Enemies Of Reason, is it propoganda?

My mother has a sclerosis since some time now and she was taking the medication proposed by her official doctor without any significant improvement and even worse, with some collateral effects(headaches etc..)

A good friend of her is an old researcher in the pharmaceutic field and worked on alternatives medications treatments especially with the plants meaning 100% bio medication and apparently she's doing a bit better now.

If she says she's in better shape i trust her...that's all i can tell you.

I heard this medication have passed a series of tests with great success but never had the approval to be sell at a larger scale for some obscure reason, they even had a trial which they eventually lost.

Sad but true you can't fight the lobbying surrounding the pharmaceutic industry.

It's like the chinese/japanese medications they've got a totally different view/manner to threat people there and i don't believe it's badder than what we traditionally do in the Western societies.

Originally posted by budski
Another problem is that the NHS are spending large amounts of money on something unproven, money which may be put to better use.

Hi, budski. I think this statement of yours deserves to be highlighted.

The fact is that the British National Health Service (NHS), which provides free medical care to Britons, supports homeopathic medicine, acupuncture and so on as well as conventional medicine.

And as you say, budski, this is a waste of money. It is also dangerous. Foolish people have been going to homeopaths for drugs to ward off malaria before going abroad on holiday, taking the pills and -- catching malaria.

Now misuneko, could you please explain why the British government should support your favourite quacks with one hand and undermine them with the other?

Originally posted by misuneko

No. If you didn’t think it was propaganda you wouldn’t be sitting there typing that. And you know what? I’m quickly losing interest in what you type.

if your loosing interest in what i type stop reading it! Also from the Evidence of my Media career advertising career and knowledge of structurising documentaries etc I can safely say that the way this documentary was protraid it was in the vested interest in making scientific fact more credible to the public. which means it has portrayed the other side unfairly and not indepth or else you would of seen a compleatly different documentary!

If you’d paid attention to what I typed, you’d understand I haven’t seen the documentary yet.

Of course I understand that homoeopathy and other such bullpie doesn’t hold up to any scrutiny, but do you seriously think it’s right to lash out against the scrutinizers as you’re doing?

Sure you do, just like you know that homoeopathy works

yes I do. I work in Television and i am well aware of what i am talking about here. If you are unaware of my understanding then maybe you need to educate yourself about the subject of Documentary making and advertising campaigns to target certain sectors of the public!

So, tell me how homoeopathy really works – the way its proponents say it works is wrong. So I’m eager to hear your take on it.

This is the first I’ve heard of your knowledge of documentary making and advertising campaigns. My, but isn’t that a broad range of knowledge you have! I seem to have underestimated you!

There are millions of entrepreneurs, contractors and consultants in the USA alone. If anybody’s trying to make people slaves to big business, then they’re failing.

People do not realise that they are slaves to the system!

What system? The same system that keeps them safe, with roofs over their heads, water, electricity, heating and internet in their homes? Have you ever considered that people are willing slaves?

Sometimes, yes. That’s kind of why this site exists. And you come in here trying to spoon feed us lies of your own.

Im not telling any lies.. im telling my thoughts... I do not need scientific proof to back up any beliefs I have.

Then please, make it very clear from now on that what you’re stating are your beliefs, because some of your beliefs are very wrong and very dangerous, and I don’t think the administration of this site appreciates the legal risk your advice poses.

Quite frankly its sad to see that some people are so closed minded having to firmly set their oppions by what others have told them on the TV. I think keeping an open mind to everything and not to take scientific fact as total Fact,, just to observe and understand that there are two sides of a coin and if a documentary isnt telling both side fairly and is biased then to be suspisious of it.

True, but at the same time, you can’t just believe in every alternative “cure” or conspiracy theory that you happen to hear. They’re like urban myths, and we all know how accurate those are.…

I AGREE THE VIDEO IS PROPAGANDA!

For the very fact that its is pro science needing factual evidence

Wait, WHAT?!

Experimentation, i.e. obtaining factual evidence, is critical to the Scientific Method.

you miss quoted me.. i was saying that this film was trying to find evidence or being able to prove that homeopathy does work and that astrology etc can be proved using things such as horoscopes out of newspaper cuttings that are obviously not going to be a reliable source that you would put into a documentary if you were showing the other side of the story fairy. ie propaganda!

No, I didn’t misquote you. You didn’t make yourself clear.

You may be right about astrology. As for homoeopathy, well, God forbid anybody should look for proof that something that doesn’t work actually works! Thay would be just a little too fair, wouldn’t it?

"Propaganda is the deliberate, systematic attempt to shape perceptions, manipulate cognitions, and direct behavior to achieve a response that furthers the desired intent of the propagandist."

