Complementary Medicine on TV

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Cartollomew
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Complementary Medicine on TV

Post by Cartollomew » 07 Aug 2009, 14:30

I know that watching early morning commercial TV is likely to get my back up about something, and I should probably just watch "Yo Gabba Gabba".

But sometimes I just can't help flicking it on to find a segment about... "Complementary Medicine".

Apparently, "alternative" has been considered too strong a word, so it's all about the "complementary" now.

You see... it's not an alternative! You can safely use such scams treatments as Reiki (touching people so they get better), or Ayurveda (which roughly translates as "science" from Sanskrit, despite having no modern relationship with anything resembling, you know, evidence).

Of course you can safely use them - they don't do anything, so they can't interfere with other treatments.

Apparently, yesterday's show had some actual doctors on, the kind who often aren't complementary, I guess. I'm assuming they weren't very complementary about the stuff shown to us in today's show.

Today's show was billed as "finding out if complementary medicine works". By, you know, asking the people who peddle it.

Do we still live in a world where we think spinal adjustments can fix ear infections? Where laying your hands on someone in "the right way" can cure a cough? Where if our "life force" is low, we're more susceptible to disease?

Am I mad? Did germ theory not get discovered at all? Does it turn out that Uri Gellar isn't a fraud, and magic is real?

These quacks may aquiesce to the scientific community by pretending they're all "complementary" to real medicine, but they still encourage people who are really sick to take their placebos instead of actual treatment.

What kind of sick fuck lets a cancer patient use touch therapy instead of visiting a goddamn oncologist?

If you insist on peddling woo on television, the least a network can do is advertise the fact - loudly - that none of this shit has evidence supporting it. There are still suckers out there who are happy to be scammed, warning or not.

Anything less is downright irresponsible. Forget fixing schools for now - can we teach some critical thought to our celebrities and presenters?
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Re: Complementary Medicine on TV

Post by Mitra » 07 Aug 2009, 20:48

Little known fact 227.

Cart's parents used him and his twin in one the 80's most controversial leukeamia treatment trials.
Cart got the bone marrow transplant and the chance to wear a nice suit at the funeral.
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Re: Complementary Medicine on TV

Post by Sparton » 10 Aug 2009, 07:52

I am actually convinced that one of the reasons people are so susceptible to this is the over-emphasis of "Science" as the foundation of Truth in Western culture.

Yes, I said that. Over-emphasis.

Over the past two centuries or so it has become increasingly fashionable to scoff at anything which does not purport to be demonstrated by empirical experiment. The first things to be rejected were religion and tradition, but not long after went philosophy and and the entire world of thought beyond the material.

This has meant that everyone here has grown up in a world that will not even entertain for the sake of argument anything which does not immediately conform to empirical measurement, even if empirical measurement is a wholly inappropriate methodology to employ. Consider the attempts of, say, biologist Richard Dawkins to create a "materialist ethics". Hit utter distrust of philosophy and crippling dependance on the methods of scientific experiment mean that as soon as he attempts to solve problems outside the material realm (eg ethical behaviour) he is forced to either plagiarise materialist philosophers (whose ethical systems, unbeknownst to Dawkins, have already been demonstrated untenable) or make recommendations which fly in the face of history.

But how does all this affect the common man? The victim of the "complementary" health scam? It's quite simple.

Since we have been raised in an age that idolises minds like Dawkins, we have all been taught (implicitly and explicitly) to avoid like the plague anything akin to the traditional non-scientific mindset. The Europe of the middle ages, for instance, was one wherein believing that God created the Earth meant the Earth could be studied rationally, because it was not God. In fact, this realisation that the world is not God made Europe the exclusive cradle of what became the Scientific Method. With the banishment of religion in the west, however, suddenly this kind of reasonable understanding (that the world is not God) has been forgotten.

But people still have the appeal to mystery. No matter whether you believe one, many, or any divine beings exist, it is impossible to claim that humans do not have a natural impulse to seek the divine. This means that in an age such as ours, where the traditional understanding of the divine has been cast out, people will start divinising material things. The fundamental principle behind every "alternative treatment" is some kind of mysticism, which divinises either a material thing or an imagined thing. In homeopathy, the "spirit" of the medicine persist through dilution, in Reiki it is the "energy of the spirit being channeled through the practitioner".

And yet, medicine does not have a spirit. There is no universal "life-force energy" for a reiki practitioner to channel - if anything, it is a dramatically mystical massage (my aikido instructor once decided to use reiki to relieve my leg cramp). People have forgotten that the world is not God, and when the world's treatments for worldly ills (antibiotics for bacterial infections) fail to fix them, they divinise worldly things in the hope that faith will succeed where science did not.

