I'm switching my baloney detection antennae off.
Tue, 12. October 2010
A Worrying Lack of Scientific Literacy in the Community
I need to protect them and avoid a baloney meltdown for a few days. I won't need them either, it will be in our faces for all to see. The 'Sainthood Circus' of the Catholic church is going to dominate the media for the next week here in Australia. We will be reminded over and over that this woman who died in 1909 - you know her name - was a wonderful person. Perhaps she was, I don't know. She must have possessed some degree of decency because (when she was alive) she stood up against the rape of minors by Catholic priests. Catholic Church insiders who have done that are rare commodities indeed. Maybe she should become a "saint" for that reason alone but they will be ignoring that bit, because it is fact not fantasy.
We just had to have an Australian 'saint', didn't we? Public opinion demanded it. 'Sainthood' seems to be a mechanism bestowed by the hierarchy to please the proletariat (a bit like the Queens birthday honours) - providing a role model and a god-like local hero of their own to worship and idolise. It is a blatant transgression of two of their own Top Ten favourite commandments "Thou shalt worship no other god but me" and " You shall not make for yourself an idol."
They tell us that the post-mortem Mary Mackillop is responsible for two Australians recovering from very serious illness. Just two, both after her death and none during her lifetime. Nowhere will we read scientific or medical reports on the veracity of these astonishing claims. The Church will not be providing detailed and proper evidence of these astonishing claims for public scrutiny. As always, they are secret and besides, they won't feel the need to, because they are giving Australian Catholics exactly what they have been demanding for decades.
There was a great reality check in the Sydney Morning Herald before the 'Sainthood Circus' rides into town next weekend. It said: "The celebration of Mary MacKillop's miracle cancer cures is a worrying example of the lack of scientific literacy in the community". They certainly got that bit right.
It continued: "The question is not whether the NSW mother Kathleen Evans recovered from her cancer after praying to MacKillop but how many others prayed and did NOT go into remission?"
These words were reportedly from Chris Del Mar, a professor of primary care research at Bond University and they get to the crux of the matter (no pun intended). The 'canonisation' of this person for 'curing' disease (in just two people) is a direct insult to the medical staff that treated them and it gives no consideration whatsover to the evidence of TRILLIONS of prayers that go unanswered by their idol or their god or their saint or their statue or their beads or their cross or their hairdryer or whatever else they happen to pray to. The deliberate omission of comparitive statistical data is downright dishonesty.
There are two types of Thinking Errors. One is believing a falsehood. The other is rejecting true evidence. This incredible and unbelievable 'Catholic Canonisation Circus' employs both.
See my astronomy images on my website: http://home.exetel.com.au/greybeard/Index.htm