This documetary was intended in ridiculing everything of spirituality to homeopathy issues. It was intended to shape perceptions using scientific facts and show how this area of interest cant be proven scienfitically and therefore give the desired intent of the propagandist in believing that if science cant make factual evidence of the spiritual world it cant be taken seriously in this world as science cant prove in its methods. Also by using very examples in the spiritual world to portray just a mininal and by no means intire true representation of what goes on in the spiritual circles it showed a unfair argument within this docuementary. It finished gaining the desired intent that it was set out to achieve just by who the narrator was says it all as well...

Then by that same token, anything promoting homoeopathy and/or spirituality is propaganda as well. Oops.

Everything is going in the divine order...

TO fight amungst outselves is only feeding the negativity that we have on our planet.

Just be true to yourself. And ask to be guided to what is in the light or the light.

Dont be manipulated by external sources... even what i write just feel what is in your heart and follow it as true as possible...until we are awakened.

Originally posted by ModernAcademia
What are your thoughts on richard dawkins's Enemies of Reason.

If you don't know what it is, it's a new mini-series on british television about how alternative medicines are nothing but superstitions and none are proven to work.

You can look for enemies of reason in google video, you'll see it.

Is it propoganda?

Its far from propaganda and all his comments were objective,dispassionate,impartial and reasonable (and refreshing).
He makes a very good point that irrational,agenda based thinking is unwise and has an unhealthy influence on society.
I particularly liked the part with Derren Brown who showed the remarkable simarlarities between mediumship and cold reading.
The more people who think like Richard Dawkins the better (but I have to say I think the scientific community has got it bang wrong about UFOs though).
Cheers Karl

[edit on 01/24/07 by karl 12]

They may have been so... but im afraid that the sources that the production company choose to portray in the doco were biased to the outcome of the doco... or else we would of been watching something compleatly different...

Its all about how to write a show, what words to use and how to organise the doco in a way that will bring about whatever they want to prove or disprove.

This doco in my oppinion didnt give the spiritual world a true voice, it used sources that were not credible and didnt even touch the surface of all these subjects it only looked at the first layer or the subjects and riped them to pieces.

For the people watching this programme. yes it did have good scientific answers to the questions and it did compleatly make spirituality and the other alternative healing methods look silly, But this is TELEVISION, it is the way to provoke and establish certain mind sets of the viewers!

Of course this programme is going to prove that looking at star signs from a magazine is going to have an outcome that its not true of peoples star signs! OF COURSE! but this isnt a real representation of how to read star signs...!

Of course Daren Brown is going to show how easy it is to read minds! and how you juxtaposition it over a clarvoyent doing a reading and you will see the similarities! But again its not showing a fair representation to uphold the side of the other! it got away with it by using examples from the spiritual world that is borderlining the commercial world, which is of course going to be incorrect as its a money making venture part of selling magazines!

It misrepreseted a great proportion of the people who live their lives open heartedly, who know in great depth their interest of subject and who know have a greater knowedge of this subject that what was given in this documentary, this is what I personally do not like about this doco, how it doesnt tell all the wonderous things that have happened with spiritual things and the other aspects of living this way, and how they benifit the world.

No wonder there are so many of you out there who liked and related with this programme as that was its intention. Im sure if you watched a programme that was "made" to make the viewer think of spirituality and a clean enviromentally and healthier way of life, that incorporates the sciences and the spiritual side of things. As most of these people live in this society and they fit in, they work in harmony and are happier this way to live.

can't find this anywhere

Originally posted by NRen2k5

Originally posted by Jazzerman
Homeopathic remedies

Homoeopathy is complete BS.

The idea behind homoeopathy is that if take something harmful and dilute it enough, it will do good rather than harm. However, they dilute the active ingredient to the point where there is less than one molecule of it in the volume sold to the customer. In other words, the active ingredient isn’t there at all.

Rational thinkers will understand that homoeopathy works entirely on the “placebo effect” – that just thinking that something will improve your condition will improve your condition.

What is interesting in your denial of the efficacy of alternative treatments is the fact that you have asserted the very proposition that makes such treatments viable. You defined the "placebo effect", which indicates that you accept that such a thing exists. Now it seems that you have a little internal inconsistency problem to chew on. If the term "placebo effect" carries negative or uncomfortable connotations for you, then call it something else. What's in a name, anyway?

Yes, the millenia of experience of our forefathers and foremothers are irrelevant and immaterial. None of it had anything to do with peer review and clinical observation. Only the knowledge of a profound few found over the past few hundred years is of any value.

It is strictly coincidence that they have pillaged liberally from the ancestors on their way to omnipotence.

For instance Asperin is actually an herbal remedy. The inner bark of the white willow collected in the spring contains salicin, which turns to salicilic acid in the blood stream. Asperin is salicilic acid. Asperin burns the stomach. Salicin does not. I have used the bark to treat migranes and it is far superior to the pill in it's effectiveness.

Did you know that almost all people who die in western countries do so while under the care of modern medical practicioners?

Coincidence, I think not!

One witch doctor is very much like the next. Some dispense pills, others tonics. The trick is to find someone who helps sick people get well, as opposed to one who practices medicine and the dispensing of products under license.