6 Things You Believe that are Complete BS

While acupuncture is often held up by advocates of alternative medicine as an effective treatment for a number of ailments, there are a number of well designed studies that show the ancient practice to be little more than the placebo effect. In other words, there is a real possibility that you have been paying $100 bucks a pop to have pins stabbed into your back for the same warm fuzzy feeling that a sugar pill could accomplish. It really shouldn't be that surprising.Traditional Chinese medicine theory states that qi, the vital energy, flows along meridians. These meridians form the basis of acupuncture points, precise places a trained expert is supposed to stab you before promptly taking your money. Unfortunately these points have no known scientific or medical significance. I think Felix Mann, the founder of the Medical Acupuncture Society says it best, "The traditional acupuncture points are no more real than the black spots a drunkard sees in front of his eyes."

Americans spend $34 billion per year on alternative medicine and a large chunk of that change go to chiropractors. Founded in the 1890s, over 100 years of study have yet to demonstrate that spinal manipulation is at all effective, except for back pain. Yes folks, if you receive a back rub, your back will feel better. The potential uselessness of chiropractic cures (except for the trusty placebo effect of course) may make sense in light of how the practice began. D. D. Palmer, a magnetic healer and deep believer in mysticism was once struck with idea that the spine could hold the secret to curing all disease. Palmer considered the techniques he developed to be religious in nature, at one point nearly declaring chiropractic a religion. He came to believe that, "A subluxated vertebra... is the cause of 95 percent of all diseases... The other five percent is caused by displaced joints other than those of the vertebral column." Later in his life he began to go the L. Ron Hubbard route in promoting his techniques. "... we must have a religious head, one who is the founder, as did Christ, Mohamed, Jo. Smith, Mrs. Eddy, Martin Luther and other who have founded religions. I am the fountain head. I am the founder of chiropractic in its science, in its art, in its philosophy and in its religious phase." That's right, a practice founded by a religious nut over a century ago is still handing out expensive back rubs as a cure for disease. Maybe in 100 years insurance will pay for Dianetics.

You feel a cold coming on. Stumbling into the kitchen you reach for the bottle of vitamin C and jam a fistful in your mouth like a real man. Your immune system is like a platoon of hard boiled assholes and the vitamin C is like a magazine jam packed with whoop-ass. Except the whoop-ass is actually Silly String. Giant doses of vitamin C don't do anything to the common cold.

Many world religions claim that their god is both omniscient (able to see into the future) and omnipotent (all powerful). Unfortunately these two ideas are mutually exclusive; it is impossible to be both omnipotent and omniscient at the same time. Richard Dawkins explained that,

"If God is omniscient he must be knowing what he is going to do at some point of time (say one year later) in the future. Then he is powerless against changing it. Hence He cannot be omnipotent"

God was powerless to stop the previous sentence.

This lie is regurgitated over and over again by conservative commentators and is completely untrue. The most well known founding fathers like Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, Adams, and Hamilton were Deists, who believed that the creator of the universe may be understood only through reason and observation, not faith. Many openly opposed organized religion. Jefferson advocated the separation of church and state and even created his own bible, stripping out any mention of miracles or paranormal events. Just to demonstrate how crazy bonkers outragous this misconception is, hear it it their own words:

“The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.” - John Adams

“I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life, I absenteed myself from Christian assemblies.” - Benjamin Franklin

“Religious controversies are always productive of more acrimony and irreconcilable hatreds than those which spring from any other cause. I had hoped that liberal and enlightened thought would have reconciled the Christians so that their religious fights would not endanger the peace of Society.”  - George Washington

"It is too late in the day for men of sincerity to pretend they believe in the Platonic mysticisms that three are one, and one is three; and yet that the one is not three, and the three are not one. But this constitutes the craft, the power and the profit of the priests." - Thomas Jefferson

While it may be easier for some parents to look at their screaming obnoxious children and tell themselves its just the sugar they're eating, they're wrong. Studies have shown that sugar doesn't make a bit of difference. Your children are just screaming obnoxious.