11-11-11

My friend received the following email recently:

This is the year of MONEY! In Chinese, this is a lucky number!
Check this out! This year we will experience 4 unusual dates.... 1/1/11, 1/11/11/,  11/1/11, 11/11/11!
So figure this out.. take the last 2 digits of the year you were born plus the age you will be this year and it will equal 111!
October of 2011 has 5 Saturdays, 5 Sundays and 5 Mondays! This only happens once every 823 years! This is called Money Bags.
Send this to 11 friends within 11 minutes and in 4 days money will come to you! If you don't forward this, no money will come to you.
It Works! 

This was basically 3 different chain emails rolled into one. So here is a nice dose of reality.

• First, 1 and 11 are not auspicious numbers in China. Also, even numbers are generally considered luckier than uneven. But four is the exception as it sounds like "death" so it's considered unlucky and is avoided. 
• Forwarding a chain email only irritates the people you send it to. Nothing magical happens. There is no mechanism in physics or natural law that supports such a ridiculous notion. 
• If someone forwards an email to you to reach their demanded quota, email them after the time that they were promised their money/luck/etc. See how many times those people win the lottery in those days. (It can happen, but that would be random chance, nothing more)
• Yes, we do have 4 mildly interesting dates this year. So what? You can find these little number patterns almost any year. Nothing magical or amazing happened in the world on 1/11/11 or 11/1/11, did it? Nothing magical will happen on 11/1/11 or 11/11/11 either.
• It is also meaningless and completely arbitrary. Read about the history of calendars. We use the Gregorian calendar now. They are fairly arbitrary. 
• If the good luck comes from Chinese beliefs, this isn't even 2011 in their calendar. 
• Not to mention the year isn't 11, it's 2011. If you add that factor in, it all falls apart. 
• Every month that has 31 says include 5 occurrences of 3 days of the week that follow a simple pattern that repeats every several years. 
• Money bags in Feng Shui have nothing to do with 5, days of the week, or 4. In fact, remember 4 is very unlucky and 5 isn't luck for them either. A "money bag" in Feng Shui has 9 Chinese coins tied up in red cloth with a red ribbon, and is placed where money is received or generated. This is superstitious, arbitrary nonsense. 
• Adding the last 2 digits of your birth year to your age for this year will always come up with the last two digits of the current year. For example, I was born in 1969. I arbitrarily ignore the 19 (so that they trick will work) then at 42 to that and I'll get 111. Spooky, huh? Ok, in 2010 I would add 69 to 41 and get 110. Nothing magical. Just numbers doing their thing.

Resources:

• Snopes 
• Snopes
• Wikipedia
• Travel China Guide

As an added bonus, check out the ridiculous woo proclaimed regarding 11:11.

They're Very Smart, These Scientists

Here is a video and partial transcript of yesterday's episode of the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Noelle Nikpour, Republican Strategist, is interviewed by Aasif Mandvi.

Nikpour: "Scientists are scamming the American people right and left for their own financial gain."

(Mandvi asks for Data? Evidence?)

Nikpour: "I think every American, if they really thought about it, would have a gut feeling that some of these numbers that the scientists are putting out are not right.
"Scientists are the only people qualified to comment on scientific theories. This is what raises doubt with not only Republicans, but Americans."

(Mandvi comes up with a preposterous example regarding surgeons, which Nikpour agrees with). He says, "They're very smart, these scientists." Nikpour says, "That's what I'm saying!"

Mandvi goes to a science fair and talks to kids, spoofing that science is corrupting them and they will end up addicted to grant money for their next science fix. He finishes by saying, "Whether science is peddling quantum physics or evolution, the corruption of our children happens every day right under our noses."

Nikpour: "It's very confusing for a child to be only taught evolution, to go home to a household where their parents say, "Well, wait a minute, God created the Earth."
Mandvi: "What is the point of teaching children facts if it's just going to confuse them?"
Nikpour: "It confuses the children when they go home. We as Americans, we are paying tax dollars for our children to be educated. We need to offer them every theory that's out there. It's all about choice. It's all about freedom."
Mandvi: "I mean it should be up to the American people to decide what's true."
Nikpour: "Absolutely! Doesn't it make common sense?"

