My God is Like, Totes Awesome 'n Stuff

Tom Harpur is again dipping a toe into the wading pool of intellectual discourse. Harpur, who should be smarter than he comes across on paper, states that :

"God, the ultimate source and ground of not just this universe but of untold, as-yet unknown, universes beyond, is not only “great” but greater by a zillion degrees than anything our limited minds or technologies can ever possibly conjure up."

A zillion degrees.

I've tried using my local Sun paper, the London Free Press, to pick up dog crap. The crap rejects it.

Let's view Tom's argument as it deserves to be seen, as interpretive dance.

Anyway, god is so totally more awesome than anyone could ever, or will ever, be able to imagine. At least Tom has set the groundwork for his argument in that he is going to make bald assertions that are not only unverifiable, but could never be verifiable, ever in the infinite history of the universe. This is what is know in religious conservatives circles as "debate".

"atheism is today a wholly untenable position"

Not having a belief in gods is untenable to Tom. He is saying that not believing in the supernatural (literally outside of nature as he outlined above) is not a logical position to take. That takes some balls and being a bear of very little brain. Of course it could be that Tom has evidence to bring forth to convince us.

"The most amazing thing about the universe as we now know it is the fine-tuning of the physical constants behind the structure and coherence of everything else."

There we go. Full fucking moron in 9 paragraphs. In case anyone is not familiar with the argument for fine tuning, I'll let Douglas Adams, by way of a real atronomer, explain this widely discredited argument for the existence of a god.

Tom says "blah blah blah" when what he means is that, thanks to his belief in the supernatural, he thinks that the universe was always meant to create human life. Such ego.  Such hubris. Why, it's not christian, is it? Where's the humility?

Tom pops off with this resounding zinger:

"Frankly, when I consider the amount of confidence in sheer coincidence required by atheism in the face of the latest scientific findings about the origin and nature of the universe, I realize I simply don’t have and never will the amount of faith such a leap demands."

Tom packs a lot of straw into that little paragraph. It has intelligent design, atheism as a religion, knowledge of abiogenesis, and a sweet little "Bless your heart" to finish off on our faces. Do these guys wake up and go "Holy crap, there's a cock under this fat flap! I had no idea it was there." That is how he comes across; as someone who has just stumbled upon an idea, new to him, but that has been discussed to death, and widely discredited. It's like when Madonna discovered sex, we all had to hear about, about how awesome it was, and how she was the only one doing it right .

Let's graphically illustrate the universe, fine-tuned for human life.

Here a Venn diagram I made showing the intersection of the known universe, and the portion of the universe suitable for human life, as far as our current knowledge allows. The entire universe is black, and the portion containing us is in yellow. I know the yellow is too big, but I don't have the right kind of software to make it any smaller.

That is some fine, fine tuning there. According to Tom there has been billions of years of evolution, billions of years of infinite galaxies forming, billions of star systems that were born and died, untold astronomical events that have been happening since the beginning of time, and it was all for him. All so that we could end up with this picture:

Not worth it.


Yes, I know what you're thinking as you gaze upon that picture, so here you go.

It's nice to end on a positive note. Where do they get those facts anyway?

You & Yer Fancy Book Lernin', Nuts To That

The pointless water-fluoridation debate continues apace in London, Ontario. Last night the civics works committee heard from a variety of people on the benefits, and horrors, of water-fluoridation. Anyone who has followed this exhausting non-issue for the last twenty-years could have told you how it was going to play out, but I'll let the reporters tell you:  

Earlier in the evening, tempers flared during the presentation by Dr. Bryna Warshawsky of the Middlesex-London Health Unit. When she said it was safe to use fluoridated water to mix baby formula, a man yelled "that's not true." Coun. Stephen Orser, who has recently become convinced of fluoride's risks, was clear in his challenging of presentations by Warshawsky and Peter Cooney, Health Canada's chief dental officer. Much of the crowd was clearly opposed to fluoride. People cheered whenever someone offered even a hint of an anti-fluoride statement.

Not surprisingly, when rational thought and scientific consensus is on the table, experts are booed and jeered by the crowd, and challenged by Stephen Orser. Fucking genius Stephen, with his shiny new Google M.D., is now convinced that years and years and years of studies about water fluoridation, and it's efficacy, are wrong. Like the anti-wind turbine folks, the wifi-is-evil crowd, the goddamn-Bilderburgers-are-controlling-us-all group, and the LARPers (fucking LARPers), these groups attribute all kinds of evils to their pet chimera. In this case, the daughter of Typhon is fluoride, which like Bill Clinton's penis, is the most powerful force in the universe. There is no evil it cannot inflict upon you once you are under its sway.

Fluoridation is safe and effective for preventing tooth decay.

From the CDC, "Scientists have found a lack of evidence to show an association between water fluoridation and a negative impact on people, plants, or animals.”

