As a skeptic, do you take great pleasure in debunking?

[OKNancy]

I do.

Post your DU debunks if you have them.

My latest:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=2690157&mesg_id=2690267

[Dookus]

1. Yeah, I enjoy it

it's usually easy work, too.

[Dookus]

2. Good opportunity just now...

there's a thread in LBN about yet another guy who claims to have found Atlantis. Somebody posted about the underwater "road" found in the Caribbean.

I remember an article in SI last year about this - the Bimini beach rocks. It's a natural formation.

Here's the thread and a link to the article in SI

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=987412&mesg_id=989383&page=

[OKNancy]

3. good for you

!

[Donkeyboy75]

4. Indeed I do.

But, I can also be skeptic of the skeptics. It's fun all around, really.

[arwalden]

5. It's A Twofold Pleasure...

Part of it comes from the "ah-ha" moment when someone finally gets it and realizes that what they thought was true, really wasn't true and wasn't supported by facts or evidence.

The other part of it comes from watching (reading) the squirming or weaseling as the most militant of believers try to justify their belief in magic. Facts be damned! --- You'd think I'd be frustrated with it, but it can be amusing.

-- Allen

[BurtWorm]

6. I used to post regularly in misc.heath.alternative

where I did indeed take great pleasure in debunking myths about alternative therapies and quack views of science. Unfortunately, debunking is usually never enough for believers. Not even Jesus Christ could unconvince the majority of them.

[BurtWorm]

7. Make that misc.health.alternative.

It wasn't about alternative Scots. ;)

[Socialist Dem]

8. yeah, but it gets frustraiting,

I never try to convince someone that their particular faith could be wrong, or that there might not be some invisible guy controlling everything they do, but I do try to debunk frauds and thieves like Jon Edward. I went to a live show with my ex's family. Edward was terrible! When he was on stage, he could pick out "plants", but when we wandered about the audence, his "hit" ratio suddenly plummeted. He went to one group and started asking about someone with a missing leg..... nothing. Then the leg wasn't missing, but did have some kind of damage. still nothing. So now the leg used to be damaged, but got fixed later on... finally someone remembered their father had knee surgery once. It was funny watching him flail about, but my ex and her family were still convinced he talks to dead people, even after I pointed out how lame he was.

[NoodleBoy]

9. too much pleasure

creationists and racists are always the funnest to debunk, because they're always the first ones to accuse you of being closed-minded and ignorant.

[lazarus]

10. Mine was political

I can't find it, but it was in a thread about BBV and that ol' debbil, SAIC.

Seems the BBV folks are in love with Avi Rubin, the programmer who did a lot of work on the issue. They are also convinced SAIC is an evil company that permanently taints everything they touch.

So I pointed out that Avi Ruben's college computer science lab worked with SAIC, and his first job was with an SAIC affiliate.

Suddenly I became Bush enabler and a friend of the BFEE and Halliburton. Not sure how that happened, to be honest. :evilgrin:

[politicat]

11. not latest, but biggest: Debunking Satanic Panic in Utah.

I got involved in a divorce case last year where the wife was claiming her estranged husband was a high priest in a Satanic Cult. (He was actually a Congregationalist Minister, and a nice guy.) She believed he was raising the kids to be breeders and satanic high priests.

I derived great pleasure in debunking that one and in trying to get the kids out of her custody. Psycho bitch.

Currently, I'm working on getting attachment therapy shut down. Two sides of the same coin - the attachment people are often also related to the satanic panic group.

Pcat

[greyl]

12. Isn't that self-evident? nt

[Birthmark]

13. What other joy is there to being a skeptic?

Really. Crushing the closely held but erroneou beliefs of some irrational gasbag is all that keeps going some days.

[qnr]

14. Pleasure? No! --- there is no way I should *have* to be debunking

some of the things I do, it practically makes me sick to my stomache, to be honest.

Give me a break, I dropped out of High School after 3 months, and I have to correct college graduates?

Edit: typo.

[WoodrowFan]

15. yep

Mostly though it's imaging the throbbing forehead veins on the heads on the 9-11 tinfoilers!!

It was a missile with a hologram projector that hit the Pentagon!! :eyes:


It's a guilty pleasure...

[Endangered Specie]

16. Extremely...

my favorite debunking is of creastionism's Noah's Ark, and the damn impossible logistics of it:

You are proposing fitting, at the very minimum, every animal life-form that exists today (and more really, for some have gone extinct in the past 4000 years), and enough food for at least a dozen generations of each animal, simply because you dont want them to eat one another.

And it aint just ground animal life... sea creatures must be stored too, since most can only survive in water of a certain temperature, depth, sunlight (or lack), and salt mixture.

And, of course, there are the plants... Im pretty sure that most above ground plant life wouldnt survive 40 days under water, most of it under water so deep the sun wouldn't get to it. You are talking about regrowing hundreds of eco-systems from scratch!

Then there is bacteria, which has got to be an even bigger nightmare, seeing as to how their microscopes didnt work to well back then.

There is the logistics of gathering up each of these animals, all of which ususally only exists in very select places in the world.

Ive never had time to work out the numbers, but, I imagine theyd look pretty bleak, if God told me to do all this Id tell Him to stick it!

[pauliedangerously]

17. As a skeptic, I HATE debunking

I get extremely frustrated with the low-level thinking in the world and wish we could focus on more productive issues than "bringing people up to speed with reality." Isn't that what the school system is supposed to accomplish?

[derby378]

18. I hear you

It's not very effective to tear down someone's view of the world without giving them the tools to build a new one. That's one reason why I'm drawn towards the philosophical aspect of skepticism.