Quote:

On the other hand, of course, (not so much here but generally) you
have thickheaded people who call themselves skeptics who are really just
incredibly dogmatic. They aren't interested in researching anything
they've been told or decided is quackery. They quickly form opinions
about things. They never apply any rigorous questioning or critique to
their own beliefs or thinking processes. I find these people incredibly
annoying. They style themselves as scientific but never perform any
experiments or tests on anything, least of all on their own notions.

I really hate to see entire areas labeled as bunk, which is sort of like
having a cognitive police line drawn around them. The police line means,
"Don't really think any more about this, just consider it hokum. Only
criticize it. No other kind of exploration is necessary or allowed." I
think that's crap.




babyada,

While I appreciate the open-minded spirit in which you wrote this, I don't
agree 100%. Some things really ARE hokum, and, sure you can feel free to
play the open-minded inquirer and dish out your $299 per CD/DVD package to
prove to yourself that it is, but I'm past the point of willingly making
peddlers of hokum rich at my expense. Using a little reasoning about what
we know about how nature works, I can quickly slice through the majority
of the bunk and not be afraid to call it what it is: bunk. That's part of
the "predictive power" of science.

Let's take Feng Shui and this whole mangling of Qi as an example.
(Unfortunately, a very long thread which I had started in the FS forum to
rationally discuss its basis of validity had been unceremoniously deleted
by the admins for whatever reason, so I have to repeat myself here ...)

Feng Shui and Qi-based exercises/systems have their artistic/health
benefits ... I whole-heartedly agree, and I'm sure most rational,
reductionist scientists would agree. There's actually a lot of
scientific experimentation with Qi-based exercises/systems, and I'm sure
it will help us more deeply appreciate the mind/body connection. And, I'm
sure there are many rational explanations based upon human psychology
which one can offer for the aesthetic benefits of FS. All fine and good.

If it ended there, we would all be in agreement. But, no ... FS and Qi
proponents take it to the next level and start introducing all sorts of meta-physical
hokum. And people really believe the hokum! And they vigorously defend
it as true.

Look, if all the hokum around FS and Qi were really true, then China would
today be the most wealthy, most powerful, most healthy, most successful,
most lucky, in short, most PERFECT Heaven on Earth, because FS and Qi have
been practiced there for literally thousands of years. Rather, China's
history is filled with the most terrifying calamities, bloodshed, poverty,
famine, wars ... etc ... plagued by the same misfortunes which any other
group of people trying to survive had to overcome. I can see from the
historical evidence that FS and Qi has nothing to do with objective
reality besides the (admittedly valuable) measure of hope and balance that
it can provide to its practitioners. I don't need to buy into all that
hokum, because I'm smart enough to see the thousands of years of evidence
which already exists.

Look at the Boxer Revolution, and the generation of well-meaning
Qi-masters/monks that it slaughtered in one day. They believed
(irrationally) that Qi gave them paranormal, super-human abilities that
would protect them from those damned Western invaders' bullets and swords.
What more honorable use of Qi than to defend one's country and way of
life? Those monks and masters spent their entire lives mastering Qi.
Nevertheless, physics easily trumped belief-in-Qi that day, and Western
soldiers (who could care less about Qi but could pull a trigger and swing
a sword) easily wiped out a generation of otherwise good, but sadly
misguided souls ... all because of hokum.

It appears history is doomed to repeat itself over and over again, because
we are still finding our way back to hokum and conjuring up more and more
hokum. Worse, those of us who are not afraid of calling hokum for what it
is are regarded as closed-minded, arrogant and blind. Ok, that's fine.
We may not know everything, but we know enough not to expect Qi (or any other
metaphysical belief) to make bullets, swords, and their equivalents harmless,
or to effortlessly funnel love, wealth, health, success, and happiness into our laps.

Yes, an open-mind is important, but not if it so open that your brains start
falling out.