I sincerely believe that people need to learn some very basic philosophy at school. People need to learn such things as introductory logic, connecting premisses and conclusions, seeing through fallacious arguments. If people could learn to make the distinction between a conclusion that follows relevant premisses and a guy in a white jacket misapplying principles from an unrelated field, I sincerely believe we would have far fewer snake oil salesmen.

Including Richard Dawkins.

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Re: Complementary Medicine on TV

Post by Cartollomew » 10 Aug 2009, 13:13

Sparton wrote:I am actually convinced that one of the reasons people are so susceptible to this is the over-emphasis of "Science" as the foundation of Truth in Western culture.

Yes, I said that. Over-emphasis.

Over the past two centuries or so it has become increasingly fashionable to scoff at anything which does not purport to be demonstrated by empirical experiment. The first things to be rejected were religion and tradition, but not long after went philosophy and and the entire world of thought beyond the material.
First up, calling BS.
Most people aren't atheists. If anything, the pull away from religion has more to do with the lack of willingness for faith leaders to enact social change at a comparable rate to society itself.

Your average schmo doesn't give a good Goddamn about science or Dawkins (particularly Dawkins - even if you know or care not a jot about science or faith, you can still know that Dawkins is an ass), they care about themselves and the environment in which they live.
Sparton wrote: This has meant that everyone here has grown up in a world that will not even entertain for the sake of argument anything which does not immediately conform to empirical measurement, even if empirical measurement is a wholly inappropriate methodology to employ.
BS again. There are multiple fields of science or hypotheses which don't "immediately" stand up to scrutiny from empirical measurement, or which simply cannot be even thought to be proven until later times.

String theory, gravity, loop gravity - many of the thought experiments and theories put together by great minds from the 18th through to the 20th century have been unprovable, untestable (through empirical means) or useless in the time in which they were created.

And if you're suggesting I live in a world which will not even entertain the notion of a God, I have to wonder where you've grown up.
Sparton wrote: Consider the attempts of, say, biologist Richard Dawkins to create a "materialist ethics". Hit utter distrust of philosophy and crippling dependance on the methods of scientific experiment mean that as soon as he attempts to solve problems outside the material realm (eg ethical behaviour) he is forced to either plagiarise materialist philosophers (whose ethical systems, unbeknownst to Dawkins, have already been demonstrated untenable) or make recommendations which fly in the face of history.
Morality, objective morality and the foundation on which we create our social expectations of behaviour/what is acceptable and so on, has merely a nodding acquaintance with the foundations of science.
For starters, science has a foundation.
What Dawkins attempts to do as an atheistic ethicist has nothing to do with the what Dawkins attempts to do as a biologist and scientist - philosophy is not science.
I suspect you could just say that philosophers classically make poor scientists and that scientists often make bad philosophers, but I suspect that's not particularly true, nor does it have any bearing on why people insist on buying little bottles of expensive water to cure their colds.
Sparton wrote: But how does all this affect the common man? The victim of the "complementary" health scam? It's quite simple.

Since we have been raised in an age that idolises minds like Dawkins, we have all been taught (implicitly and explicitly) to avoid like the plague anything akin to the traditional non-scientific mindset. The Europe of the middle ages, for instance, was one wherein believing that God created the Earth meant the Earth could be studied rationally, because it was not God. In fact, this realisation that the world is not God made Europe the exclusive cradle of what became the Scientific Method. With the banishment of religion in the west, however, suddenly this kind of reasonable understanding (that the world is not God) has been forgotten.
Your argument is being poorly expressed here. Fix it.

Additionally, there is no "banishment of religion" in the west.
Sparton wrote: But people still have the appeal to mystery. No matter whether you believe one, many, or any divine beings exist, it is impossible to claim that humans do not have a natural impulse to seek the divine. This means that in an age such as ours, where the traditional understanding of the divine has been cast out, people will start divinising material things. The fundamental principle behind every "alternative treatment" is some kind of mysticism, which divinises either a material thing or an imagined thing. In homeopathy, the "spirit" of the medicine persist through dilution, in Reiki it is the "energy of the spirit being channeled through the practitioner".
People are perfectly capable of finding the divine in ways other than "channeling the dead", "telepathy", or "spiritual healing". I hear this "prayer" thing is reasonably common in pretty much any given faith. Also, some form of meditation (which is often approximate to a form of prayer) is usually present.

These things are a way of reaching or communing with a sense of the divine - and these are not areas in which science itself is leading some kind of assault. Dickheads like Dawkins, who have an axe to grind, will no doubt continue being smug, but honestly - Dawkins is preaching to his choir, he's not converting anyone into atheists.
On the other side of the coin, the damage done by fundamentalist demagogues insisting that we replace science with their translation of a bronze age mythology is far greater than the tiny proportion of atheists who feel left out.

Science and religion are not mutually exclusive. Any sensible preacher/scientist/atheist admits as much. Give people enough credit to know this - it's only a fringe who believe it has to be one or the other.

