Skeptical about the skeptics: The Health Ranger answers the skeptics on natural

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NTN: Health skeptics prove their opinions are meaningless (humor)

Fri, 28 Apr 2006 09:58:51 -0700

 

 

 

 

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Skeptical about the skeptics: The Health Ranger answers the skeptics

on natural medicine

 

 

Whenever I really want to be amused, I spend a few minutes reading the

latest admonishments and retortments from the extreme skeptics of

natural medicine. By " extreme skeptics, " I don't mean actual critical

thinkers who apply genuine open-minded curiosity to the world around

them, I mean the pseudoscientific zealots who berate anyone who

believes in acupuncture, massage therapy, homeopathy, herbal medicine,

sunlight therapy, breath therapy, meditation or any number of other

natural healing modalities. They think vitamins are useless,

acupuncture is quackery, and that all medical treatment should be

limited to drugs, surgery, radiation and chemotherapy.

 

These extreme skeptics are truly impressive in the depth of their

knowledge: There is nothing true in the universe that they don't

already know. All science has already been discovered, they proclaim,

and therefore all new " whacky " ideas about vibrational healing, energy

medicine or nutritional therapy are based on nothing but quackery.

That's why they've constructed an intellectual moat in order to keep

all such bad ideas out of the Church of Logic.

 

I've also learned from these omniscient rationalists that there is no

such thing as mysterious, invisible energy vibrations. I'm not sure

how radios work, then, or magnets, or nuclear medicine, or the

subatomic weak nuclear force, or quantum computing, or even the

vibrating piece of crystal that governs the clock on my computer's

CPU, but I'm pretty sure it's only because I'm too stupid to

understand genuine " scientific thinking, " which is apparently based on

learning how to invoke obfuscating scientific-sounding incantations to

support conclusions you have previously committed to.

 

More importantly, I've also learned from these skeptics that the

universe operates in pure Newtonian fashion like a giant pinball

machine, and that free will, creativity, love, intuition and faith are

merely illusory notions invoked by chemical balances in the brain that

should be treated with psychiatric drugs. Because, of course, people

who actually FEEL anything are obviously irrational and have no place

in our pinball machine universe.

 

Many of these extreme skeptics, I've also learned, don't even believe

in their own free will, since consciousness (they've explained to me)

is merely a fleeting projection of a physical brain that operates like

a wondrously complex Turing machine. This has me pondering an

important question: Who does a skeptic think is offering the opinions

of skepticism if that same skeptic does not believe in the existence

of his own consciousness?

 

By definition, then, the opinions of all such skeptics are of no

greater consequence than two billiard balls bouncing off each other

because even they do not believe they exist as conscious beings

capable of creating inspired thought. Thus, if you take their word for

it, extreme skeptics have the same level of consciousness as, say,

your average armadillo. They self-admittedly have none, in fact,

making such skeptics about as intelligent as a brass doorknob, but far

less useful. A doorknob, at least, can open something. But extreme

skeptics remain forever closed to new ideas.

 

I once asked a skeptic how he could be sure there was nothing else in

the universe besides the physical, and he gave me an answer that

basically translates into, " I intuitively felt so. " Normally, I would

call such a person a complete idiot, but most skeptics are actually

well educated. They are clearly not idiots. Rather, they are purveyors

of self-aggrandizing reductionism who suffer under the cult-like

illusion that hyper-rational, compartmentalized, Descartian logic is

the one and only way to arrive at any sort of truth.

 

Their belief in the superiority of selective logic bounded by

preordained conceptual blinders is as zealotistic and pompous as any

fanatical religion, but far less believable because to become a member

of the Church of Logic, you have to pledge exclusive faith to a system

of philosophy that disavows the concept of faith altogether. What the

members of this church are missing is the idea that metaphor, or

meditation, or storytelling, or dreaming is often far truer and a

whole lot more interesting than mere logic. Or that food, sunlight and

water are powerful medicine. Certainly logic is one way to look at the

universe, and it is a useful way for many things, but it is hardly the

only way. In fact, for the things that really matter (like happiness,

compassion, or love), logic is practically irrelevant.

 

Of course, skeptics may disagree with this assessment, but even that

would require some original thought, which violates the beliefs of

skeptics in the first place. If you're an extreme skeptic, you can't

fathom the meaning of any of this because you have no consciousness

and you don't possess any original ideas whatsoever, according to your

own Church of Logic. So if you're perturbed by this essay because

you're a self-admitted skeptic, then don't sweat it: Your negative

emotion is just a side effect of the giant pinball Turing Machine in

your head. You'll get over it.

 

Everybody else, on the other hand, does exist, which is why we are all

laughing so hard at the skeptics -- the only group of people in the

history of human civilization to vehemently argue for their own

irrelevance, and then to prove it through pompous babble aimed not at

any effort to discover real truth, but rather to protect their own

fragile egos and hollow philosophical scaffolding.

 

A mind is a terrible thing to waste. It's a good thing, then, that

extreme skeptics don't believe in the mind at all -- only in the

brain, a physical organ they say merely creates the illusion of

consciousness and has no ethereal existence whatsoever: No spirit, no

soul, no mind.

 

By their own definition, then, extreme skeptics are mindless, soulless

walking water bags that are no more " alive " than the DNA sequence of a

virus. Unfortunately, they still manage to spout words from time to

time, probably due to some sort of linguistic reflex action, and annoy

the rest of us who actually do have consciousness.

 

So the next time a skeptic annoys you with blathering syllables that

sound like arguments against alternative medicine, just remember: A

chicken can still run with its head cut off, but that doesn't mean it

knows where it's going. It's only a reflex that appears to resemble

conscious intention. Don't mind it.