'Skeptics' article stirs up condemnation from skeptics, praise from holistic thinkers

Monday, January 25, 2010 by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...) Tags: skeptics, thinking, health news

(NaturalNews) The article I posted yesterday that exposed the true beliefs of "skeptics" made some major waves across the 'net. Entitled, What "skeptics" really believe about vaccines, medicine, consciousness and the universe (https://www.naturalnews.com/028012_skeptics_m...), the article turned the tables on the skeptics and detailed their bizarre beliefs for the whole world to see.

This article succeeded wildly in infuriating the "skeptics" across the 'net by simply reminding them what they believe. They then resorted to their same old dirty tricks to attack me by doing things like joining our Facebook page then posting a message that says, "That article made me so mad, I'm quitting this forum!" (Gee, oh well.)

Meanwhile, the article received praise from supporters of natural medicine, the healing arts and holistic thinking -- all of whom have had enough of being labeled quacks and kooks for believing in plant-based medicine, nutritional therapies and the healing potential of the human mind and body.

They're tired of being insulted and demeaned by the skeptics who have for years gotten away with blasting holistic thinkers without receiving much criticism themselves. So we turned the tables on the skeptics and showed the world how crazy some of their beliefs are. It is absolutely true that the most ardent skeptics believe they themselves have no consciousness, no soul, no free will and not even a mind. People thought I made this up, but I didn't. It's one of the core beliefs among classic "skeptics" (they will even tell you this themselves).

Water is magical... really!

One such skeptic accused me of being a quack because he said that I believe "water is magical." Was that supposed to be an insult? I do think water is magical!

I think pregnancy is magical. Human consciousness is magical. Plant life is magical. And water is at the very top of the list of magical substances with amazing, miraculous properties, many of which have yet to be discovered.

Think about it: Water expands when it freezes (almost everything else shrinks). Water is both a solvent and a lubricant. Water is almost impervious to compression. Water can flow upwards, against gravity, into small cracks and crevices. Water is made up of two gases, each of which is a combustible fuel on its own. Do I think water is magical? You bet I do!

I also think magnetism is magical. And gravity. And quantum physics. There isn't a single scientist or skeptic alive today who truly understands magnetism or gravity. Sure, they can mathematically model it. They can describe it and observe it, but they don't understand it. Mass warps the very fabric of reality and causes two objects to magically attract each other? Seriously? That's about as magical as it gets.

Quantum physics is magical, too. As physicist Richard Feynman famously said, "I think I can safely say that no one understands quantum mechanics." To all humans, including skeptics, quantum physics is essentially magic. If they claim to truly understand quantum physics, they are lying.

Feyman was unusually open-minded for a scientist. In fact, he was no closed-minded "skeptic." He was infinitely curious about the way the universe works, and had he lived longer, he may have very well discovered the principles behind homeopathy and water memory. But he also knew that science has its limits -- an idea that still has not occurred to most skeptics today. Feynman said, "I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy." Those are his words, not mine. The words of perhaps the greatest physicist to have ever lived.

Science cannot answer the most important questions

And he's right. Reductionism doesn't work to study holistic phenomena. And that's where most skeptics go completely off track. They think you can isolate, identify and categorize every bit and piece of every single thing if you just look closely enough. In that belief, they are wrong. The universe is holographic. The whole is in the parts. The universe is holistic, and it cannot be understood by ripping it apart into tiny pieces and giving them tiny names.

I wrote about this in an article about the Large Hadron Collider that has been widely read across the 'net. It's entitled The Higgs Boson Particle Isn't a Particle - Why the Search for Subatomic Particles is an Illusion (https://www.naturalnews.com/025486.html)

Reductionist thinking (the preferred worldview of "skeptics") cannot ever hope to understand plant-based medicine. Because plant-based medicine works through the synergistic effects of thousands of phytonutrients working together. Separate them all and the "magic" of plant-based medicine disappears. Western scientists can study every single molecule of a plant in great detail and yet entirely miss the healing effects of the whole plant.

When skeptics demand that we "prove that this plant has medicinal properties," what they mean is that the plant chemicals should be studied in isolation, one by one, to see if any of them work in isolation. And that approach simply won't work. Traditional Chinese Medicine, for example, uses ingredients that when taken in isolation can be dangerous (such as ephedra), but when combined with other supporting herbs are remarkably safe.

Skeptics don't get this. The FDA doesn't get this. And many consumers still don't get this either. Holistic medicine cannot be studied with reductionist thinking.

In a similar way, the holistic nature of the universe cannot be understood, explained or even comprehended by reductionist thinking. The worldview of "skeptics," in other words, limits them to a very narrow understanding of the world around them. That limitation is what prevents them from understanding the healing arts, or homeopathy, or mind-body medicine or any other advanced modality.

Skeptics recruit thousands of new readers for NaturalNews

Getting back to the skeptics themselves, some of them took my article way too personally, attributing every single statement to themselves. Well of course every single belief in that article isn't followed by every single "skeptic" person. Even skeptics disagree amongst themselves on how far to take their "skeptic" beliefs. There is a spectrum of skeptics in the same way there is a spectrum of natural health practitioners.

But by blasting my article all over the web and then attacking it, they accomplished something quite amazing: They brought us over 2,500 new email newsletter subscribers in just 48 hours! As it turns out, many people are skeptical of the skeptics and they're quite open to a differing point of view. They might believe one or two things that typify the skeptics' position, but they don't swallow the whole belief system of the most ardent skeptics.

And that brings me to beliefs. I don't want you to believe anything I say. Not automatically, anyway. I want you to think for yourself. I don't want you to follow holistic thinking just because it sounds pretty; I want you to explore for yourself what seems to be true in your own experience.

If you, in your own experience, find that herbs and massage therapy and nutrition are all utterly worthless, and you want to join the skeptics camp, then go for it! If you've thought about it yourself, and reached your own conclusions, and you've pursued truth with an open mind and an open heart, then whatever conclusion you reach is "your" truth. But don't let your current intellectual position become a prison that prevents you from exploring other possibilities of the way the universe works.

This is the default position of free thinkers, by the way, of which I am a lifelong member. Free thinkers respect the freedoms of others to arrive at their own truths. Skeptics, on the other hand, aggressively attack anyone who disagrees with their conclusions. If you don't believe the things they believe, then you're a quack, or a kook or a woo woo practitioner.

They also tend to jump to false conclusions about what people are really saying. In my previous article, for example, I never stated whether I believed in God, or whether I was an athiest, or whether I followed organized religion and yet people read the article and they leaped to conclusions, assuming I was promoting organized religion, for example, or that I was condemning atheism.

Actually I never stated my position on those matters in the article at all, but the skeptics leaped to the conclusion that I did. This speaks to their tendency to warp all incoming information and restructure it to conform to the beliefs they already carry about the subject at hand.

Above all, skeptics have an extremely limited, distorted view of the world. It is that view that prevents them from grasping more advanced concepts like quantum healing, vibrational medicine, mind-body medicine or even medicinal herbs. The skeptics' view of the universe is that of a child. Embracing the holistic nature of the universe requires a more mature understanding.