Faith Based Skepticism

Faith Based Skepticism Headerby Benjamin T. Moore, Jr.

Faith Based Skepticism

For some time now I have pondered the dichotomy between the mission statement of scientific skepticism and its actual practice. On the one hand, a healthy dose of skepticism is essential for finding truth. However, taken to extremes, skepticism can become every bit as irrational and delusional as the faith based perspectives.

skep·ti·cism also scep·ti·cism  (skpt-szm) n.

1. A doubting or questioning attitude or state of mind; dubiety.

2. Philosophy

a. The ancient school of Pyrrho of Elis that stressed the uncertainty of our beliefs in order to oppose dogmatism.

b. The doctrine that absolute knowledge is impossible, either in a particular domain or in general.

c. A methodology based on an assumption of doubt with the aim of acquiring approximate or relative certainty.

3. Doubt or disbelief of religious tenets.

There are few who would find anything objectionable with skepticism based on its definition. However, the way skepticism is actually practiced now borders on religious fervor. First, let me state, I am a devout Agnostic. A friend once defined that as being a “weak atheist.” Actually, there is a distinct difference between atheism and agnosticism. The root of “atheism” is theism. Atheism is the disbelief in gods or God and in particular God as a “personal saviour.” Agnosticism leaves that door open and is not inextricably linked to religious philosophy. The Agnostic simply says, “I do not know.”

Who Debunks The Debunkers?

Faith Based Skepticism - James Randi

The Amazing Randi

While I could certainly focus on matters of religion, the focus of this article is on the cottage industry of skepticism that has sprung up over the past few decades. One of the better known ones is the “James Randi Educational Foundation” founded in 1996. It’s expressed purpose is “to help people defend themselves against paranormal and pseudo-scientific claims.”  While this mission statement certainly seems laudable, we must remember Randi himself admits to being a cheat, trickster and a charlatan. I’m not sure if those are the best credentials for someone who purports to uncover the truth about claims of the paranormal and extraordinary.

I have followed James Randi over the years. I actually saw his appearance on the “Tonight Show” when the inimitable Johnny Carson was the host. On the night in question he was demonstrating how spoon and key bending is done and damnit if the key didn’t break. Thinking quickly he immediately stomped on the broken piece to conceal it from the audience. Of course, this was done so clumsily, everyone noticed him do it.

As a magician, Randi really isn’t all that exceptional. Thus, his foray into debunking did not come as a surprise. Not unlike the “Masked Magician” who has made his living revealing how magic tricks are done, Randi has figured out a way to generate revenue as a professional debunker. That may be his best “magic trick” to date!

Don’t get me wrong. Exposing the pariahs of society which feed like parasites on the fears and superstitions of the ignorant is a good thing. I’m all for unmasking, exposing and defaming hypocritical religions and their leaders who have turned a gullible public into their personal cash cows. I feel equally malignant towards medical quacks who are giving people false hope while looting their bank accounts. A pox on them all!

CSI – Committee for Skeptical Inquiry

Faith Based Skepticism - Joe Nickell

Dr. Joe Nickell

This organization does a slightly better job at suppressing its biases.  Nevertheless, those biases are exposed by the experts they send out to speak to various issues. One such expert is Dr. Joe Nickell. I’ve seen him sent out to debunk everything from UFOs to Bigfoot to paranormal claims. He’s a credible debunker right? He does have a Ph.D after all… Yes he does! He has a Ph.D from the University of Kentucky in English with a focus on literary investigation and folklore. In other words, he’s an expert at evaluating books on the customs and myths of indigenous peoples. He does not have a background in science or the scientific methodology. His opinions on these matters is no more valid than the Janitor’s down the hall.

Occupationally, Dr. Nickell has been a carnival barker, private detective, blackjack dealer, riverboat manager and a stage magician. While he might certainly make for an interesting dinner guest, there is nothing in his background that would qualify him to speak to the matters he often is seen debunking.

What Is The Scientific Method?