What people aren't armed with is a concrete knowledge about what science really is.

As far as your average high school graduate is concerned, the big words they hear from the reiki practitioner is science. They haven't been taught critical thought, they haven't been taught to apply scientific skepticism.
Many people these days at least have a distrust of marketing - but they don't have a methodology to back it up.

Far from science being over-emphasised, science is considered a special area for nerds and "boffins", practising mysterious things in their ivory towers.
Do people need to learn philosophy and logic in school? Sure.
Do people need to learn how to apply critical thought, and the foundation of science (it was sure never taught to me)? Yes.

Philosophy without science isn't going to give anyone the power to assess whether a given treatment has a sound foundation. Science without philosophy isn't going to give anyone a hint on how to determine society's values.

Also:
Philosophy is a very poor substitute for faith or mysticism - it won't be the silver bullet you are after in that regard.
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Re: Complementary Medicine on TV

Post by dyer » 13 Aug 2009, 06:15

Somewhat related to the op , Faith healing gone wrong.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... =107004473

Will it click that he could have helped her? Hes probably convinced shes in a better place and this was gods will. One can hope its eating away at his conscience daily.
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Re: Complementary Medicine on TV

Post by Cartollomew » 13 Aug 2009, 12:31

dyer wrote:Will it click that he could have helped her?
"If I go to the doctor, I am putting the doctor before God," Neumann testified. "I am not believing what he said he would do."

The father testified that he thought Madeline had the flu or a fever, and several relatives and family friends said they also did not realize how sick she was.
His second statement does not follow on from the first; he's saying God will heal everything, unless it's more serious than a flu (in which case he would have gone to a doctor).

This kind of hypocrisy is common both among religious authoritarians (who are able to seamlessly compartmentalise and support contradictory beliefs or events) and alternative peddlers - who are happy to use their woo to treat problems that will go away by themselves anyway, but sometimes mistake something more serious for a cold and end up killing someone through lack of real treatment.

I think I linked a news story a while back describing a similar case: a homeopath failed to give his baby daughter proper medical treatment for eczma, and complications from the condition ended up killing her.

Placebos can be very powerful for pain relief some of the time, but we can't expect them to be more than that.
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Re: Complementary Medicine on TV

Post by Vampirial » 14 Aug 2009, 10:34

This is just my thoughts on alternate medicine. I don't necessarily believe all work, but I do beleive some people whom know what they are doing can do stuff out of the norm. I think it also depends how desperate your situation is. I don't think alternate medicine should replace medicine but if you have no further options and are a believer why not give it a whirl. I once worked with a 47 year old lady whom swears acupuncture cured her (and a diet of vitamin pills). She had incurable lymphocyte cancer (and for those that know a little about the human body cancer in the lymphocytes is quite often fatal once its established). She'd tried everything the hospitals and doctors threw at her and nothing worked so she started looking outside the box. Whether it worked or not I beleive belief is a very powerful mindset.

My mother has been diagnosed with cancer 3 times in her life, 2 of the times she was told she would die. The first time she was told there was no way she would see the year 2000 (she was lucky to see 98), the second no way would she see the year 2003. I honestly believe my mum just wasn't ready to let go. Through all the pain and suffering she just couldn't let herself die. That probably sounds harsh but having been around cancer patients and having otherr family members die from it it seems often that they reach that point where the pain and suffering is too great that they just cannot do it anymore (to me anyway). My mum didn't use any alternative therapies but if she did no doubt she'd be attributing that to her survival. And thats what begs the question is it a miracle that someone recovers from these diseases or some other means?

My second example is also from my mum. She smoked right from before we were born, throughout pregnancies and our entire life span. She was so bad that at her weakest and sickest moments it was a real fear that she would burn the house down. She bought tobacco illegally, if she had of bought tailor mades it easy would of been a pack a day. She'd tried quitting a few times but never succeeded the patches didn't help nor the gum and within a short time she would be back on them again. Recently she had a family friend have a second heart attack who absolutely had to give up smoking or she was going to die (still a chance but smoking certainly wasn't helping). That friend went and got hypnosis. She went from smoking more than my mum to nothing not even a craving. So my mum forked out the $400 dollars and now for the last 6 months hasn't touched a cigarette, nor had a craving for them. So you have to ask the question what worked? Was the hypnosis that good or was it belief that it was going to work?