Some thoughts:

• Science is often counter-intuitive. You can't rely on common sense in science. You have to experiment and observe to find hard evidence.
• You don't get to decide what is reality. It is not subjective. Just because you want the Earth to be the center of the Universe doesn't make it so. If you believe that, you are delusional. Reality doesn't bend to your will.
• Science is not a secret society where you have to learn a special handshake. It's open and relies on peer review to keep things honest and as accurate as humanly possible. 
• Science is self-correcting.
• Nikpour uses typical talking points in lockstep with Republican propaganda. Nothing interesting (or factual)
• She has a complete lack of understanding of the concept of theory and how it is used in the vernacular and in science:
• Theory and hypothesis are used in non-technical contexts to mean an untested idea or opinion. 
• A theory is a coherent group of tested general propositions, commonly regarded as correct, that can be used as principles of explanation and prediction for a class of phenomena: Einstein's theory of relativity.
• A theory in technical use is a more or less verified or established explanation accounting for known facts or phenomena: the theory of relativity. 
• A hypothesis is an assumption used in an argument without its being endorsed; a supposition; an unproved theory; a conjecture
• Public education is supposed to be in the best interest of the child, teaching them facts that will help them be productive members of society. It's not for teaching personal opinions and beliefs.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Weathering Fights - Science - What's It Up To?
www.thedailyshow.com

Rapture Time, Again!

Remember back on May 21st when the Rapture happened? No? Well, that's because it  was spiritual, not physical. And the real Rapture/Judgment Day is actually happening TODAY!

I can't believe I forgot about it! I still have money in my bank account, room left on my credit cards, and I haven't cheated on my husband with every person within grabbing distance. And I haven't killed anyone yet!

Most importantly I haven't fallen to my knees to beg for mercy and salvation from my lord and savior (the Flying Spaghetti Monster.. who were you thinking of?).

It's still only 6:30 pm on the West Coast where Harold Camping lives, so maybe there's still a chance, but the day is marching on. It looks like his math was wrong yet again.

Did anyone believe him this time? Will he just fade into the distance after wrongly predicting the Rapture 3 times? What will his excuse be tomorrow? I can't wait to find out how he'll twist things around to keep himself firmly ensconced in his sad little delusion.

I hear that his Family Radio bank account still has $70 million dollars in it, by the way. Just one last question. Why didn't he spend all that money doing something useful if he knew he and the rest of the sheep would be raptured today? It sure looks like even Camping doesn't trust his own predictions!

Everything Happens For A Reason?

Just the other night at dinner with my heathen friends, a woman I had just met (who labels herself something like "nonreligious") had this mini conversation with us:

Woman: "Everything happens for a reason."
Me (to myself): cough cough... Bullshit! (I couldn't think of a nice, non-aggressive way to say this so I took another bite of my dinner)
Butch (my atheist husband): "I don't believe that it does. Think about all the bad things that happen to good people."

At which point I can't remember what happened. I think someone changed the subject.

But I get this a lot. And to be honest, it probably wasn't that many years ago that I used to believe it myself.

If you're religious, which most people are, I understand your thinking that God and Satan basically guide you, tempt you and otherwise have a hand in your life. Ok. You have a personal god who is active in your life. You are a puppet.

But when a nonreligious person says it, then I start to wonder a bit more, and of course it makes me reflect on my progress from Christian to Spiritual to Skeptical Naturalist/Atheist.

Just because someone doesn't believe in gods, it does not follow that they automatically don't believe in anything supernatural. Even though I know this intellectually (and went through that spiritual/new age phase myself after becoming an atheist), I still find it jarring.

My question to you, though is, Why? Why do think that there is an invisible force acting in your life?