Perhaps we need some clarity regarding just what the “scientific method” entails. The “Cliff’s Notes” on the scientific method or methodology are as follows:

  • Hypothesis. Your idea as to what is going on.
  • Null Hypothesis. What you should find if your hypothesis is wrong.
  • Experimental Design. The experiment you design to test your hypothesis.
  • Experiment. You run your experiment and collect your data.
  • Data Analysis. You analyze your data producing a “finding.”
  • Acceptance or Rejection of your hypothesis. Your results.
  • Repeatability. You and others should be able to follow your methodology and reproduce the same results.

In a nutshell, this is the “Scientific Method.” If I am measuring acceleration caused by gravity and drop a 2 kilogram lead ball from 10′ feet and take the measurements, I should get similar results if I perform the exact same experiment in Russia, China, Australia or Brazil. Repeatability is one of the hallmarks of the “Scientific Method.”

Faith Based Skepticism - Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann

Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann

In 1989, Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann announced that they had discovered “Cold Fusion.” This is nuclear fusion at room temperatures. The Sun is powered by nuclear fusion but clearly not at room temperature. It created quite a stir as you might imagine. Cheap, clean, abundant energy without the danger of nuclear radiation or radioactive waste? Oh yes, they made quite a stir. Instantly laboratories around the globe began trying to replicate their findings. Some were successful, many were not.

They were ultimately denounced and censured. Why? Well, largely because they violated the orthodoxy of the Scientific Community. There was more outrage at their violation of the orthodoxy than there was interest in what they may have discovered. According to the orthodoxy, they were supposed to have submitted their discovery for “peer review.” Instead of doing this, they published their results to the world. In typical debunking fashion, the labs that were able to replicate their experiment were largely ignored and only the labs who could not were focused on.

The result was, Cold Fusion was considered to be a hoax or an error and the public largely forgot about it. Think about what it would mean to have a small fusion reactor powering your home or your car. Not only would it mean an end to carbon emissions, all the fossil fuel industries would collapse. World poverty could be ended and the wars over oil and resources would end. The military industrial complex would go broke. We can’t have that now can we? Fortunately there have been scientist working quietly behind the scenes to realize the potentials of “Cold Fusion.” Some have been wildly successful.

The Higgs Boson Does Not Exist

Faith Based Skepticism - Large Hadron Collider

LHC – Large Hadron Collider

If we hold the discovers of the Higgs Boson – the so called “God Particle” which gives mass to all other particles – to the same standards as Pons and Fleischmann were held to, we must similarly conclude that the Higgs Boson does not exist. Why? Because you cannot replicate the experiment unless you happen to have the equivalent of the – Large Hadron Collider – LHC. Yet, scientist around the world believe that the Higgs particle has been discovered. Text books are being rewritten and this new discovery is now being factored into the mathematical equations used by physicist around the globe. Evidently, they all take it on faith!

Faith Based Skepticism - Philip J. Klass

Dr. Philip J. Klass – Member of CSI

Yes, the Scientific Community, just like any church organization, has it’s own orthodoxy, it’s own recognized Apostles – Albert Einstein for one – their own Bibles – peer reviewed journals – and they meet all the definitions of a faith based community. If one of their Apostles says that UFOs don’t exist or are not visiting Earth, they all fall in line with the orthodoxy. Never mind the reams of data, eyewitness testimony, photographs and videos to the contrary. Two old farts over in the UK are making all those crop circles around the globe.

If one of their Apostles says Bigfoot is a hoax, they all fall in line. Never mind the fact that the Roger Patterson film was never sold, nobody has yet attempted to profit off of it and if that’s a man in a monkey suit, they should have got the same fellow to make Chewbacca’s suit. We even have DNA evidence for Bigfoot. Foot prints have been found in such out of the way locations, the likelihood of anyone coming upon them would make it pointless for a hoaxer to plant them. Yet, because the orthodoxy does not accept their existence, I guess they don’t exist.

