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Unfortunately, because there is not much regulation with herbal supplements, substitutions, contamination, and outright fraud is rampant in small shops/ebay. There have been several studies done in the last few years where they buy herbs at shops and then test them and find that they are not...

There probably are some doctors who say patients just want attention, but remember that a diagnosis of a psychosomatic condition is not the same as saying someone is crazy or faking. It's possible to question the disease without questioning the symptoms. IOW a doctor could believe every symptom...

So sorry to hear your wife is having to take such serious meds. Just please be skeptical when searching for alternatives. There are those out there willing to take advantage of people in your situation. I can understand the desire to try alternative therapies, and in some cases there is...

I think it's plausible that cannabis could help to relieve pain and discomfort associated with Lyme, but I don't think there is any prior plausibility that would suggest it will fight the actual infection.

I should have specified that I meant cognitive prejudice/biases, which happen below our consciousness. What you've described is a stereotype based on inductive reasoning. That's not quite what I was getting at, although propaganda certainly takes advantage of those sorts phenomena as well...

This is the basic mechanism that makes any propaganda work. Humans have buttons in their brains which can be pushed to turn off intellectual thought. Fear, disgust, indignation: these are all very popular tools used to stoke prejudices and biases. It is also human nature that, once we become...

Knowledge is a subset of belief. Belief can be based on knowledge, or it can be based on faith, inductive reasoning, intuition, ect. Knowing that someone believes is not the same as knowing that they have knowledge. Atheist/theist is an answer to the question "Do you believe?"...

Agnosticism is an answer to a different question. It doesn't mean "undecided."

As an atheist, I don't get offended by depictions of baby Jesus at Christmas anymore than I do of Dracula at Halloween.

I agree with your central point. Mindfulness is useful and important to understanding ourselves and the reality around us. Just because meditation often gets lumped in with pseudoscientific nonsense doesn't mean it's useless...

This video is sort of a wishful thinking version of the story. Although Dr Emoto does believe that consciousness can affect matter, even he admits that these experiments are preliminary and sloppy. For example, he looked at hundreds of crystals and picked the ones he thought best represented...

Proof is a tricky word. I don't demand anything be proven, just demonstrated to a degree that it would be unreasonable to deny it. Plenty of double-blind studies have been done on healing energy, and, like most alternative forms of treatment, they cannot show themselves to work beyond a...

No one has said science must explain everything, but when you use a word like energy in a scientific context, you evoke science. If you want to claim some special ability then fine, but don't pretend that a scientific understanding of energy backs you up. That's what's known as equivocation...

"In fact, energy is not really a tangible "thing" at all. Energy is a measurement of something's ability to perform work. Given this context, when spiritualists talk about your body's energy fields, they're really saying nothing that's even remotely meaningful. Yet this kind of talk has become...

"You could measure how much money theTooth Fairy leaves under the pillow, whether she leaves more cash for the first or lasttooth, whether the payoff is greater if you leave the tooth in a plastic baggie versus wrapped in Kleenex. You can get all kinds of good data that is reproducible and...

Nothing in this post actually demonstrates that you or your parents aren't bigots. I'm afraid it takes more than just saying "nu uh" and then repeating the same bigoted shit you've already said before. The reason you cannot spell is the same reason you cannot see yourself as a hypocrite and a...

You could ask straight men the same thing, as many enjoy anal sex. Women have buttholes too. And just an FYI, saying "that's how I was raised" is not a defense for any idea. It merely tells us that your parents were as bigoted as you. It says that not only do you have terrible ideas, but...

Just because someone uses fallacious logic to reach a conclusion doesn't mean the conclusion is false. The fallacy fallacy occurs when someone acts as if bad logic disproves the conclusion, when all it really does is signal a weak argument. If, however, someone is just saying that because...

I saw that a while back. I've given credit to Richy several times throughout this thread, and linked to his thread over at imag more than once. Though I doubt he is the first to ever think of using beneficials in hydro, he is responsible for the research into how best to incorporate them into...