You Can Make a Difference Effortlessly or By Playing a Game

I was listening to the Naked Scientists Podcast yesterday and Joe Jasinski talked about the World Community Grid. Basically, people all over the world donate their computer's downtime to help science. Here is Joe explaining how it works:

The World Community Grid is a group of researchers and a group of ordinary citizens who have combined their efforts to build what is in fact in some sense, one of the world’s largest supercomputers to solve problems that we believe are beneficial to mankind. Anybody can join. It’s using your own PC or computers to join a network of computers [around the world] and those computers are used by the scientists who are doing projects with the World Community Grid to do computations that would otherwise be impossible for them to do because they don't have enough computing power.

So the way it works is you go to worldcommunitygrid.org and you can sign up your machine or machines and we download a screensaver to your machine, and when you're not using your computer, which is most of the time actually even if you have it on and you're sitting in front of it, we can do some computations. Then we send the results back to a centralised computer which we call the head node.

After we’ve done enough of these computations, we present the data to the principal investigators, the scientists who are exploring things on the World Community Grid, and they can then understand their problem and hopefully discover something new like a new drug to treat HIV/AIDS or for dengue fever, or maybe finding new kinds of plastic materials that would make cheap solar cells available.

So you, little ol' you, can make a difference almost effortlessly. This is a great way to be a Citizen Scientist. By the way, WCG is non-profit.

I signed up and downloaded the screensaver. I changed my preferences so that WCG gets 10 GB of hard drive space, and can have 20% of RAM when I'm using the computer, then 75% when I'm away from the computer (I didn't want it running at 100% because I don't want my computer to stay too hot).

I read that it uses about the same electricity as turning on a light, so the cost to me is negligible. But as I write, my computer is working on solutions to AIDs and cancer, and I'm also computing for the LHC (see below) and folding proteins. Yesterday, it worked on solutions for clean water, clean energy and a drug search for some nasty parasite called Leishmaniasis.

You get to pick which projects you want to contribute to. You can choose to work on all of them, which is what I did. Here is the active list right now:

• Drug search for Leishmaniasis, a parasitic tropical disease which infects over 2 million people in 97 countries


• Computing for Clean Water


• The Clean Energy Project Phase 2 - solar cells and energy storage device calculations


• Discovering Dengue Drugs Phase 2 - Dengue is a viral disease


• Help Cure Muscular Dystrophy Phase 2


• Help Fight Childhood Cancer - finding drugs that disable 3 particular proteins associated with neuroblastoma


• Help Conquer Cancer - improve the results of x-ray crystallography in order to increase understanding of cancer and its treatment


• Human Proteome Folding Phase 2


• Fight AIDs at Home - using computation methods to identify candidate drugs to block HIV protease (structure-based drug design)

Here are the 9 projects that have been completed.

You can also join a Team! I recommend Rational Atheists United for Science, which is what I have joined. If you form a team, let us know so we can join it.

They are on Facebook at World Community Grid. They are also the founders of a group called People for a Smarter Planet. This page has several groups that you can participate in, such as CityOne (a game you can play to help science), Creek Watch (a nifty smart phone app), World Community Grid and the Goldstine Fellowship.

Suppose you want to do even more for science? How about Foldit! You can play a game that could make a huge difference. In fact, it has already! Foldit is a protein folding game that you can download and play on your computer. Here is the science behind the game.

Here is where it gets supremely cool. A protein causing AIDs in rhesus monkeys that hadn't been solved for 15 years was resolved by Foldit players and confirmed by x-ray crytallography! Here is the paper.

Don't have time to play a game? Rosetta uses distributed computers (like WCG) to compute protein folding. You install a screensaver and it does computations when you are idle.

Both WCG and Rosetta run the same program, BOINC. SETI@home, Climateprediction.net, LHC@Home (you can help the Large Hadron Collider!) and others also use this system so you can connect to whatever projects you like (this link has a big list!).

Once you have BOINC installed, go to Tools > Attach to project or account manager > then select which projects you like. Super easy to do!

If you join and get started, let us know! And if you join a team or form one on any of  the projects let us know that too.

One thing that True Believers seem to misunderstand (either deliberately or innocently) is what atheism is and what it most definitely is not. The other day I posted part of a conversation between my husband and a friend of his. The friend said, "I will even state that atheists are people of faith, for they wholeheartedly believe that there is no God. That is an even greater faith than any religion, for even believers can have a lapse of faith while atheists never will."