Anyway thats my thought of the day. The mind is a very powerful tool, and there is areas of the brain even we are not sure yet what they are used for. I don't think alternate medicines are necessarily a cure and nor would I go see a naturapath before my doctor. I do also beleive in auras and spiritual healing. But I definitely do believe in the power of the mind and placebos.
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Re: Complementary Medicine on TV

Post by Cartollomew » 14 Aug 2009, 13:19

Satrix wrote:(and for those that know a little about the human body cancer in the lymphocytes is quite often fatal once its established)
Keyword here is "often". Certainly there is much we don't know about the body. There are 2 likely reasons why people either get or feel better via alternative medicine when actual medicine has "failed" them:

1) Their body just recovers.
This sometimes happens - there are more than a handful of stories about people who "shouldn't have lived out the year" but have gone on to live for 2, 5 or 10 years after (or whatever). These cases are often examined closely by the scientific community - because if they can figure out similarities between the people who "just get better", they might be able to work out why, and create those conditions in other sufferers. Sometimes they do find links - it's just a matter of someone having different physiology. Sometimes they'll find weak links that don't immediately make sense, or never make sense. Often times, there is no link at all.
I'm yet to find a clear link showing that any particular alternative medicine gave someone an advantage in this sense. The other possibility in this case is that the doctors are playing it conservatively - if you think the patient might last 12 months, tell them less than 12 months. Better you're wrong and the patient has more time than the alternative. But I don't have any numbers on this possibility (due to laziness), though I suspect it wouldn't be too hard to study it.

2) A "Drug Fever" style effect - whatever cocktail of treatment the patient is on, is not correct for the patient's condition, either making it worse or suspending it. When a patient in this situation ceases treatment, they can begin to feel a hell of a lot better, and their condition can improve, simply from not being treated at all.
Combine this with a visit to one's alt med practitioner of choice, and you have what appears to be a really clear case of "alt med works!"
Except that it has nothing to do with the efficacy of alternative medicine, and everything to do with the patient no longer being on the wrong mix of drugs.
The downside to this, is that there are patients who will go this route and then deteriorate very quickly afterward, having given up on medicine - when what they really needed was to have their condition reassessed and the right treatment assigned.

Re: Willpower
Cecil Adams has a reasonably skeptical view on this, but as with many of the studies on the mind, the tests are hard to run, the results aren't as concrete as we'd like.
But for now, the science points to no - a greater will to live doesn't necessarily equate to a higher chance of survival.
My second example is also from my mum. She smoked right from before we were born, throughout pregnancies and our entire life span. She was so bad that at her weakest and sickest moments it was a real fear that she would burn the house down. She bought tobacco illegally, if she had of bought tailor mades it easy would of been a pack a day. She'd tried quitting a few times but never succeeded the patches didn't help nor the gum and within a short time she would be back on them again. Recently she had a family friend have a second heart attack who absolutely had to give up smoking or she was going to die (still a chance but smoking certainly wasn't helping). That friend went and got hypnosis. She went from smoking more than my mum to nothing not even a craving. So my mum forked out the $400 dollars and now for the last 6 months hasn't touched a cigarette, nor had a craving for them. So you have to ask the question what worked? Was the hypnosis that good or was it belief that it was going to work?
Hypnosis is another beast entirely - it isn't an alt med area, although there are certainly hypnosis charlatans out there.
Hypnosis has a number of sound foundations when it comes to treatments - the effects of hypnosis are real and can be examined to some extent (where the effects of, say, Reiki cannot). Additionally there have been well prepared and executed studies with regards to treatment of pain or addictions (such as smoking) via hypnosis that have produced middling to reasonably good results.

Hypnosis also has its share of quackery and non-scientifically sound uses - such as regressive memory or "past life" memory. The results of these have not (or cannot) be scientifically verified, and therefore reside in the same box as the other pseudo scientific stuff.
Anyway thats my thought of the day. The mind is a very powerful tool, and there is areas of the brain even we are not sure yet what they are used for. I don't think alternate medicines are necessarily a cure and nor would I go see a naturapath before my doctor. I do also beleive in auras and spiritual healing. But I definitely do believe in the power of the mind and placebos.
You're more than welcome to believe what you like - the placebo effect is very real and measurable, though not reliable.
As for spiritual healing - I suspect they can often have a positive effect on one's psychological well being, but I'm too lazy to look up any research. I vaguely recall reading an article about prayer in this regard, but I can't remember the results for sure.

I'll have to shrug when it comes to auras - there's certainly no evidence for their existence, but that doesn't necessarily preclude them from being real. I'd probably take issue with someone peddling aura readings to people in place of real diagnosis if it came to medicine, but otherwise I guess it's not any different to people visiting their astrologist or palm readin' person - there's a fine line between selling people what they want and taking them for a ride on the conman express.

Out of curiosity, are you happy to share your experience or belief in auras here? If not, all good.

