Oh Oh,...

"I think this country is ready for a black president, though that’s a separate question than whether America should vote for Barack Obama. In fact, at the moment chief among my questions about his fitness for office is why he would want to stand on a stage next to Oprah Winfrey.

Sure, capitalizing on her popularity seems like an obvious move for Obama. But while Oprah’s legions may be loyal, but the fact they swallow what she’s selling says a lot about their collective intelligence.

Remember, Oprah endorsed the obviously embellished memoirs of fabulist James Frey who gave false hope to many with his heroic — and fictional — approach to conquering drug addiction. Then there’s her high-profile support of The Secret, a pernicious self-help phenomenon that tells people they can physically realize their dreams by merely wishing for them. The creators of The Secret claim quantum physics proves all this and, well, if your dreams don’t come true you’re not doing it right. Physicist Niels Bohr, one of the pioneers of quantum physics, famously said, “Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it.” Well, I’m shocked that anyone would believe something as cockamamie as The Secret, so it must be true!

Naturally, like most everything else Oprah touches, The Secret is nothing more than one big marketing scheme. Except unlike her other marketing schemes, instead of squeezing cash out of a desire to lose weight or improve one’s marriage — this one actually sucks her audience’s bank accounts dry by exploiting the actual process of hoping and dreaming, leaving a consumerist sack of meat where a person with a soul once was."

- Mark Hemingway, conservative columnist at the National Review Online

Understatement Of The Day

"I did think she was being naive to assume that homeopaths could be trusted,..."

- From The Quackometer blog.

Homeopathy: The Stupid European Pagan "Science" (That Doesn't Work)

"German writers and philosophers were developing the ideas of ’Naturphilosophie’ - a semi-mystical view of science and the world that underlies, for example, much of Goethe’s thought. It is almost certain that the young Hahnemann would have encountered these ideas at university, and though he does not refer to them explicitly in his writings their influence can be detected in his religious and metaphysical outlook. ’Naturphilosophie’, as expounded by its leading philosopher, Schelling, is based on a sense of the Divine as underlying the manifest universe and as giving form to it, but the nature of truth is to be apprehended by thought and intuition rather than through revelation. ’Naturphilosophie’, therefore, is deistic rather than theistic, pagan rather than Christian."

-- From Anthony Campbell's "Homeopathy In Perspective: Myth And Reality".

Dumb, Dumb, Dumb, Dumb, Dumb

It's Starting To Look A Lot Like Christmas

Lesson Learned (The Hard Way)

“Never underestimate the power of belief and theology. People will give up everything they have, lives included, to die for their beliefs.”

- Rev. Prof Kenneth Newport, Pro-Vice Chancellor of Liverpool's Hope University.

What's even worse is when their friends and family let them,...

Homeopathic "Doctors" Are Killers

"These people look like doctors, act like doctors, and believe themselves to be doctors. They are not. And if the trend for,...homeopathy continues, these people are,...as dangerous as the diseases they claim to cure."

- SciencePunk

I Must Accept The Truth (Surrounded By Idiots)

"I don't think anything predated Christians"?

"'Is the world flat?' has never been important to me."

(A shout out to Orac, at Respectful Insolence, for this one)

P.S.

TMR would like to point out that talking nicely to this pea-brain, as Whoopie and Barbara Walters are doing, isn't working,...

It's Just Tragic: People In Long-Term Marriages Get All Depressed If Their Spouse Is Caught Being Sexual With Other People (Whoda Thunk It?)

"[My wife] Kerry and I were having a get-together at our house. I went into my room and lay on the bed.

"The next thing I remember, Alison [Corin] was on the bed and we were kissing. Kerry saw us and stormed off.

"I put my shoes on, and thought, 'What happened?' It was an isolated incident which I can't explain.

"I heard Kerry tell Alison, 'Leave, or I'll have to tell Will'."

Mrs Corin later confessed to her husband.