Even in the face of scientific evidence that jet fuel does not burn hot enough to melt steel – if it did, what would you make jet engines out of? – the scientific orthodoxy believes that jets brought the twin towers down on September 11, 2001. If you point out that “Building 7” was never hit by a jet this doesn’t seem to bother them. Never mind the fact that immediately following the “attacks” when the entire nation was under a “no fly order” our government was rounding up family members of Osama Bin Laden and flying them out of the country, nobody asks how or why our government was doing this when presumably they did not yet know whom they were going to blam… excuse me, whom was responsible for the attacks.

Faith based skepticism for some strange reason is rarely applied to whatever the official government approved party line is. I find that not only odd, but extremely disturbing. If we cannot rely on our Scientific community to use the tools of the Scientific Method to ferret out the truth, how are they any better than the pastor of that “mega-church” who sells heaven for a price to his gullible followers?

Evidence is always defined by the persons requiring it. _Benjamin T. Moore, Jr.

RULE BY FEAR – The Fleecing Of The Gullible!

Rule By Fear - Headerby Benjamin T. Moore, Jr.

If you’ve been paying attention over… THE LAST DECADE, we’ve been bombarded with one thing to fear after the other. Remember when all the computers were going to crash and send us back to the stone age? They called it “Y2K.” We bought generators, stored food, prepared for the Apocalypse. Well, at least I did. Yeah, they got me. A lot of merchants got paid though.

9/11 The Fear Of Terrorism

Rule By Fear - Saddam Statue ToppledTerrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. That was certainly an international tragedy! We lost close to 4,000 United States Citizens that day. We saw the “Twin Towers” fall and the Pentagon hit. They used our own air planes against us. Yes, we were angry, but our fear fanned the flame of that anger. Because of our fear and anger, we invaded two countries, one of which had NOTHING to do with the attacks. We’ve lost more lives fighting over there than we lost on “911.” If you count the maimed and wounded, our casualties are easily over 30,000. Yet, in that exact same year, we lost 37,862 people in fatal car accidents. Not one move was made to outlaw automobiles or restrict driving. Why?

Fear is what drives our economy. Fear is why our gasoline prices fluctuate wildly from day to day. Start a rumor about an oil spill or a slow down in production anywhere in the world, and like lemmings going over a cliff, oil speculators will drive the price of gas through the roof. Fear is both expensive and profitable.

Economic Fear

Rule By Fear - J. P. Morgan

J. P. Morgan

Fear brought on “The Great Depression.” People were afraid that their bank was going to run out of money. The rumor as started by J.P. Morgan and others to kill off some of their competition. So everybody ran to their banks and withdrew all their money, thus causing the very thing they feared, to happen.

When we go to war, large industrial corporations make billions! War is good for their businesses. All of them have full time, paid lobbyist who lobby your representatives. Whom do you think your representatives, represent? You or them?

Political Fear

With the election of our first Black President, there has been the constant drumbeat of fear. I don’t know how white people – those who haven’t gone insane – keep their sanity. “We’re becoming socialist!” Ever hear that? Next time you do, ask the person saying it to define socialism. Bet you almost anything they won’t be able to. Fire departments, police departments, ambulance services and public schools are technically socialism. We seem to have done alright down through the years with these institutions.

Race Fear

Rule By Fear - Zombie Apocalypse

Zombie Apocalypse?

Nit wits such as Bill O’Reilly predicted that if George Zimmerman were acquitted, this nation would erupt in race riots. I wonder how many frightened white people got their guns, ammo and hunkered down for that one? We hear terms like “Zombie Apocalypse!” We all know what that means. The Zombies are the inner city urban people – Blacks and other minorities – who are going to come to the suburbs and rural areas to kill white people and take what they’ve got. The NRA sure makes a bunch of money feeding this fear. Gun manufactures make money feeding this fear. Conservative talk radio gets listeners by feeding this fear and their advertisers make money feeding this fear. Buy gold! Buy Silver! Question, what is a gold coin worth? If you’re starving, it is just about worth a single slice of bread.

Because of fear, we allow ourselves to be subjected to invasive searches and body scans whenever we fly and we allow our children to be groped. Why? The rules were rewritten by flight 93 on September 11, 2001. You no longer need to search anyone getting on a plane. If a terrorist pulled out a sub machine gun he’d get beaten to death by the passengers before he could holler “Allah Akbar!”