Thanks for the (much more level headed) response Sat :-)
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Re: Complementary Medicine on TV

Post by Vampirial » 15 Aug 2009, 14:06

Cartollomew wrote:
Out of curiosity, are you happy to share your experience or belief in auras here? If not, all good.
Yea will take me some time pretty busy at the moment, I'll throw some ideas up prob next weekend. Although I'm probably a walking contradiction all by myself I kind of pick and choose what I want to believe from various religions and discard the rest. Should start a cult or something!
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Re: Complementary Medicine on TV

Post by Sparton » 16 Aug 2009, 23:37

Cartollomew wrote:First up, calling BS.
I assume this is your way of saying "I do not agree that what you are saying is true". Assuming this to be so, I do not see where the following refutes anything I have explicitly claimed.
Most people aren't atheists. If anything, the pull away from religion has more to do with the lack of willingness for faith leaders to enact social change at a comparable rate to society itself.
Nowhere did I claim that the majority of people are atheists - in fact, your wikipedia page reinforces the point that even in the modern world most of humanity agrees with history on the question of deity. I do take issue however with your second statement. The "pull away from religion" is refuted by your own first sentence - there is no "pull away from religion" in the sense that the number of people actively rejecting any form of metaphysical belief is increasing, the only thing that has changed is the object of their belief. Where once people happily adhered to a detailed, systematic theology they are now more keen to craft metaphysical systems of their own design (often by cherry-picking established systems), but most people are certainly not pure materialists, and the number of pure materialists is certainly not increasing.

So, to use your terms, "calling BS".

Next, the claim that this "pull away from religion" (perhaps shorthand for "no longer adhering to traditional religions but instead following or forming alternative expressions of religious practice"?) is based on the "lack of willingness for faith leaders to enact social change at a comparable rate to society itself". What is it that makes "social change" an objectively good thing in the first place? Is "social change" always and everywhere something to be embraced? The 20th century alone is brimming with examples of "social change" that were readily embraced, and now regretted.

Then we must consider the implications of the statement - if the "faith leaders" were unwilling to enact social change, what was it that prompted society to do so? Did people just stop doing things the way they had always been doing them and change tracks spontaneously? Were the tracks changed for them by some other, non-faith-leader influence?
Your average schmo doesn't give a good Goddamn about science or Dawkins (particularly Dawkins - even if you know or care not a jot about science or faith, you can still know that Dawkins is an ass), they care about themselves and the environment in which they live.
If the first half of this statement were even partly true, then we would not be having this discussion at all. Dawkins would be just another biologist whose name is recognised only by peers in the field, nobody would even bother publishing books on God by scientists, and the topic would not be raised on a daily basis in the pages of newspapers. The evidence of the everyday man's world demonstrates that this claim, as it stands, is BS. Yes, anyone with a clue about science and/or philosophy recognises that Dawkins is a clown talking out of his arse, but that does not change the fact that he is an influential clown selling millions of books about whom the average schmo cares. There are only so many books a man can sell before he has to start reaching the average schmo, after all. Voices like Dawkins' influence more than merely those people who know who he is.

I claimed that it had become fashionable to disparage the study of immaterial things, first religion in particular and then philosophy in general. In no way could this mean "everyone became atheist". Rather, it points out that the voices of influence in society had moved to a position particularly hostile to metaphysics (especially in France during the time of the Revolution) and that this hostility was carried under the banner of "science". The unnatural and unprecedented conflict between reason and religion has never been resolved, and continues to fuel the confusion we see today.
BS again. There are multiple fields of science or hypotheses which don't "immediately" stand up to scrutiny from empirical measurement, or which simply cannot be even thought to be proven until later times.

String theory, gravity, loop gravity - many of the thought experiments and theories put together by great minds from the 18th through to the 20th century have been unprovable, untestable (through empirical means) or useless in the time in which they were created.
You must have grown up in a fascinating world if those fields of scientific study had even a modest impact on your youth. The influence of String Theory on pre-teen popular culture! Gravitational theory on boy bands! Thought experiments and Captain Planet!

These things go straight over the heads of "the average schmo" you mentioned before, and have no impact on him. He will flip on the television and see "scientists find a cure for cancer!" every three days, think "isn't that nice" and move on. Once in a while the papers will print "Large Hadron Collider could destroy the planet", he will chuckle at this on his train ride to work and forget about it. In short, introducing a number of purely mathematical fields to the discussion doesn't even scratch the claim that the culture of the world has unduly shifted towards the materialistic.
And if you're suggesting I live in a world which will not even entertain the notion of a God, I have to wonder where you've grown up.
Your first link is fascinating. Why does a country with constitutionally guaranteed freedom of religion need a constitutional amendment to guarantee the free practice of religion in schools? Indeed, how does this in any way support your point?

