On politics…
One of my favourite (US) blogger-physicians comments on politics:
[...] I cannot bring myself to vote for any political candidate who believes in magic instead of science, and who uses those beliefs to determine policy.
Homeopathy is magic. “EverCleanse” colon cleanse (advertised daily on the radio) is magic. Enzyte is magic, and it’s inventor/marketer is on his way to jail for fraud. Chiropracters run the gamut from those who understand that they’re glorified physical therapists to those who don’t believe germs cause disease; in general, chiropractic is magic.
Creationism is magic, but because it is cloaked in the trappings of religion, it gets treated with kid gloves. Religion needs to stay out of the science classroom, and I cannot bring myself to vote for anyone who doesn’t understand why.
I think it’s a shame that ignorance has become not only prevalent but desirable in this formerly great land of ours. I suppose hypocrites are so popular because they make people comfortable with their own hypocrisy.
I can’t even tell if my dominant emotion is fear or sadness.
All I can do is apply my own private, non-partisan litmus test in the privacy of the voting booth. Magical thinking is a thought process of childhood. It’s time this country grew up.
Unfortunately, this magical thinking is all too prevalent here north or the border as well, as I complained about regarding the CFP article on ‘Integrative Medicine”. Acupuncture, ‘energy-based healing modalities’, chiropractic, are also magic. ‘Spirituality’ is also fundamentally a belief in magic. In medical, and federal politics, this kind of ignorant thinking is all too prevalent.
Our Western Civilization has brought about many achievements, including effective medicine; it is a culture based on the naturalistic, empirical quest for knowledge as brought into popularity by the Greeks, kept alive by early Islam, and fully developed throughout the Renaissance.
Will we tumble back into a Dark Age of orthodoxy, an unreasoned acceptance of these New Age, ’spiritual’ philosophies with no basis in reality, just as we are on the cusp of achieving easy access to knowledge and education for all with powerful tools like the Internet?
Wouldn’t that be an irony? Or is the irony that in the Internet age, when the populace has been generally trained to believe things in print; and any quack and woo-meister can post their kooky theories for all to read, they will overwhelm reason by the weight of sheer numbers?
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