pink unicorns

"Invisible Pink Unicorns are beings of great spiritual power. We know this because they are capable of being invisible and pink at the same time. Like all religions, the Faith of the Invisible Pink Unicorns is based upon both logic and faith. We have faith that they are pink; we logically know that they are invisible because we can't see them." -- Steve Eley

Personally i think this is stupid. Kinda funny, but stupid. It is supposed to show the faith people have for their religions. We have faith that God is out there, but have no proof. I'm sure the christians and catholics are not amused by this.

It is accepted that there are no actual believers in this mock goddess, but it has become popular, especially on atheist web sites and on-line discussion forums, to feign belief in her for the sake of humor and as a form of critique or satire of theistic belief. These professions of faith also make the point that it is difficult to refute avowals of belief in phenomena outside human perception. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_Pink_Unicorn

Fallacies in the news

The Radio Factor, Bill O'Reilly makes a comparison to the Third Reich: “The ACLU is the most fascist organization I have seen in decades. They want to tell you how to live. They don’t want to abide by the Constitution. They want to go around the Constitution. They’re intellectual fascists, and they use the courts as their Panzer divisions.”

This would be the slippery slope fallacy. The ACLU's real job according to www.aclu.org is "We work daily in courts, legislatures and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States. Our job is to conserve America's original civic values - the Constitution and the Bill of Rights."

Just because the ACLU wants to allow people to live the way they wish, they are now fascists, and they want to go around the constitution. In fact, the ACLU makes sure the contemperary laws do not go beyond the constitution. O'Reilly takes a simple group, and makes them out to be fascists.

Happy water

The presentation was good. It gave all the particulars of the experiment, with the exception of why these guys thought this was true. It is a pretty obscure idea to believe that water can take the emotions into them, and make crystals. As one of the presenters said, you don't just get an idea from thin air. What gave the Dr. the idea that water had these capabilities?

The part that I liked was that they also said not to discount an idea simply because it seems crazy. The craziest ideas in the past turned out to be true.... who would have thought the earth was round!?! That you need to have proof either way is a good idea to keep.

have you heard of this?

have you seen this website, what is this?!?
strangemag

fallacies

---The Straw Man fallacy is committed when a person simply ignores a person's actual position and substitutes a distorted, exaggerated or misrepresented version of that position.

When people are trying to back up their theories, or cut down others, they can use this fallacy. By distorting the position, the antagonist can more easily discredit, or cut down the theory. When in fact, they aren't even attacking the actual position, but instead the distorted view of the position.
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/straw-man.html
---The Slippery Slope is a fallacy in which a person asserts that some event must inevitably follow from another without any argument for the inevitability of the event in question.

From a seemingly simple statement, people try to "rationally" get from that point to another, more radical point. This can also be used for discrediting theories. For example; If someone believes there is life on other places than earth, they probably believe that they came to earth , and they brought with them all our technology and that they have been controlling us through our technology. A series of steps, where eventually they get out of control.

Claims

The big paranormal claim..... psychic healing. Some believe that people with psychic ability can heal others by using their minds. Like the videos of people in Russia. While this is crap, it is possible that positive thinking and positive mindsets can allow people to heal better, or quicker, and negative mindsets can impede healing.

To use the same paranormal claim, the minimal amount of evidence needed to show this would be to take medically sick, documented people, and put them with these so called psychic healers for a period of time, and see if they heal the sick. Taking into account the known rates which people get better with time for the particular illness. In other words i would like to see a scientific study, not just peoples claims.

Definitions and such...

Dichotomy is a division into two non-overlapping or mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive parts. They are often contrasting and spoken of as "opposites". Equivocation is the same word is used with two different meanings. For example: Criminal actions are illegal, and all murder trials are criminal actions, thus all murder trials are illegal. OR The sign said "fine for parking here", and since it was fine, I parked there. Ad Hominem is a general category of fallacies in which a claim or argument is rejected on the basis of some irrelevant fact about the author of or the person presenting the claim or argument.
For example :
Bill: "I believe that abortion is morally wrong."
Dave: "Of course you would say that, you're a priest."
Bill: "What about the arguments I gave to support my position?"
Dave: "Those don't count. Like I said, you're a priest, so you have to say that abortion is wrong. Further, you are just a lackey to the Pope, so I can't believe what you say."
From site: http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/ad-hominem.html

People often use these as ploys to get you to believe their theory or to disprove someone elses. But these aren't based on actual concrete evidence.


People as animals..... yes, physically we are animals, we are mammals in the whole order of species so technically we are animals. People get all uptight about being called animals because of the connotation that comes with the word. Most humans aren't walking around killing for territory, or peeing on bushes, or eating off the ground, as other animals do. People just want to be differentiated from other animals because sociologically we are slightly different, and we can talk and gotta love the opposible thumbs.

Burden of Proof

While the burden of proof, or who has to back up their theories is the group or person with the idea which is not mainstream, isn't there some proof needed from the people on the other side as well. For example, when the earths population believed that the world was flat, the burden of proof fell with the believers of a round world. But didn't these flat-world believers ever have to prove their theory? Or were they just assumed right with the information they had at the time and because nobody had a better theory? The same can be said for people who believe aliens exist or there is some sort of life on distant, or maybe not so distant planets. While the burden of proof lies with the UFO-folk, doesn't there have to be some sort of concrete evidence that there is no life as well? You can't just say because we can't find it it's not there. Right?

Try to explain this........

ok... My friend was standing outside with a neighbor at 4ish in the afternoon, on the corner of Maple and Shepard. A little plane (cessna) was flying eastward, when right in front of him, out of a cloud pops out a bright white ball about half the size of the plane. They thought the plane was going to fly into it, because it looked like it was really close, but the plane moved to the left at the last minute to avoid it. Or did he even see it? Not too sure about that... As soon as the plane went past it, 4 more identical white balls appeared next to the original one, with the original one in the center. Then they shot off to the south east real freakin fast. This all took place over like 30 seconds. 5 minutes later 2 F16's flew in the same direction seeming to be going REAL slow. Can you explain this away with your dang science?