universe is supposed to hear YOU over billions and billions of galaxies which might host billions of different intelligent lives which might be also "wishing" to it (all at the same time)..... that sounds unbearably self-centered, even megalomaniac!! Don't you think? There's by the way a similar phenomenon followed by millions which begins with "R"...

Anyway, the real danger of this crap, is that some people might actually believe that if they wish hard enough, they can be cured from dangerous illnesses, they might prefer to do that over looking for medical professional help which could in deed save their lives, once they realize that there is no magic in the Universe and look for that professional help, it might be too late!! This might sound stupid for many of you, because we are more or less educated, but think about the people who are not, who could be more vulnerable. This kind of shit shouldn't be tolerated!! I am absolutely in favor of the freedom of expression, but there should be limits,

difference should be made crystal clear about what is fantasy and what is reality to avoid putting people in danger , and that is why the skeptic community raises its voice against these charlatans, and I am not talking only about her only but about any pseudo-science form, because they put many lives in danger!! That's is why is so important to promote critical thinking, is not about you believing in me, is about you not believing in anyone, but making your own research, looking at the big picture and drawing your own conclusions. Is really not that hard.

I like how Brian Dunning (Skeptoid.com) expresses why the Secret has been a best seller, he says:

1. It's based on ancient wisdom, which is always popular
2. It sells the same motivational self-help pitches that are always popular
3. It teaches that you're already a winner because you didn't fail like those people who died in New Orleans.

And talking about that last point, Rhonda also writes that all the big sad tragedies that strike the World such as the Tsunami of 2004, are the result of massive negative thoughts........???...??...So does that mean that more than 200,000 people in 11 different countries die because of their negative thoughts and so the Universe decided to wipe them off the face of the Earth? Were the exact number of victims the exact number of negative people that deserved to die? Or were there any innocents among the victims? The great majority maybe? Well, I guess you got the point of that non-sense garbage. And if you haven't had enough, just listen to what these two clowns have to say about it.

Because of people like these, using the media to misinform others, is that pseudo-science still stands strong, but that would be another topic. Anyway, if you really need this motivational books kind of thing in your life, go ahead, but make sure you recognize between reality and fantasy, evolution has given us brains that are able to solve extremely complex problems, more than what any other animal could ever achieve, yet, sometimes it seems as if we are using them against ourselves. Just remember to follow YOUR OWN critical thinking...out of my system, time to move on..

Living la vida loca??

Well finally back "blogging" after this last crazy month which saw the birth of my first child, a beautiful baby girl. And what a better catalyst for keeping the writing of critical thinking. During that month news have come and gone as they always do. One that called my attention, however, was the "confession" Ricky Martin made about his sexual preference. I mean, what's with that? Should that even be a topic of discussion? A headline? Should we even care? Should I write about it?

Giving the World we are living, I think I should. But think about it, why did Ricky have to deliverate for so long about letting everybody know that he likes guys instead of girls? Would he also have to deliverate for so many years telling us he prefers to eat apples rather than oranges? Or that he enjoys more by looking at an orchid instead of a peony? I use Ricky deliberatly here because it's a case most of us are familiar with, but it applies to any homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual, asexual or any other label you want to use.

Preference for the same sex is widely common among the wild, figures are said to go as high as 40% (evolution 101 podcast). If this is the case, homosexuality must play an important role in evolution, whatever that is (think of a natural birth control). It doesn't surprise me then that the Pope along with the vast majority of religious leaders and followers, consider homosexuality as a sin and even as an illness, giving that most religious people are creationists themselves and really don't pay attention to evidence.

But whether homosexuality is relevant to evolution or not (most likely it is), it still blows my mind that so many people don't know that one is born with an already given sexual preference, meaning is not something you choose as you develop. So why should we care more about it than about the food one likes or dislikes? How worst or better does that make that particular person? I am glad an artist with such a big projection as Ricky Martin finally opened up, on the other hand, it astonishes me how hard that road had to be and how people keep talking about the topic.

I really hope I can do my job by teaching my daughter how irrelevant it is for me to know whether she will like boys or girls and rather focusing on being happy even if she prefers the oranges over the apples, so she doesn't have to sweat and waste energy the way Ricky did but instead brings the partner(s) she chooses to be part of her life to share valuable moments with her family. That would mean that at least in my family, which is the only one I can protect, we won't have to make this a topic of extraordinary importance because it really is not, or should at least not be, so if you see your male dog pumping another male dog, think about oranges!!!