Who, what, why ?

“Gullibility Kills” – so said the late Dr Carl Sagan in his seminal book, ‘The Demon-Haunted World’.

We are all capable of being fooled. Sometimes we know it’s a trick and choose to play along – such as when we see a magician pull a rabbit from a hat. We know there is no real magic, but we let it go and enjoy the show. There are those that so want something to be true that they will ignore or be blinded to anything contrary to that belief. And there are those that are practised in deception and who only wish to steal or harm.

What does it matter if someone takes a harmless sugar pill, or says there are UFOs or believes in angels and an all powerful god ? More than you might imagine.

The person who takes a sugar pill (homeopathy) today because they have headache is the same person more likely to take a herbal remedy for something more serious, like cancer, later in life. Or spend their last savings and health chasing snake oil in other countries instead of seeking evidence-based care and enjoying their family.

The person who believes strongly in UFOs now may well end up believing that there are grand conspiracies by reptiles to control the world and be afraid to leave their house.

The person who believes strongly in god today way well end up kidnapping a child and keeping her prisoner for the next 18 years.

OK, some of these are at the fringe (right at the ragged edge and beyond, if we are honest), but even a journey to the fringes has to start somewhere. So let’s reel it back in a little and say that very few fundamentalist Christians are going to kidnap children and keep them in their backyards. However a great number of them would have us teach mythology in place of science in schools, or at the very least have it be given equal time.

Very few Doctors would give a patient pills that they knew contained nothing of value to obviously sick or dying patients, but many practitioners of alternative medicines do this daily. Homeopaths would have us believe, against all scientific evidence, that their sugar pills and hyper-diluted water can be used to treat HIV and malaria in Africa. That is not ethical. That is fraud and gross indifference to the suffering of others on a mammoth scale.

In Iraq they have been using bomb detectors purchased at huge cost (over US$60,000 per unit, in some cases) that are in fact empty boxes with a divining rod attached. The purveyor of these fraudulent devices is now under arrest, but the Iraqi police are still using these devices, as are other police and military services around the world. And the bombs still get to their targets and go off, killing hundreds.

With this blog I intend to bring together news, views and articles from other critical thinking sites and blogs, relevant information from other sites and resources, and provide original content. The skeptical movement has undergone huge growth over the past few years, with Web 2.0 being a major asset and tool for the spreading of the critical thinking message. I hope to play my part in helping get the message out there.

Let’s keep science in science class, quackery out of medicine, and magic on stage where it belongs. At the same time, let’s also show the world that skeptics have imaginations, a sense of humour, and are filled with wonder at the majesty of the universe around us.

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