Really? Does Enoch believe that nonsense? Can you hear my eyes rolling up into the back of my head? This kind of mindlessness makes me crazy. So here are some explanations of what atheism is and is not:

Atheism¹ is a lack of belief in a god. It is the absence of belief that any deities exist. That’s it.

• Atheism is not a rejection of God. You can’t reject something you don’t believe in. Do you reject Santa? No. You just know he doesn’t exist, due to overwhelming evidence (and lack of evidence) and common sense (among other reasons).


• Atheism is not a belief. Atheism is a lack of and absence of belief. The word atheism is Greek in origin: atheos meaning “without god”. A belief² is something believed or accepted as true, especially a particular tenet or a body of tenets accepted by a group of persons. When I say I’m an atheist, I am merely saying I don’t believe in gods, I am not making any claim as to what I do believe in.


• Atheism is not a denial of God. Again, I can’t deny something that doesn’t exist. I don’t deny Bigfoot either.


• Atheism is not a rebellion against God. How can I rebel against something that I’m fairly confident doesn’t exist? I don’t rebel against aliens from Mars either.


• It does not take faith to be an atheist. In fact, it’s the opposite of faith. Faith³ is belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence. This is the antithesis of how many atheists develop their worldviews. Most of us pointedly go out of our way to look for evidence. That’s why we are atheists. Because there is no evidence. So saying we have faith makes no sense.

If you try to define it in these ways you are poisoning the well⁴ and not being objective. Just because you might want to define atheism in terms that assume the existence of your deity doesn't mean your god’s existence is a fact.

It’s impossible to prove a negative. I can’t prove that there are no fairies in my garden. That’s just the way it is. But proving God exists also seems to be impossible. Proving that any god exists is impossible. But proving the Christian god exists is also problematic. So no one can definitively say they know God exists or doesn’t. ⁵

If you call yourself a Christian, you are also an atheist. You don’t believe in Krishna, right? So you lack a belief in the Hindu gods, and all the rest. I am like you, I just go one god further.

Once you get to the heart of what atheism is, you’ll find that each person is individual. For instance, my main reason for being an atheist is that there is zero evidence for deities or the supernatural. This is common among my godless friends. But other atheists have other ways of reasoning to the same lack of belief in gods.

Once someone comes to the conclusion that there are no gods, then that’s where other philosophies and science take over. For instance, many godless people call themselves Humanists. Some don’t like the word atheist, since they can’t know for certain, so they prefer agnostic. It’s very personal and it usually takes a person awhile to figure out what they do believe once they are confident that there are no gods. I talked more about the labels here: Agnostic/Atheist/Skeptic

Resources:

1. Atheism


2. Belief


3. Faith


4. Poisoning the well


5. The Spectrum of Theistic Probability

By the way, this is just a brief list of what I think atheism is and isn't. Feel free to comment below or email me if you have something that belongs on the list!

US Law and the 10 Commandments

The following information was offered by my awesome husband Butch to a friend on Facebook (we'll call him Enoch), regarding the 10 commandments. This is what Enoch said:

Why is it when a political candidate is openly religious, people bring up the "separation of church and state?". Read the words. It doesn't say that you can't have a picture of Jesus in a school or the ten commandments in a courthouse. It just says that there will be no government sponsored religion (read Henry VIII establishing the church of england because the Pope wouldn't let him get a divorce). It just means the government can't make you go to a particular church, or any for that matter.

Butch replied:

But putting religious symbols on government property equates to governmental endorsement of that religion.What if the phrase "In God We Trust" on our money, or "Under God" in the Pledge were replaced by "Allah Akbar?" Would you be OK with that? Would you be OK with Naqibs being part of a school's uniforms? Or, if they displayed every religious symbol with equal time & space, would you be OK with an islamic flag & a star of David flying above a cross?