You may also recall some of the media coverage from that second event, which conveniently took place in Sydney last year. For those who were actually in Sydney at the time, many will recall the Police Commissioner's statement that Sydney's crime rates had dropped, that there had been no disturbances of the peace, and that the atmosphere of the city was overwhelmingly positive. For those who relied on newspapers, however, World Youth Day was a wasteful, expensive, dangerous, dirty and noisy adventure permitted by the Federal and State governments to indulge a bunch of hypocritical old men in dresses. Hardly the liberal spirit.
Sparton wrote: Consider the attempts of, say, biologist Richard Dawkins to create a "materialist ethics". Hit utter distrust of philosophy and crippling dependance on the methods of scientific experiment mean that as soon as he attempts to solve problems outside the material realm (eg ethical behaviour) he is forced to either plagiarise materialist philosophers (whose ethical systems, unbeknownst to Dawkins, have already been demonstrated untenable) or make recommendations which fly in the face of history.
Morality, objective morality and the foundation on which we create our social expectations of behaviour/what is acceptable and so on, has merely a nodding acquaintance with the foundations of science.
For starters, science has a foundation.
You appear to imply that morality has no foundation. Please demonstrate this.
What Dawkins attempts to do as an atheistic ethicist has nothing to do with the what Dawkins attempts to do as a biologist and scientist - philosophy is not science.
We are in agreement here.
I suspect you could just say that philosophers classically make poor scientists and that scientists often make bad philosophers, but I suspect that's not particularly true, nor does it have any bearing on why people insist on buying little bottles of expensive water to cure their colds.
As here, though even the statement you tentatively reject is biased. The first scientists (at least in the Western world) were all philosophers, and usually proficient ones at that. We must not forget however that those philosophers who pioneered science did so by gaining a foundation in scientific methods (such as empirical observation). Dawkins served merely as an example of a fellow who attempted to go the other way without bothering with the foundation. He makes philosophical and metaphysical claims with pontifical certainty, but has never attempted to gain a solid foundation upon which to make those claims. Thus he serves as an excellent example of the social plague, where people of all stripes who know how to do one thing will attempt to apply it to anything, regardless of whether it is appropriate.
Your argument is being poorly expressed here. Fix it.
I would be glad to clarify, though this imperative is entirely useless. Perhaps you could tell me what you think I have said, and compare with what you think I meant to say?
Additionally, there is no "banishment of religion" in the west.
The evidence betrays you. See above the treatment of a major, public religious event in Sydney last year by Sydney's largest newspaper. Or even the example you gave of the American School Prayer Amendment.
People are perfectly capable of finding the divine in ways other than "channeling the dead", "telepathy", or "spiritual healing". I hear this "prayer" thing is reasonably common in pretty much any given faith. Also, some form of meditation (which is often approximate to a form of prayer) is usually present.
Of course people are capable, this wouldn't be relevant if they weren't. What interests us here is why they do these things despite their capability. What would drive them to do the abnormal if the normal is available to them?
These things are a way of reaching or communing with a sense of the divine - and these are not areas in which science itself is leading some kind of assault.
Of course not. Science is the systematic collection and study of material knowledge. It is incapable of an agenda, let alone an assault. The issue at hand is the way people use "science", as you mention here...
Dickheads like Dawkins, who have an axe to grind, will no doubt continue being smug, but honestly - Dawkins is preaching to his choir, he's not converting anyone into atheists.
The sad truth. With this said, he still does great damage to society at large by militarising otherwise peaceful atheists, turning himself into a sort of atheist pope about whom they rally in their anti-crusade to crush what he calls the "plague of religion".
On the other side of the coin, the damage done by fundamentalist demagogues insisting that we replace science with their translation of a bronze age mythology is far greater than the tiny proportion of atheists who feel left out.
Nonsense. First, because you have inverted the proportions both in number and influence. How much influence do the people you disparage as "fundamentalist demagogues" have over science, really? How much influence can they possibly exert, on a global scale, over the perceptions of the general public towards it? Of the media? Of government or industry? How many major newspapers push a radical anti-science agenda onto their vast metropolitan circulations?

Second, because the link you provided was thoroughly irrelevant to the point you failed to make. A bunch of baptists calling one of many Bible translations "satanic", and then ritually burning it on a barbecue to Finlandia has nothing to do with the relative harm of religious fanatics versus atheist fanatics. I did find it thoroughly amusing though, because I happen to be familiar with the deep flaws of the NIV translation from both a linguistic and eisegetical perspective.
Science and religion are not mutually exclusive. Any sensible preacher/scientist/atheist admits as much. Give people enough credit to know this - it's only a fringe who believe it has to be one or the other.
I'm sorry, but no. After running the full cycle of state education, as well as teaching some of its products myself, I cannot admit that the average young adult is capable of this realisation any longer. They have been formed in a way that demands an exclusive disjunction between the two, favouring the latter. I agree that the sensible are capable of knowing this, but I respond that the sensible are just as likely not to because of the way they have been formed.