Mr Baragwanath, who runs two holiday parks near St Ives, said: "When Will found out, he attacked me, continuing to punch me. I was bruised and had a cut to the left side of my face.

"Later, he said he wanted to talk. I told him it was just a kiss."

But the incident lingered in the mind of Mr Corin, who was in charge of maintenance on Mr Baragwanath's land.

In a police statement Mrs Corin, who managed a farmhouse at one of the caravan parks, said: "We started having arguments. I can't explain why I kissed Andrew - there was no affair."

At the beginning of June, the couple discussed their problems and considered splitting up.

They spent the night in separate bedrooms. but Mrs Corin said she woke in the middle of the night and went to the spare room to give her husband a hug.

Discovering he was not there, she found the text message. It read: "You are so wrong. I love you more than anything. Goodbye."

Fighting back tears, Mrs Corin told the Truro inquest: "I thought he was just messing about, and texted him back.

"I thought he must be in his garage asleep. I went in and saw Will was just hanging there from a beam in the roof."

Mr Baragwanath, a father of six, said: "On the morning he died, I was awoken by the phone.

"It was Alison - she was hysterical. She told me that Will had committed suicide. I drove to the farm, where I saw Alison sitting on the step, crying. We entered the shed and saw him hanging."

Cornwall coroner Dr Emma Carlyon recorded a verdict of suicide.

Yesterday Mr Corin's family described how he was tormented by the breakdown of his marriage.

His brother Tim Corin, a 49-year-old builder, said: "He thought something had been going on for a while.

"He was a genuinely nice, caring bloke. He was too caring - that is what led to this tragedy in my eyes."

- From The Daily Mail, reporting on the suicide of William Corin, who discovered his wife, Alison, was kissing his boss, Andrew Baragwanath.

You Gotta Stop - Hey - What's That Sound? Everybody Look What's Goin' Down,...

"I think the objections to Mormon theology are often sound. But I think there are sound objections to pretty much every theology."

- Jonah Goldberg, conservative columnist, on Mitt's Big Moment in The National Review.

Fool's Gold

"According to the admittedly very contradictory scriptures of the New Testament, Jesus of Nazareth warned his disciples and followers that they should expect to be ridiculed and mocked for their faith. After all, how likely was it that God had decided to reveal himself to only a few illiterate peasants in a barbarous backwater? Those who elected to believe this stuff were quite rightly told to expect a hard time, and the expression 'fool for God' or 'fool for Christ' has been with us ever since. That concept has some dignity and nobility. Entirely lacking in dignity or nobility (or average integrity) is the well-heeled son of a gold-plated church who wants to assume the pained look of martyrdom only when he is asked if he actually believes what he says. A long time ago, Romney took the decision to be a fool for Joseph Smith, a convicted fraud and serial practitioner of statutory rape who at times made war on the United States and whose cult has been made to amend itself several times in order to be considered American at all. We do not require pious lectures on the American founding from such a man, and we are still waiting for some straight answers from him."

- Christopher Hitchens, on Mitt Romney's "Morman speech".

Finally, The Undiluted Truth: "You're Just Saying That Because You Don't Believe"

The Government's most senior scientist today warned that homeopathic medicine was putting lives at risk.

Sir David King said the alternative medicine, whose supporters include Prince Charles and novelist Jeanette Winterson, was of no medical use whatsoever.

He criticised the Department of Health for supporting the use of the technique.

"There is not one jot of evidence supporting the notion that homeopathic medicines are of any assistance whatsoever," he told MPs.

"Therefore, I would say they are a risk to the population because people may take them expecting they are dealing with a serious problem."

- From today's Daily Mail.

"It's Like If You're In A Car Crash,..."