Enoch said:

This country was (partly) founded on the basis of religious freedom. The ability of the individual to worship as they see fit, or not at all. I don't believe that these symbols are an endorsement of religion. You can make the argument that the ten commandments are the basis in one way or another of all of our laws (and the placement of a copy of the ten commandments in a courthouse could be considered an endorsement of judaism, since they are found in the old testament of the bible, which is an interpretation of the jewish torah). True muslim teachings believe that christians and jews are people of the same god, that jesus was just one of the series of prophets like those in the old testament, and that Mohammed was a prophet that followed Jesus. Christians and jews are only infidels because they have not followed the teachings from God handed down through Mohammed. And no, I would not be ok with the replacement of in God we trust or under god (which was added to the original text of the pledge). But a display of multiple religious symbols being given equal time/space I would not have a problem with. The point I was trying to make, however, is that we should be able to look past a political candidates openly displayed choice of religion and look at the greater issues involved. The constitution states that you won't be forced to worship one way or another. We are a country of many faiths, christian, jew, islam, buddhism, etc. And for the argument that it will start I will even state that atheists are people of faith, for they wholeheartedly believe that there is no God. That is an even greater faith than any religion, for even believers can have a lapse of faith while atheists never will.

Egads! Let's see how Butch retorts:

I don't really have a problem with any religious candidate, what I DO have a HUGE problem with is a candidate who even hints that US law should be brought into line with their particular interpretation of biblical law. I feel that once they say that, even if caught accidentally in a private conversation, they should IMMEDIATELY be disqualified from holding any kind of elected office. Again, would you want your Representative or Congressional delegate to be a mullah? I wouldn't. As for the 10 commandments being the basis for the laws in this country, I'm afraid you're mistaken. Regarde: 1)No other gods before me: There is no law anywhere that says you shall have no other gods before the god of the OT. Quite the opposite, in fact, as it's the First Amendment. 2) No graven images: No laws against Idolatry, either. 3) Don't take the lord's name in vain: No law anywhere forbidding using the lord's name in vain. Once again the 1st Amendment. 4) Keep the sabbath holy: No law requiring the honoring of the sabbath either. 5) Honor your father and mother: No law requiring you to honor your parents. 6) Don't kill: Laws against murder predate the OT. It's illegal in non-JudeoChristian countries as well. 7) No adultery: No laws against adultery, otherwise there'd be no porn & 95% of Congress & the Senate would be in prison. 8) Don't steal: Refer to #6 9) Don't bear false witness: The only time it's illegal to lie is when you're giving testimony in a court of law, otherwise refer to #7. 10) Don't covet: Our entire economy is in direct conflict with this one. The entire marketing industry is based on peoples' desire for "better" things. Lastly, saying atheists have faith is wrong. There are too many different types (I'm a skeptic, personally, which means any claim presented to me needs solid evidence as proof) to lump them all together.

I will write about what atheism is and is not next, because this is a common myth.

So you want to be an Atheist. You want to deny the Holy Spirit and sleep in on Sundays. Ok! Sign here and here, initial here, and give us your firstborn. Oh wait, no. You get to keep your demon spawn. We have our quota filled.

(Updated at the end)

Here is your soapbox. As you can see they come in a set of three. The petite is for offhand comments made casually to the faithful. Medium is a short argument with someone who actually tries to talk to you about religon. And the jumbo is for particularly long rants on the Interwebs and when you've got a True Believer speaking in tongues and trying to cast your demons out.

Welcome to the club! Before you go we have to teach you the Secret Handshake. Oh, and here's a recipe book for fresh baby.

Recently I had an email exchange with a man I've named Abraham. He has since come to the Dark Side and is now comfortable with calling himself an atheist. I thought it would be nice, since he wants to be able to defend his position, if we helped him with a list of resources.

So here they are, in the order I received them (basically). This is a work in progress! If you have a resource that helped you either deconvert or to get to know more about your new atheist worldview, please either email me or comment below.

