The NHS budget has been battered recently, not least by the scandal of over £6 billions spent on a central computer system, that mercifully doesn’t work and that anyone with any sense will be able to opt out of.

So this particular example of a mad waste of NHS funds is small potatoes in comparison. A/c to the BBC, Peter Hain has set aside £200,000 to be spent on a year’s trial of providing “alternative therapies” at two general practices in Londonderry and Belfast.

Don’t waste the year, I can tell you now how useful they are for half that amount. Please.

If they worked, they wouldn’t be “alternative”.

Weren’t there a load of recent news items about medical treatments (for cancer, Alzheimer’s, blindness) that people believe they need but which can’t be funded because the national body for clinical excellence says the medicines are too expensive and not cost-effective?

The alternative therapies (acupuncture, massage, homeopathy) will apparently be offered for stress and musculoskeletal disorders.

Well, for musculoskeletal disorders, I thought we had physiotherapy? Even, more “alternatively”, subsidised gym memberships for people recovering from MSDs to get strength back through their own efforts?

And stress? Come on, what is stress? If your life is a bit crappy, then you will be stressed. A backrub massage won’t help much for more than half an hour, and so might a good walk in the park. Or a good comedy show. Or a nice cup of tea. Whatever. Is it a doctor’s job to give you little treats from public money when your boss treats you like dirt?

More serious stress, showing up as depression or breakdown, needs more serious treatment. Granted that most current treatments may be pretty poor at dealing with mental health problems, it doesn’t mean that expensive placebos are ever going to be a better alternative.

Give out sugar coated chalk pills if you can’t do anything for patients but want to look as if you have a solution.

In any case, can you imagine how slighted you’d feel if you went to your doctor with a bad back or a case of agaraphobia and s/he said words to the effect of “Go to this charlatan, please.” Doesn’t that say that your doctor thinks you are a hypochondriac?

But then Peter Hain has outed himself as a hypochondriac, by saying he uses alternative medicine himself and thinks people who can’t afford it should be able to. How egalitarian of him.

This is too much like somone who keeps falling for email scams (“Esteemed person of repute. Help me get my money out of “wherever) offering to fund those of us who can’t fall for them because we have no cash to send.

Technorati Tags: alternative, medicine, woo, NHS, Peter Hain, health, waste, acupuncture, homeopathy

(as if proof was needed).

Without going into too much detail as previously mentioned in passing, a group called the “Rational Response Squad” have created something they call the “Blasphemy Challenge” in which they encourage people to YouTube themselves saying they do not believe in the Holy Spirit. To an atheist this seems like a trivial way to get a free DVD. To a Christian this seems to be the worst thing on Earth. Strange people, aren’t they?

It is entertaining that the main accusations thrown against the Rational Response Squad is that they are trying to seduce children into atheism. Does any one really think children are born Christians? If so, why the need to indoctrinate them from as early an age as possible? Hypocrites.

Anyway, there is a blog, oddly titled “The Blasphemy Challenge” (I can only assume it is to lure the unsuspecting) which tries to refute the (real) Blasphemy Challenge. It has this as its tagline:

This blog is in response to the Rational Response Squad’s (RRS) Blasphemy Challenge. Here you’ll learn the true nature of this so-called challenge and who RRS are and what they’re all about. We’re also myspacing.

Now, as a naive atheist I would have assumed if you were going to counter the arguments put out by the RRS, you would actually counter the arguments. It seems that this blog would rather attack the RRS themselves and ridicule even the thought that people could deny the holy spirit. For the record, I think of the holy spirit in the same category as I think of Father Christmas, the tooth fairy, goblins, elves, dragons (etc). I find it difficult to “deny” the existence of something which does not exist as to me “deny” is a faith based term. The holy spirit is as real as the unicorn on the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon all those years ago.

Still, I suspect that as theists have no evidence to support their arguments use of ad hominems and arguments from a false premise are pretty much par for the course.

One part that really got me, and proved the Christians on this blog really do not get it (the point of the blasphemy challenge or what atheism actually is) was this: (emphasis on the original)

Well, it’s quite easy to see now. Blaspheming the Holy Spirit is to attribute the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit to Satan. That’s all it is, folks. And it’s plain for anybody to see that.

Priceless. There you have it. If you are an atheist, and don’t believe in the holy spirit you are actually saying the holy spirits power belongs to Satan. What unadulterated madness. Adding an argumentum ad populum at the end does not make this resemble any form of logical reasoning.

I presume if you blaspheme or deny the existence of Father Christmas you are actually attributing his present giving power to the grinch.

Nutcases. All of them.

Tags: Religion, Religious Fools, Blasphemy, Christianity, Blasphemy Challenge, Rational Response Squad, Society, Philosophy, Nutcases, Atheist, Atheism, Logical Fallacy

It is not often that a blog gets specifically mentioned here, rather than just being added to the blogroll, but today I came across a blog with such a funny “about” section I couldn’t resist.

About this blog

People die for it. People kill for it. They ignore fact to support it. They champion ignorance to defend it. And worst of all they teach their children to do the same. Faith is a disease; a dysfunction of the mind and of society as a whole. Faith is a dangerous irrationality that has cost millions of lives and will cost millions more. In a world in which we hear so much about respecting others beliefs this blog is a stand against that idiocy. Faith deserves no respect. Faith deserves to be cured.

If that is not enough to make you want visit, [Deity of Choice] knows what will do the trick.

Tags: Atheism, Atheist, Blogroll, Links, Religion, Society,Philosophy

For those who are interested, the debate between Sam Harris and Andrew Sullivan is continuing. You can catch up with Page 4 (the most current) or start from the beginning.

Currently, it seems to be getting a bit long winded and part of the problem with this sort of “online blog-war” style of debate is that each post contains a number of points, but with a few exceptions these are overlooked. The responses on both sides seem to focus on one salient point that the other has made, then build in another 10 – 20 spin off points of their own.

It might have been better if the combatants in this particular war were forced to keep each post to a single point and there was some moderation to focus them. Both are excellent writers and both are more than capable of “spinning” their viewpoint to the extent that onlookers (myself included) can see the logic and “reasonableness” of what they are saying. I really do think this is a debate which will never, ever end.

Before anyone gets started, this is not science. This is a debate about faith on a website called Beliefnet. You still can not do science by debate :-).

[tags]philosophy, society, Religion, Sam Harris, Andrew Sullivan, Blog War, Debate, Faith, Religious Tolerance, Atheism, Religious Moderates[/tags]