Rule By Fear - Police State

Police State?

Because of fear we are watching our nation and the nations of the world, turn into “Police States.” Police departments are armed damn near as heavily as army combat units. They have their own armored personnel carriers, helicopters with FLIR and other various weapons systems. They patrol our streets in “Jackboots” with armor and full automatic weapons. Yet, we don’t seem to mind because we’ve deluded ourselves into *believing* that they’re keeping us safe… but who will keep us safe from them?

Rule By Fear

It’s all one big game. The objective is absolute control and subjugation of the population. Consider poor white people during the time of Slavery in the United States. Talk about being had! These poor fools supported the very institution that was keeping them in poverty! The mind control trigger was in convincing them that because of their skin color, they were better than the Slaves. Never mind the fact that they weren’t really living any better. Some were living worse off than the Slaves. On the plantation the Slaves were fed.

Rule By Fear - Poor White People

They should have joined forces.

Why were these white people poor? They were poor because they were out of work. Who was in a position to hire? The plantation owners of course. However, why should they hire white people whom they’d have to pay a wage, when they could make the Black Slaves do the work for free?

We had a commonality of interest that was derailed by deluding these poor white people to focus on race and skin color. If they’d been smart, they’d of been fighting to free the Slaves. Freed slaves would have meant that the plantation owners would have to hire them and pay them a wage. That money would have made it possible for them to move up the social ladder, and build a better life for them and their own children.

Nothing has changed! You can see poor white people, blinded by racism, wanting to kick all the undocumented workers out of this country under the impression that these people from south of or border are costing them jobs. Many of these people are wearing clothes that they purchased from Walmart. They’re buying groceries to put on their tables, from Walmart. The irony approaches the surreal!

Fear Of Immigrants

Rule By Fear - China-Mart

Let’s call it what it is.

Hispanic people come to this country, undocumented or not, work here, pay taxes here, buy goods and services here and for the most part, the money stays right here. They contribute to our economy. When you shop at Walmart – we really should call it by its true name, China-Mart – the people manufacturing the products you buy are in China. Many times working in slave conditions. They do not pay taxes here, nor do they support the American economy. They are the cause of American factories and plants closing and our jobs going to China. Big business gets richer and you get poorer. Don’t focus on the *real* problem. Fear people who don’t look exactly like you do. They must be the problem! Not big business. We are gullible and being ruled by a fear that has no merit, but has been fostered and fed to keep us distracted from the real problems. The reality? In the words of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, “We have nothing to fear, but fear itself!” It is time to dispose of childish fears.

Gun Control – Is It The Solution (Part IV)

Gun Control Headerby Benjamin T. Moore, Jr.

Gun Control – Is It The Solution? (Conclusion)

I have laid out the case in part I, Part II and Part III. In Part IV we will endeavour to reveal the lethal manipulation being used to move the American people in a direction in accordance with someone’s agenda. While we cannot see the wind, we can mark it’s passage, the direction it is moving and the strength of it’s force by what it moves. So too can an unknown entity, cloaked in invisibility be discovered, noted and tracked.

The Hegelian Dialectic

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Hegelian dialectic:
an interpretive method, originally used to relate specific entities or events to the absolute idea, in which an assertable proposition (thesis) is necessarily opposed by its apparent contradiction (antithesis), and both reconciled on a higher level of truth by a third proposition (synthesis).

To put the above in layman’s terms:

David Icke

David Icke

Society is moved in a chosen direction through the use of the levers of Problem, Reaction, Solution. _David Icke

What this means is, the most efficient way to move – herd – a societal group is by creating a problem designed to cause a predicted reaction for which you provide the solution. That solution always happens to be a movement in the direction you want society to go. It is a highly technical way of describing how cowboys steer a herd of cattle. If you want to drive them to the north, you go to the south of the herd and either crack a whip or fire a gun. This creates the problem for the herd. Their reaction is to move away from the noise. Because you chose where to create the loud disturbance, you’ve already picked the possible solution for the herd and that is to move towards the north.

