Homeopath skeptic????

[kittynh]

I got the book from the library, "Sleeping with Extra-Terrestirials" by Wendy Kaminer. The sub title is, "The Rise of Irrationalism and Perils of Piety".

In the introduction she confesses she sees a homeopath and has no interest in learning WHY homeopathy does not work. She says it works for her and that is enough. She sees no harm in going. She has no interest in hearing the truth, while admitting that she is NOT checking it out.

Then she attacks new age everything. I couldn't read the whole book because I just kept thinking, "how is this belief different than homeopathy?" In fact, many of the beliefs she attacks seem to be more rational than her belief that homeopathy works for her. It just ruined the rest of the book for me.

I mean, I just didn't get it. Why such a hardliner, and yet such a sucker? Is this common?

 

[Peter Morris]

Sure it's common. There's many folks that take pride in how 'skeptical' they are, yet believe anything Randi tells them, without question.

 

[Mercutio]

Sure it's common. There's many folks that take pride in how 'skeptical' they are, yet believe anything Randi tells them, without question.

Well put. Made me laugh.

But yes, it is very common. In fact, skepticism about topic Y may be very useful in maintaining belief in topic X, as the individual will be able to say "I am a very skeptical person--see this Y-type evidence--and so my belief in X is the belief of a skeptical person!"

I have had students who were very skeptical of ghosts but knew their grandmothers could dowse pregnant women for the genders of their babies; very skeptical of dowsers, but read and followed their horoscopes; very skeptical of horoscopes, but certain that their house was haunted, and many other combinations of skepticism and belief.

We are, as humans, extraordinarily good at compartmentalizing our beliefs. This in not limited to the paranormal, of course--one's knowledge of smoking and cancer is kept separate from one's enjoyment of nicotine...one's knowledge of cholesterol is kept separate from one's appreciation for the Denny's meat-lover's breakfast. It would be, I think, extremely rare to find the perfectly rational human being.

 

[steenkh]

Besides, some people take pride in showing that they are not "religious" by sticking to one sort of irrational belief.

 

[Anders W. Bonde]

This compartmentalization seems particularly evident when it comes to religion; bright scientists that go to church, religious zealots of one kind "debunking" religious zealots of another kind. And myself - yes, I do and imbibe things I know are (at least) potentially harmful to me - but I do it anyway. Argh! The dilemmas involved with human life!

BTW - and this may be the subject of another thread already - do any studies of what type of person is more prone to accepting irrational beliefs than others exist? With the risk of being called sexist, it is my impression, from personal experience, that women are more susceptible to belief in such as dowsing, divination, astrology and homeopathy than men, for instance, but that may only apply to the demographic segment I live in. Any thoughts?

 

[Jyera]

Experience is a very dear friend.

Close to our heart and mind.
Very expensive to acquire, sometime priceless.
We paid for experience with part of our life.

 

[Z]

Well, take me for example.

I come here and debate and fight about all sorts of nonsense. I KNOW that scientifically and logically, only what is real can exist, and what is real must be material in nature on some level. Nothing unreal can exist.

But I BELIEVE that the unreal DOES exist, on some level, and has 'magickal' influences on us.

On one side, I embrace science and eschew silly notions in general. On the other side, I perform rituals to improve prosperity or to celebrate the lunar cycle (even though I KNOW the science around the cycle by which we observe the moon's reflections of solar light).

If I get ill, I want to see a real M.D./Ph.D. doctor with real credentials and actual scientific medical practices. But once I've taken the Motrin, etc. and undergone the appropriate treatments, I see nothing wrong with using a faith healing exercise to 'improve' my general health (probably just a psychological booster, really - but I still do it). Yet homeopathy has been RUINED for me utterly. Why? Because homeopaths insist on trying to be accepted under the 'scientific and medical' side, and if it works at all, it's clearly a faith-healing process.

I generally accept those who claim a faith/mystical ability, so long as they do not a) try to claim scientific truth for their claims, and b) don't charge people money for their supposed powers. Any time they do one and/or the other, I immediately feel like they are scamming someone.

This is why I generally refer to myself as a pseudo-skeptic. As long as the claims are firmly and frankly kept in the realm of the mystic/faith/unreal, I can accept them as such and move along. If they instead insist on reality/truth/science, I hold them to reality/truth/science - whereby anything of mystic/faith/unreal nature must crumble and fail.

So perhaps it's a sign of schizophrenia? Who knows? I'll ask myself when I get back to consciousness...

 

[kittynh]

Good points! I know several nurses that practice Reiki. They pay a lot of money to take classes in it. Once when I was very very ill, and knew I would be unable to reach medical care for at least 24 hours, a nursing student that was with my group practiced Reiki on me. I knew it was silly (well, actually not until she began to "practice", I'd never heard of it before). While it didn't cure me (she was sure it had though I ended up in the hospital for a while), it did calm me down and relax me. Just getting some extra attention from a calm person was nice. That and Gatoraide (I think the Gataraide really saved my life...). Still, I think she could have held my hand and just talked to me calmly and it would have had the same effect.

I always wondered why a nurse would want to learn Reiki, but I think it just gives people that are interested in healing something to do when there is nothing else you can do.

My problem with homeopathy is that they cost people a LOT of money, and make promises they can't deliver on. If a drug company said, "use this drug and it will cure your hayfever forever", that claim would need to be tested. Homeopathy wants to be able to make the same claims as drug companies (well, claims that no drug company would dare make) and yet not be held to the same standard. They want to be respected as a serious science, but not held to the same standards as serious science. I cannot tell you the misery teachers are put through at my school by parents giving us complex schedules of when their child is supposed to take their homeopathic medicines. To "cure" hayfever and allergies is made almost impossible by the tight and demanding schedule the "water" is supposed to be taken. Of course it doesn't work because it doesnt work, but the out the homeopaths have is that no one can stick to the schedule of "treatment". Or by the time the "treatment" is up (many many weeks) that ragweed is no longer in season.