Resources for a New Atheist

This Makes It All Worth It - A Followup

Earlier today I wrote about an email I received from Abraham (not his real name) and how he is starting to look to atheism. He said that it was partly due to deep thinking and partly due to things I said here on HDC. We had a very nice exchange of emails and he agreed to let me share them, which I did earlier today in This Makes It All Worth It

Well! Abraham read the emails I sent to him, and my elaboration on here (see above link) and said the following a bit ago:

Saw the post on the blog, and I appreciated it, and the comments. In terms of reading, not much so far. I did go to Wikipedia and looked up "atheism", and with your comment, it helped me greatly. I am now ready to say that I am, in fact, an atheist, and hope to be able to defend my knowing that God does not exist more in time (I did read your post on Dawkins Spectrum of Theistic Probablilty). I hope to learn more in time. I really am not that much into podcasts, but am willing to look at essays.

I told him he is now on the A-Team and that he will soon get to learn our secret handshake. :P

I had offered to share the podcasts with him that I feel have been so helpful to me. I also asked him which books he's read on the subject.

So hey, I need your help! Let's compile a list for new atheists. I'd like to put books, essays and anything else on there that you've found helpful in your godless travels. Believe it or not, I have read very little of the classic stuff on atheism/religion/etc.

What would you recommend to Abraham? Which one or 2 sources did you find most informative and helpful once you were comfortable calling yourself an atheist (or the label of your choice)? Remember, he's come over to the Dark Side now, so we don't have to convince him. Now it's about information, insight, and being able to defend his lack of belief in gods. Please leave comments with the books, essays or resources you recommend and briefly how you felt they were helpful to you. Thanks very much! :)

Lately keeping up Heaving Dead Cats been really tough with problems behind the scenes. I thought for sure I'd never work them out, but somehow I think I managed it.

Anyway, right when I was feeling pretty bleak about the future of HDC, I received an email that makes it all worth it. I got it from a nice man we'll call Abraham:

Hi Neece: I found your "Heaving Dead Cats" blog via the "Atheist/Catholic" blog. As I turned 50 earlier this year, I have done a lot of thinking about what and how I believe. In part from things you have said, and in part because of other issues, I realize that the best explanation about why there are things like "natural disasters", and debilitating illness is that if there is a "God", he/she/it is not involved in the things today. I know that a basic tenant of Christianity is that God is involved in things now. So, I guess that I am close to becoming a practical atheist (and it is scary). I realize that I have always been skeptical about miracles, either today, or in history, so I know I must embrace that. I have more of an issue about how things came into being if there is no God. Right now, I see God more as an "it", something that started it all, and does not interfere in things. I live close to a secular, liberal arts college, so I am sure there are atheists either involved in the college, or involved in the UU fellowship (I know from having attended in the past that the UU is open to atheists, and there is at least one there). I will say thank you for your assistance in helping me to think about things of this nature.

... I will keep you in touch on my journey towards atheism (which I am sure will be a complete journey).  I had rejected the idea of eternal damnation about 10 years ago, so I did not have that to concern myself with.  If I can figure out how the universe started, I think I can fully embrace the atheism that my head says is right.

For atheists who are out of the closet, it can be kind of frustrating at times, dealing with people who treat you differently just because you don't believe in their fairy tales and dogma. I've tried to have friendly discussions with True Believers, and not argue with them. It almost invariably fails. I've tried to keep religion off the table with family members and just have a secular relationship with them. They often can't seem to manage it. I've received many vitriolic emails from religious people through this site or others I've worked on, simply because I have an opinion that differs from their narrow worldview and/or because I'm promoting things they hate, like science and critical thinking.

It's amazing how religious people (who think they are morally superior) can be so hateful. No matter how reasonable I try to be, it seems that sometimes just my godless presence is enough to offend a True Believer, and that I actually speak my mind reminds them how "persecuted" they are.

Sigh! And you know, to be honest, when I read what happens around the country and around the world in the name of religion, I get pretty damned offended too. Most of  the time, I'm quite happy to live in a quiet peace with people of differing worldviews. We can agree to disagree. But when you try to force your beliefs down my throat, or hurt others with it, I get really upset about that, and rightly so.

