Does anyone get that teeth-on-edge feeling every time Oprah starts pushing her latest woo-monger onto the credulous masses?
It was a sad day when neurosurgeon Eben Alexander decided that the lucrative mystical-woo bandwagon was more important than actual science, and pretended that his oxygen-deprivation-induced hallucinations were proof that people don’t actually die, we just go hang with the Giant Sky Fairy. Another schmuckwitted fool in a cutesy tie gets Oprah’s stank all over him. “Together, science and spirituality will thrive in a symbiosis offering the most profound insight into fundamental Truth, yielding unimaginable power. The keystone is in global progression of individual conscious awakening.” If I facepalm any harder, I might bruise my wonderful, mysterious Consciousness and have to buy some of Deep-arse Chop-ra’s bum-scented aromatherapy ointment. ;D
It’s not the festering greed swathed in smarmy, butterfly-laden appeals to wishful thinking; it’s the insistence that fluffy anecdote somehow trumps scientific knowledge, and anything mysterious can only be explained away by navel-gazing and appeals to the supernatural, that evokes my gritted-teeth lulz. But hey, the dumber we all are, and the more these malignant narcissists and their Orca-witch can drain our resources, the less money we have for guns, right?
Actually, I’m a little bit fond of ol’ Choppy. It can’t be easy starting to get grey and grizzled when your life’s work is selling DVDs telling people they won’t get old if they just imagine they won’t.
I’ve had a guy come up thumping this at me a couple of months ago.
“Look! A DOCTOR said it’s true, take THAT atheist!”
It’s classic appeal to authority. It’s also classic “one born every minute let’s take em for what they’ve got”.
Hey, I’ve met MD’s punting Amway: there’s absolutely no magical property about MD’s that makes them trustworthy. Which brings back a complaint I’ve had since childhood: Why the hell are we supposed to “be on our best” for doctors and dominees? Who died and made them flawless?
Nothing like a whiskey babelaas to get one’s ire hopping about. Oh, and I lost horribly at pool last night to my hippie better half, Gaia damn him.
I’ve met MDs and surgeons that are super-religious. There must be something about hacking people about and peering down (or up) our various orifices, that makes them want to believe we’re not just meat.
It must also be emotionally comforting when a patient kicks the bucket, and doctor just knows that the death was God’s will, and certainly had nothing to do with that brave 1,3-tetrapholicarboraline sulphenol gamble.
Yep, and apparently you can make DMT out of your lawn!! Err, not that I would try or anything, because that would be totally illegal. 0:)
I just can’t wrap my head around the fact that these heaven-lovin’ types rattle on about NDEs being proof of an afterlife, when it’s a NEAR death experience. Not a DEATH experience. facepalmfacepalmfacepalm How badly do you have to want to believe in something, that that huge wobbly great fact just doesn’t make it past your cognitive bias? It’s like his Morton’s demon is as big as those big-ass statues in LOTR.
Excuse all the mixed metaphors, I’ve had way too much coffee today.
How? I have two weekend ambitions: 1) Mow the lawn, and 2) Go for a ride on a butterfly. If you provide the link, I’ll be able to achieve both of those in one fell swoop. I’ll get on the old tor network so the boere can’t track me down…
On second thoughts, a quick Google reveals that you have to use things like hydrochloric acid and caustic soda to make it out of your lawn. I’d rather have a banal existence with no butterfly rides, than melt my face off.
Again, I’d rather have a banal butterfly-ride-free existence than projectile-vomit a litre of Vicks Medinite all over the lounge.