The Canadian Dental Association, the American Dental Association, the CDC, The Federal-Provincial-Territorial Committee on Drinking Water; these groups are not made up of evil people. They are not poisoning you for some nefarious purpose. The overwhelming weight of evidence supports water fluoridation as a public good. Groups of engineers and concerned homeopaths cannot be held in equal regard when they rage against fluoridation. We have to, at some point, defer to the consensus opinion of experts, or nothing can get done and no public good can result in any facet of our lives. There are groups and studies pro and con EVERYTHING. They cannot be held in equal regard at all times. "He said, she said" is not the way to do public policy. We simply must stop arguing at some point and get on with doing the right thing. When the weight of evidence against water-fluoridation even remotely approaches the evidence for, then we should take a look at it. As it stands, it does not. 

Letters to the Editor: Therapy for the Mentally Ill?

In my imaginary world, these kinds of letters to the local rag are merely exercises in critical thinking for the insane, incarcerated due to their pronounced sociopathy. Some kindly doctor has allowed them to read the paper in order to identify trigger words, and then has the patient pen a missive, which hopefully dispenses the rage in a non-violent fashion.

They don't get mailed to the paper, especially if they're full of nonsense, unsourced "facts" and bizarre assertions with little to no basis in reality.

They do if it's the London Free Press we're talking about.

Time to review flu shots

Regarding the article Flu shot flunkies (Jan. 17).

Through the years we have gone to expensive ends to protect the frail elderly from the ravages of the annual flu. Initially we focused our efforts on immunizing those at risk. For a while we even banked on the whimsical concept of "herd immunity" among them.

We have to stop. Herd immunity is a "whimsical concept"? Right out of the gate, Mr.Jamie Harris is spouting a line of nonsense so ridiculous that the editors should have tossed this letter into the bin without further thought. Does Mr. Harris think that smallpox and polio and measles just went away? That they got tired and moved on? Shall we say "fucking moron" or let himself shoot off his penis?

When it was proven that the uptake of immunity within the herd and by the individual elder was more miss than hit, we resorted to trying to protect the "at risk" population by immunizing society in general and caregivers in particular.

Fucking moron. Nobody has ever contended that vaccines are perfect, but 64%-95% efficacy is nothing to sneeze at (that pertains to pertussis), and it isn't hit or miss.  The Japanese tried not vaccinating children against the flu. The result was "there was a rapid increase in excess deaths after 1994, the year in which mass immunization formally ended, [which] supports the conclusion that the effects observed in earlier years were due to vaccine-induced herd immunity" As to the hit and miss, researchers conclude that  "37,000 to 49,000 excess deaths from all causes were averted annually when the Japanese program of mass immunization of schoolchildren against influenza was in effect."  Nearly the entire population of Sarnia, Ont. is not hit or miss.

Oh well, let's just dive into the truly insane part. Plug your nose and stuff your ethics into a water tight bag, 'cause it gets messy.

Perhaps it is time to step back and reconsider the annual influenza outbreak.
The point of the annual flu shot is to increase the life expectancy for aged people, many of whom are experiencing profoundly diminished quality of life, making everyday a struggle.
The annual flu is a natural pruning tool and the consequent pneumonia was regarded, in kinder times, as "the old man's friend."
Instead of conspiring to coerce health-care providers into accepting shots, maybe a humane reconsideration of the entire flu shot ritual is long overdue.

Posted By: Jamie Harris, London
Posted On: January 21, 2012
Editors Note: As published in The London Free Press on Jan. 21, 2012.

Anyone who writes that "The annual flu is a natural pruning tool and the consequent pneumonia was regarded, in kinder times, as "the old man's friend." is either insane or lying. Mr. Jamie Harris has obviously never seen an old person with pneumonia, or has and wasn't bothered by it. I doubt the families of the great number of people killed every spring by the flu consider it a mercy. There is already a "pruning" of people who were not looking to die from the flu. Their compromised immune systems left them at risk, but it shouldn't be a death sentence because some soulless ghoul like Harris thinks the tree needs trimming.

Jamie Harris is probably a crank, most definitely someone without a ton of compassion. The London Free Press is, once again, to be ashamed of itself (were that possible). The ramblings of lunatics are not supposed to pass an editor's desk unworried, are they? Better to ask Harris to write a fully sourced column, and allow him to make his insane point properly, than to grab any piece of shit flung from the monkey cage and paste it on the bulletin board with a big "Look At This Shit" banner on top it, isn't it?

I make myself laugh.

I guess now is time to unveil my own clever artwork, to be used to graphically and colourfully enhance my shallow prose. I'm becoming a creator so that I don't run afoul of the coming hordes of copyright lawyers. Of course it will suck.

Jamie Harris of London Ontario?

Update:

From the comments, the Reverend PaperBoy, him what knows what is what about newspapers lets me have it!

"Ha! you have no idea how the letter to editors column works!"

Truer words were never spoken. Read his comment and learn how craven is the process of putting letters in the paper.