So when I get an email that says that I helped someone in some small way, "my cup runneth over" with happiness. I don't think that Abraham has to agree with me, or that he has to become an atheist. I'm just thrilled that I helped someone to think about things in a way that hopefully expanded their horizons or made them question their indoctrinated beliefs. These emails invigorate me.

What could be more wonderful than that?

So I told Abraham that a local UU church and his local college campus are both great places to find a friendly community, not to mention a local atheist/skeptical/humanist/freethinker group that might be in his area. They are popping up everywhere! :)

Now, regarding Abraham's dilemma of how the universe began, it's one of those mysteries we don't have a definitive answer for yet.

It's a wonderful mystery how the universe started. I recommended The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking (I haven't gotten to read it yet but it's on my list at some point, and I've heard interviews of Hawking talking about it). Hawking is one of the smartest people on the planet in his field (albeit not perfect of course, since he's got rather strong ideas about aliens, but hey, we all have our idiosyncrasies!). I think he has the most helpful hypotheses for how the universe as we know it began, but of course, we really don't know. The LHC - Large Hadron Collider - will hopefully answer more questions about the Big Bang, but we can never know what came before that. Unless you listen to string theorists like Michio Kaku, who sometimes sounds like he's completely off his rocker. :P

But, I'd rather have questions that can never be answered than answers that can never be questioned. I think we know so much, considering how long in the history of our species that we've been searching earnestly for those answers. Science is getting us closer, but like I said, we might never have the complete picture.

That, of course, does not mean that religion has the answers though. Just slapping the "God Did It" label on things says nothing. It simply stops us from asking any more questions. It's like your mother saying, "because I said so, now stop asking questions and eat your Brussels sprouts!"

And really, which is more helpful?

Bach Flower Remedies

Recently we adopted my neighbor's Blue Heeler. We named her Tyche (tie-kee) after the Greek goddess of luck and prosperity since she's now the luckiest dog alive. The neighbors just called her Baby Girl, they never really named her.

To make a long story short, she was left outside 24/7/365 in the rain/heat/freezing cold, to be neglected and lonely. She's the sweetest dog, so loving and smart. The neighbors had her for a year outside, so she's 2 now and has never been housetrained. She's had to fight for every scrap of food. So she's a bit of a handful.

For the past couple of months, she had been escaping her chain and visiting in the mornings. I would go outside and play with her with my other two dogs. They all got along very well. I have  a chocolate lab mix (Koku) and a Siberian Husky (Stazi). Stazi is a very dominant alpha dog. When Tyche came over, she was submissive and my dogs played very well with her.

So here's what's so interesting. When the boy said I could finally have Tyche, he just let her loose. I had no leash so I coaxed her to our yard. And instantly she was ferocious, and so was Stazi! How did they know that she was suddenly part of the family?

Now, she's not fixed (we're going to have that taken care of in a couple of weeks), so that might be part of the problem. But it's been very stressful. We're working on potty training. But Tyche's aggressiveness with Stazi is a real issue. Stazi didn't really fight back at first, and ended up with a big scratch on her ear. The last time Tyche got in Stazi's face, Stazi fought back and it was pretty scary.

Why am I telling you all of this? Well, I made a comment about Stazi's scratched ear on Facebook and I was told by someone to get Bach Flower Pet Rescue Remedy to fix the problem completely. Apparently it had been a "lifesaver" to this person with her 3 cats during a cross-country move.

This got my hackles up because I have a "no woo" policy on Facebook (and in person). But I know the woman meant well so I thanked her for the advice and said I'd rather have a science-based solution to my problem. I did not try to change her mind, I simply said thanks and I might look into it, but that I wasn't interested if it wasn't science-based.

She and her boyfriend then gave me a hard time. This is what their argument boiled down to:

•  Herbs were the only medicine until people started making synthetic ones (Appeal to Tradition, I think*)


• Some vets in the American Veterinary Medical Assoc. apparently recommend Rescue Remedy (Appeal to Authority, probably a small minority who never read the actual studies)


• I can complain to a shrink if I won't take BFRs (Bach Flower Remedies) and they can give me something to calm me - science based (as if that's evil or I should be ashamed of a chemical imbalance in my brain!?)