Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
PZ Myers is a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris.
…and this is a pharyngula stage embryo.
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Don't tell me God works in mysterious ways. There's nothing so mysterious about it. He's not working at all. He's playing. Or else He's forgotten all about us. That's the kind of God you people talk about- a country bumpkin, a clumsy, bungling, brainless, conceited, uncouth hayseed. Good God, how much reverance can you have for a Supreme being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of creation? What in the world was going through that warped, evil, scatalogical mind of His when He robbed old people of the ability to control their bowel movements? Why in the world did He ever create pain…. Who created the dangers? Oh, He was really being charitable to us when He gave us pain! Why couldn't He have used a doorbell instead to notify us, or one of His celestial choirs? Or a system of red and blue neon tubes right in the middle of each person's forehead?…. They certainly look beautiful now, writhing in agony or stupified with morphine, don't they? What a colossal, immortal blunderer! When you consider the opportunity and power He had to really do a job and then look at the stupid, ugly little mess He made of it instead, His sheer incompetence is almost staggering. It's obvious He never met a payroll. Why,no self-respecting businessman would hire a bungler like Him as even a shipping clerk!
[Yossarian to Lt. Scheisskopf's wife, Catch-22, Joseph Heller]
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Category: Skepticism
Posted on: April 12, 2008 8:32 AM, by PZ Myers
If you've ever stopped to think that maybe there might just be something to phrenology, homeopathy, coffee enemas, etc., you should be reading Crap-Based Medicine. It's for you.
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Comments
coffee enemas... Crap-Based Medicine.
No pun intended, of course.
Posted by: ennui | April 12, 2008 8:50 AM
Why wash your hair with shampoo when you can wash it with real poo?
OT: where's the nearest open thread? I need to consult the pharyngulites on a random topic.
Posted by: wazza | April 12, 2008 8:53 AM
Baal's Balls! A blog completely devoted to woo!
Posted by: PalMD | April 12, 2008 8:57 AM
Skepchick at her best.
Posted by: Cory | April 12, 2008 9:07 AM
Coffee Enemas?! I can hear it now:
"Thank You for shopping StarBucks, may I help you?"
"I'll take a double latte, 2 sugars, whole milk, and the #4 insertion tube please"
Ouch.
Some people are freaks.
Posted by: John | April 12, 2008 9:14 AM
Why use perfectly good coffee for such a purpose? Won't prune juice do?
Posted by: Deborah | April 12, 2008 9:23 AM
New Peaberry for the Poopchute®!
Now available in two exciting (non-irritating) flavours!
Kona Kornhole & Sumatran Sphincter!
This shit writes itself.
Posted by: ennui | April 12, 2008 9:43 AM
#2
Just use the IRC channel, dude. There's a link in the sidebar.
Posted by: Cairnarvon | April 12, 2008 9:47 AM
I have this horrific vision of a waitress. Pink diner uniform. Stained white apron. Holding up a tube and two pots. "Regular or decaff?"
What's really terrifying is her going on to the next table for refills...
I need to go wash my mind out with bleach now, thankees.
Posted by: Dana Hunter | April 12, 2008 9:58 AM
And then there's the milk chocolate enema. Just in case you weren't feeling like coffee this morning.
WHY? WHY DO PEOPLE BELIEVE THIS CRAP?
That was a cry from despair, my dears. No need to answer.
Posted by: Dana Hunter | April 12, 2008 10:01 AM
A colleague of mine recently embarked on a weekend "fruit flush"--eating nothing but fruit in order to "purge toxins." There was certainly a lot of flushing involved.
Posted by: Jim Anderson | April 12, 2008 11:16 AM
While you are busy-busy with flushing THE UGLY PROBLEM CAUSING TOXINS, you won't be concerned with flushing the horrendous consequences of the always increasing COMPOUND INTEREST payments you must make to laughing & rollicking bankers.
The "real" problems are in right there in YOUR OWN BOWELS; not in banking and compound interest.
Compound interest cleans you out, but it is a different kind of cleansing - a mere matter of framing the mystifications about bowels, bums, and banking.
Clean out your bowels real good, and you will be on the road to the healthy life in the garden of eden - compound interest payments are part of the CLEANSING.
You understand, do you not.
Posted by: gerald spezio | April 12, 2008 12:52 PM
Anyone who believes in phrenology should have his head examined!
Posted by: Ted Powell | April 12, 2008 1:20 PM
Again this year at my Senate District DFL (MN Democrats) convention I had to read through all the pages of the proposed platform resolutions to find the ones that request coverage for homeopathic or alternative medicine so I could vote against them. And, of course, they were in there...
Posted by: Sonja | April 12, 2008 2:16 PM
It's interesting that there are atheists who believe in this kind of alternative medicine crap.
How? Easy. They didn't become atheists through the rational process of applying reason and science to the concept of god. They became atheists for irrational reasons -- including the desire to see themselves as "freethinkers" who aren't afraid to go against Established Authorities. Established authorities like, you know, churches and priests and scientists and Big Pharma and Western ways of thinking.
I have a friend who does not believe in God, but advocates and accepts virtually every form of pseudoscientific garbage out there, from homeopathy to psychics to space alien abductions. The big connection is a deep reliance on personal experience, and a deep distrust of scientists' say-so. She worships the God of MAYBE. As in "maybe all the experts are wrong and it takes the brave, independent person who works on gut intuitions to see that." From what I can tell, the only reason she's not a creationist is she hates the Religious Right, and that's whose peddling that form of pseudoscience.
One reason why I tend to self-identify as a secular humanist, rather than just as 'atheist.'
Posted by: Sastra | April 12, 2008 2:18 PM
Alternate "medicine" is big here in the Netherlands, but this week a heavy blow was struck against it when the courts decided that quacks and spiritual healers who misdiagnose their patients should be prosecute, just like a proper doctor would.
Posted by: Martin Wisse | April 12, 2008 5:21 PM
Maybe we can convince the creationists to take reverse phrenology to heart (but only for themselves)?
Posted by: Rob | April 12, 2008 5:21 PM
Are you helping out the cause of science on the "Please Participate in This Trial" page? I would love to see pharynguloid medical conditions!
Posted by: LW | April 12, 2008 7:40 PM
Nah, too snarky. I'll stick with Junkfood Science, thanks.
Posted by: dwarf zebu | April 12, 2008 8:52 PM
I wonder if anyone has tried a fecal enema. It's natural.
Posted by: Konrad Talmont-Kaminski | April 13, 2008 2:47 AM
The parody is absolutely awsome! I laughed my ass off! What a breakfast conversation that blog would make. I could see it now, eating breakfast with my three youngest sons, debating over which is best - coffee, tea, or milk based enemas. That would be right up there with their normal dinnertime conversations that are produced without any outside influence. It was often difficult to stay at the table with them; but only because I was so busy choking on my food from laughing so hard! I have to send them this url!
There is only one homebased remedy I lend any credence to, and that is a dried, green, leafy substance with active ingredients known as tetrahydrocannabinol, cannabinol, and cannabidiol. You figure it out...
Posted by: Angel Rose Young | April 13, 2008 3:48 PM
"coffee enemas".
is it £50 a cup afterwards?
Posted by: Peter | April 14, 2008 5:15 AM
Alas for the late great "Museum of Questionable Medical Devices"!
It used to be located in Minneapolis on St. Anthony Main down by the river. The guy who ran it retired and shut it down a few years ago. The phrenology device (kind of like a dentist's chair with a lot of probes and levers around the head, and an automatic fortune cookie printout) is now in the Science Museum in St. Paul. But there was so much, so much more ...
Posted by: Alien | April 14, 2008 12:19 PM