"I went through a very trying situation which few people go through. Immediately after this happened, a bunch of people came out and offered their support to me through various avenues. They all had the same sort of barely-concealed fascination in their eyes. But I noticed something: every time I tried to open up, to tell them what it was really like, this fascination vanished. They stopped calling. They didn't want to hear, down to a man, anything that contradicted their pre-formed opinions. It was too scary. And so I don't really talk to those people anymore, because they weren't interested in me so much as in the situation itself. It's like if you're in a car crash, and there are twenty people standing outside the car you're trapped in, watching the gore, but the minute you scream or ask for help they stand back because the reality is much scarier than the ideology."

- An anonymous post on Salon.com, replying to the question, "A friend is involved in Scientology. Should I interfere?"

Here's more:

"The only difference between cults and 'religions' is that the ones with major followings get more numerous by bending to morals that are socially acceptable, while cults follow more fundamentalist styles of belief, not caring what popular humanist movements have to say on their ethics." -- Karey43

"Seriously, this is not about a reasonable respect for a difference of opinion or belief or even religious freedom, which are all important things. If my friend was being brainwashed and hoodwinked I would not worry about being polite or PC. I would concentrate on being the glaring contrast to the structure of control and manipulation." --Anonymous

"i believe that ALL religions are cults.. as an atheist, that is. one is no better than another. would you try to change the mind of a catholic or a buddhist?" --Anonymous (Note: TMR would - has. Idiots.)

"There's also a difference between "not proven or provable" and "provably false by any reasonable standard." Mormons, who follow a religion founded by a man who was arrested for running a scam based on digging for hidden treasure, then later came up with a new religion whereupon he claimed to have discovered hidden treasure which conveniently declared that he got to sleep with everyone else's wife, fall into the second category, as far as I'm concerned. So do Scientologists." --Anonymous

"Since we atheists know it's ALL false, your trying to differentiate between your false religion and their false religion is pointless and funny. You're blinded by your faith and can't see that claiming your religion is more valid than someone elses is so funny." --Anonymous

"A cult takes the best qualities about you and turns them against you." -- AbbyMay

"If you want to say that alerting people to the potential harm that this belief system can cause is being judgemental, then I guess I'm being judgemental,...If a system of belief is at risk of causing great harm to others, responsible and rational people are well within their rights to voice their objections. Religious freedom goes as far as all our other freedoms: Your freedom extends only so far as you are not harming anyone else." -- SE

"I think it is absolutely wrong that people should feel that they can't criticize religions. Why should this particular irrational belief be considered inviolate? And why is the "burden of proof" about whether there is a god be on people who don't believe in one? If someone chooses to believe somehting like this, they should have darn good reasons to back up their belief. And they should have no problem with stating them. Hint: "Somebody told me it was so" isn't a reason. "I want to believe this because I am afraid of the world and don't want to be repsonsible for my own thinking" is a valid reason because it is honest." -- Meredoo

"Religious control is what we left behind when we founded this country." --Anonymous (TMR calls bullshit: The Pilgrims didn't leave England because England was trying to religiously control the Pilgrims but because the Pilgrims wouldn't stop trying to religiously control the English over Puritanism. Get it right.)

"I lost a dear friend of many years to Mikari, a Japanese cult (she denies it's a cult). I don't know what they do in these places to brainwash people, but for sure they brainwash their followers." -- Davidese

"Hey- many people in Africa and the Middle East believe it is neecessary to cut of the genitals of little girls with no aneasthesia, using a borken piece of glass or a sharp rock. They just hold them down whle they scream and then sew them up. Then they tie the little girl's legs together for several months and they jsut lie there and form scar tissue. or die. It's a religious belief though, so you can't question it, right?

Hey- here's another one. I could go on for page and pages here! Did you read about the muslim woman who got gang raped by seven men? Whell, she is in jail for having been raped, and she is going to get 100 lashes for it too. You see, under Shari'a law (religious law) she is guilty of having had unmarried sex. It's considered her fault, too because she was out of the house in a car with a man she wans't married to.

Just because a belief is religious doesn't mean it's reasonable, or fair, or anything. People can believe any unreasonable , unfair, cruel thing they want. They have the right to believe anything they want. But that doesn't make it okay."-- Meredoo