Furthermore, it's both fringes. I see your link to Creationism, and raise you (again) Richard Dawkins. Christopher Hitchens. The ABC (and worse, the BBC).
What people aren't armed with is a concrete knowledge about what science really is.
Amen! Especially tertiary students of science.
As far as your average high school graduate is concerned, the big words they hear from the reiki practitioner is science.
I disagree. I think you need to give people enough credit to distinguish technobable from mystical babble. When my aikido instructor was explaining his Reiki technique to me, he didn't attempt to cite peer-reviewed studies or epidemiological statistics in support of his methods. He told me that he would push his ki into my body to heal my ki.
They haven't been taught critical thought, they haven't been taught to apply scientific skepticism.
On the first half we are agreed, but the second half only demonstrates my point. You have equated "critical thought" with "scientific skepticism" rather than the more sensible "logical progression". Science is not the exclusive domain of critical thought, and it was by making that claim that we began this entire exchange.
Far from science being over-emphasised, science is considered a special area for nerds and "boffins", practising mysterious things in their ivory towers.
I think the second phrase is one of the very fundamental reasons it is over-emphasised. People see science as archaic and set apart, it is only for those other, special people I have never met to understand. Whatever is claimed to be "scientific" must be true, and worthy of belief. In fact, this would appear to agree with your claim above that the reiki practitioner may gain the patient's confidence by assuring him that reiki is "scientific".

It is this very distance and mystery that contributes to the blind trust of "science" as the sole road to universal truth.
Do people need to learn philosophy and logic in school? Sure.
Do people need to learn how to apply critical thought, and the foundation of science (it was sure never taught to me)? Yes.

Philosophy without science isn't going to give anyone the power to assess whether a given treatment has a sound foundation. Science without philosophy isn't going to give anyone a hint on how to determine society's values.
My position precisely. What we need is a return to balance in emphasis of the two complementary fields. We need to properly consider both the material and the immaterial in order to function as humans, individually and as a society.
Also:
Philosophy is a very poor substitute for faith or mysticism - it won't be the silver bullet you are after in that regard.
Once more, I never claimed anything of the sort. Indeed, I couldn't honestly make any sort of claim. A basic respect for philosophy is necessary, but on equal footing with science. As it stands, people revere scientists as near-demigods, mightily forging a better tomorrow. Philosophers, on the other hand, are dismissed as useless daydreamers who contribute nothing but meaningless platitudes. This is why so many have fallen into the trap of attempting to form ethical models on materialist principles.

In short, my position is that people have been robbed of the ability to reason well. They are no longer taught how to connect sensible premisses with sensible conclusions. They are no longer taught to value truth, real truth, and to seek what is true over what is convenient. They are no longer taught how to decide what they can believe is true, and what is worthy of believing. Is something worthy of belief because it was said by someone famous? By someone on television? By someone whose life has been spent in the study of the field?

That's what I want to see. I want people given the opportunity to really decide things for themselves in a sensible, rational way. Whether they are asking if homeopathy can cure their cold better than Lemsip or if there really is a single, personal God who created all matter and time, I just want people to be taught how to look at evidence and arguments before making decisions.

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Re: Complementary Medicine on TV

Post by Naoru » 17 Aug 2009, 00:45

/sigh I'm gonna have to jump in here. BRB writing Big Wall'O'Text.
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Re: Complementary Medicine on TV

Post by Cartollomew » 17 Aug 2009, 01:05

Then we're largely in agreement.

A few things though:

What is found in the press does not necessarily reflect what is happening in society. Just because what few papers Australia has have reported WYD in a negative light doesn't mean that's how all people saw or experienced it. If you have a beef with "The Media" in this regard, then I'll join you in tut-tutting and shaking my head.
You must have grown up in a fascinating world if those fields of scientific study had even a modest impact on your youth. The influence of String Theory on pre-teen popular culture! Gravitational theory on boy bands! Thought experiments and Captain Planet!
These are typically materialistic pop-culture references. I fail to see how anything metaphysical has a strong influence on or through them.

What negative impacts are militant atheists having on, say, legislation? I can vaguely recall a few articles I've read, but can't remember the specific topics. By contrast, the fundamentalist Christian Right in the US has a reasonably strong grip on certain areas of politics in (at least) certain states. I wouldn't defend militant atheism, but even the extremes of the atheist Dawkins fans aren't comparable to the damage done by their counterparts in the Bible thumping ranks.
You appear to imply that morality has no foundation. Please demonstrate this.
Actually, I don't have to. You have to show me that it has an objective basis.
The evidence betrays you. See above the treatment of a major, public religious event in Sydney last year by Sydney's largest newspaper. Or even the example you gave of the American School Prayer Amendment.
The former is, as mentioned above, an abuse by the press. That doesn't illustrate that society has "banished religion", it means the press is reaching wonderfully low standards. The results of the event itself show an acceptance of (at least this) religion.
I think you need to give people enough credit to distinguish technobable from mystical babble. When my aikido instructor was explaining his Reiki technique to me, he didn't attempt to cite peer-reviewed studies or epidemiological statistics in support of his methods. He told me that he would push his ki into my body to heal my ki.
This is the issue though - people don't think "peer reviewed" when they think science. They think "stuff I can't possibly understand". If they thought "peer reviewed", they wouldn't buy into Reiki et al.