Pearl Harbor

The Day That Will Live In Infamy! No Really!!!

Most people are too afraid to even consider the possibility that there are people who would commit or allow the catastrophic loss of human life to occur just to facilitate their agendas. Consider the “Day That Will Live In Infamy!” The coming attack on Pearl Harbor was known by Franklin D. Roosevelt at least 3 days prior to the attack. Some might say that this was intelligence and only gave a possibility of an attack. However, this intelligence did not come from Fox News or the Drudge Report. This came from Naval Intelligence. At the very least, Roosevelt could have ordered the fleet to commence training exercises as opposed to being grouped together like fish in a barrel.

America’s active involvement in the Vietnam war too came from a contrived incident which did not happen. It was called the Gulf of Tonkin incident in which supposed Vietnamese torpedo boats engaged an American battle group and damaged the USS Maddox. This led to the “Gulf Of Tonkin Resolution” which President Lyndon Baines Johnson used to take us to war. 58,000 American dead Soldiers later, we ended that war having achieved absolutely nothing. Well, not nothing. A lot of arms manufactures made a lot of money. Hear then Secretary of Defense, Robert S. McNamara in his own words say, “It Did Not Happen!”

These are but two examples of the Hegelian Dialectic at work. In both instances there was a high loss of American lives.

What About 911?

Without going beyond the obvious problems with the official version of what happened on September 11, 2001, this event has all the hallmarks of “Problem, Reaction, Solution.” The official version which has buildings dropping into their own footprint due to the heat of the jet fuel burning, tends to ignore the incontrovertible fact, jet fuel simply doesn’t burn hot enough to melt steel. It doesn’t burn hot enough to even weaken or deform steel, certainly not in the short time given. If jet fuel burned that hot, they simply could not use it in jet engines which are made of extremely light weight metals like magnesium and aluminium.

Man with his head buried in the sand.

When you bury your head in the sand like an Ostrich, you leave all your “good” parts exposed.

Then there’s building 7 which was not struck by a plane, but it too dropped right into it’s footprint. They pay professional demolition companies millions of dollars to accomplish this feat. Thus, I’m supposed to believe that not one, not two but three buildings all came down perfectly within their footprints so as not to damage any of the surrounding skyscrapers? There is also the question of whom told NORAD to stand down? The World’s “Super Power” with the most technologically advance military and air force simply allowed 4 large jets to roam it’s skies over populated areas for better than 30 minutes in at least one case, without jet fighters being scrambled with shoot down orders? I was born at night but it wasn’t last night. Some fellow wearing a turban, commuting via Camel, living halfway around the world, can’t make all these things happen on his own.

As a child, there was a common gag in some cartoons. It went like this; one cartoon character who is searching for another cartoon character approaches a third character and asks if he’s seen anyone run past him. The character proceeds to give an accurate and highly detailed description of the fellow… was he about yay tall? Wearing a black hat? Did he have a handlebar moustache? Nope, haven’t seen ’em! The point was, he had way too much information not to have seen him.

So it was with the clue almost everybody missed concerning what brought down the towers on that fateful day in September of 2001. Watch this clip and you’ll see what I mean.

How on earth would this “man on the Street” know within minutes of the towers falling what the official explanation would be for the collapses of all the towers? With all the eyewitnesses standing about, how did they pick him? Why did they pick him? If you listened to Dan Rather, he’s seen buildings brought down by demolition experts. He knew what he was seeing and he was on the right track. However, it was his job to report the news, not become the news.

Red Pill, Blue Pill

Do you really want to know the truth?

The question is, are you ready to consider the truth even though it may be unthinkable? Is your mind strong enough to be awakened to a reality that is not what you’ve been led to believe it is? To use the analogy from the Matrix, you take the blue pill, you fall asleep and awaken back in your bed. You may believe whatever you wish to believe. You take the red pill and you find out how deep the rabbit hole goes.

Gun Control – Problem, Reaction, Solution?