It's not that science is over emphasised - it's that people don't know what is and is not science.
If there were a wider understanding of what "good science" is, it would be impossible to actually over emphasise it.
Science is not the exclusive domain of critical thought, and it was by making that claim that we began this entire exchange.
But science is what is being abused here - things that aren't supported by evidence are being presenting as something that is - medicine. The fact that critical thought is applicable in many fields is beside the point.
That's what I want to see. I want people given the opportunity to really decide things for themselves in a sensible, rational way. Whether they are asking if homeopathy can cure their cold better than Lemsip or if there really is a single, personal God who created all matter and time, I just want people to be taught how to look at evidence and arguments before making decisions.
The only way in which you and I seem to differ on this is that you seem to think that at some point in the past, people (overall) were able to better determine and study this.
From what I can see, things are getting better in this respect. I wouldn't trade this age for any time in the past.
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Re: Complementary Medicine on TV

Post by Mitra » 17 Aug 2009, 01:15

Sparton wrote:You must have grown up in a fascinating world if those fields of scientific study had even a modest impact on your youth. The influence of String Theory on pre-teen popular culture! Gravitational theory on boy bands! Thought experiments and Captain Planet!
have you ever looked at the Cast of "Captin Planet and The Planeteers" ... i suggest you take a look.

as for the rest of your debate.

i don't get why you are criticising the ABC (australian or american?)/BBC

the ABC (australian) has a regular program (compass) which looks at current affairs in the world of Faith, while also showing Dawkins programs. it also has australia's only regular free to air science/technology shows (catalyst, new inventors)
it's a broadcaster which is commited to both sides of the debate....any debate really


but seriously check out that cast
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Re: Complementary Medicine on TV

Post by Evilelmo » 05 Oct 2009, 20:40

Ahhhh the long debate - complementary verses alternative.

Osteopaths, Chiropractors and physiotherapists are all classified as complementary - why?
According to the Webber report published in 1977 in Australia - manual therapists are all classified as complementry. We are all viewed as complementary because we cannot diagnosis (in two, three years this will be reversed) and have only been allowed to assess Musculo-skeletal problems or "other issues". The professions you speak of such as reiki - they are not registered and would not be classified as "complementary medicine". It would be illegal for calling themselves "Drs". Osteopaths were initially prosecuted in Australia because they called themselves doctors until they started to form some protective legislation. Professions such as Reiki is a far cry from having legislation and registration to make them "official". Usually people view Reiki as some sort of Spa treatment from my knowledge and some personal involvement. Some professions that are legally registered and are called complementary medicine are :

- Osteopathy
- Chiropractic
- Chinese Medicine
- Podiatry etc etc

So why the distinction between Alternative and Complementary? It's mainly political jargon and plenty of hate from the Surgery/Medical Community. Alternative means we can substitute that profession for mainstream medicine whereas complementary means we assist mainstream medicine. Because of our inability to diagnosis and prescribe certain medications or perform certain procedures we cannot be classified as alternative. On the upside it has helped us evolve our professions and allowed us to distinguish ourselves from Mainstream Medicine.
Osteopathy has spread worldwide since its birth yet different countries have different theories on the practice of osteopathic medicine. In America, osteopathy is practiced as an orthodox medicine which includes orthodox medical procedures such as obstetrics, surgery and pharmaceuticals, and also osteopathic manipulative treatment (Tyreman S, 2008) However, manipulative therapy is only used by 50% of all osteopaths in America with only 5% of those who practice in manipulative therapy only (Tyreman S, 2008). In the UK, Europe and Asia pressure has been maintained that osteopathy should remain distinct and that they all use similar treatment methods which mainly incorporates manipulative therapy.

In my opinion, I think calling us complementary is better than alternative. In my strongest opinion - all our "complementary" professions stemmed from times where medical knowledge was slim. Doctors used "heroic techniques" - blood letting, electric shock therapy and dangerous venoms and more often than not more patients died than were cured. All good, legitimate professions have research underneath their belts supporting their occupation's claims and inevitably refer their patients on to an appropriate practitioner if they discover an abnormality (like a tumor) - it all comes down to good patient care. "Hobbies" and i use the term strongly, such as Reiki have no or very loose registration behind them and have certainly no research done are not called complementary in any sense. Whoever calls Reiki complementary medicine I'm pretty sure are legally incorrect (an idiot and will suffer my wrath). These people who claim they can "cure" cancer or what not will definitely be arrested and reviewed - We have very strict regulation in Australia.

*edit some links
Health occupations that have registration boards and are legitimate - http://www.health.vic.gov.au/__data/ass ... ractor.pdf

Regulation of Complementary Medicine - http://www.tga.gov.au/cm/cm.htm
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