In the past 3 years, 94,445 people were killed by firearms. This number includes suicides. In that same period, 99,060 people were killed by automobiles. That’s 4,615 more people killed by cars. Do you see anything wrong with this picture? Why don’t you hear the outrage, the concern over too many people driving? Think about how many lives you could save if you improved public transportation? Think about how many lives you could save by raising the minimum driving age to 21? These are common sense solutions that you’ll never hear raised, discussed, debated in the chambers of Congress. Why?

Is a family that loses a loved one to a motor vehicle accident in any less pain than a person who’s family member is a victim of a firearm? Of course not. There is no Constitutional Amendment protecting anybody’s right to drive. Increasing funding for public transportation, making it mandatory to use public transportation within the city limits, restricting driving to outside the city limits may seem problematic, however it would be a whole lot easier than trying to confiscate firearms. Not to mention a lot safer for the poor souls you would try to convince to carry out such a mandate.

Let us not pretend that we are so concerned about saving lives when we totally ignore automobile fatalities. Just imagine how many lives would be saved by merely increasing the minimum driving age to 21? If you’re worried about the political implications, make it 18. People under 18 cannot vote anyway. Will they even consider this? Of course not. That is not on someone’s agenda.

Who Is Behind This?

Patriot Act Surveillance

Privacy? What Privacy?

As I alluded to earlier, while we cannot see the wind, we can mark it’s passage by what it moves. Following the supposed terrorist attacks of “911,” what happened? To make us “safe” – same argument for “gun control” – legislation sped through both Houses of Congress, putting in place some of the most Constitution shredding, draconian laws we’ve ever seen. Under the “Patriot Act” – note the name of the Act has nothing to do with the function of the Act – the Government can now monitor which books you check out from your local library. To travel by air you must present your “papers” and submit to an extremely invasive body search. American citizens can be taken away in the middle of the night and held indefinitely without access to a lawyer or even their family members knowing where they’ve been taken and why. Cameras have gone up all around town and up and down our thoroughfares and highways. Your phones can be tapped, your mail opened and read, your e-mail and electronic communications monitored without a court order, probable cause or court supervision. What did the American People do? We uttered not a peep. Why? Because they told us this was to keep us safe.

Following 911 the wealth of this nation was drained away. Unless you witnessed them burning money in huge bonfires, that money went somewhere. How do you go from a $2 trillion dollar surplus to a $14 trillion dollar deficit in 8 years? Where did the money go? The Iraq war? The Afghanistan war? What did we accomplish with the money we invested? Who got paid? What did they do with that money?

There are over 300,000,000 guns in the hands of the citizens of this nation. If guns and the easy access to guns were causing gun violence, we would be in the middle of another Civil War. No business would be conducted because people would be busy shooting one another. Almost every “mass shooter” has been under psychiatric care and on psychoactive drugs. Is this a coincidence? I think not. Who destroyed Adam Lanza’s computer hard drive and why? Why do all these mass shooters commit suicide before they can be questioned and examined if they get the opportunity to do so?

Implementation Of The New World OrderThere are powerful forces at work here. It is time to pull our collective heads from the sand and ask why some group deems it necessary that the American people be disarmed and defenseless. What do they have planned for us? When you follow the money, you will find that it flows to Europe. There are forces that are determined to create a one world Government. George Herbert Walker Bush let slip when he mentioned “The New World Order.” What’s wrong with the current “World Order?” Why do we need a new one?

The extremely wealthy keep their money outside of the jurisdiction of the United States of America, why? What do they know that you don’t? Think about it. It is time to wake up! Gun control is not the solution, it is part of the agenda. If someone who doesn’t have your best interests at heart, decides there is something you should not have… it’s a good bet that it’s exactly what you need. You ask, what good are small arms against the military might of the “World’s Super Power?” Remember Afghanistan. They do not have tanks. They don’t have an air force or a navy. How have we been doing over there? We lost in Vietnam, not because the Vietnamese army had tanks and fighter jets. They had a populace armed with small arms who were committed to fight to the last man. You should pay attention. Those who are after your firearms did.

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