It's Nice To Be Mentioned

It's always nice to be mentioned, even when that mention comes from uber-skeptoids, and even when that mention has nothing much to do with anything.

A skeptic blog called Miss Rants begins a recent post thusly:

Go Read this blog; then immediately return to my blog to hear commentary: Snarly Skepticism…(and Unofficial JREF Watch).

This is a blog devoted to attacking people who are sceptical of paranormal activity (of course, you already know that because you went and read the blog. Trés bien fait!)

Well, thanks for the plug! But, while the given of the actual purpose of this blog goes over her head, as it does all "skeptics," ("attacking people who are skeptical . . .") there's no there there, as Gertrude Stein once said. Miss Rants just continues on about the silliness of woo, without addressing anything specific on this blog. But I'm not quibbling; her interest and link just goes to show "they" have stopped by to take a look around.

Ironically, Miss Rants is a Christian, and sees nothing odd about the fact she doesn't believe any of that woo stuff, but does believe that Jesus rules. Bigfoot is silly:

Reason and science tell me that there is not a breeding population of giant apes living outside of Seattle;

(I always love it when the skeptics assume BF is just a giant ape, to be fair, so do a lot of Bigfoot researchers. . .)

But Jesus is real:

Of course, they also tell me that a Jewish carpenter from Nazareth who lived on the outer-edge of the Roman Empire 2,000 years ago was not the omnipotent ruler of the universe. That I can expect the former but reject the later is a sign of my own intellectual laziness perhaps. Even more so then, I appreciate the sceptical. I cannot help but think that blessed are those who do not believe what they do not see.

At least she acknowledges the "intellectual laziness" but I would argue it isn't lazy at all.  While I don't believe in any Christian type construct of Jesus/God, or the Bible as literal truth divinely inspired or dictated by said God, and so on, I am not an atheist by any means, (not even a secular humanist since they bash woo just as much as any old skeptibunkie)  and have faith in all kinds of things, including, for lack of a better term, a spiritual system. 

I have direct experience of some things, and no, I'm not going to debate anyone -- certainly not skeptoids, I mean, have you been reading this blog? -- about the validity of those direct experiences. Interpretations of those experiences are one thing; manipulated to fit into one's personal cultural/religous/soceital framework, blah blah, though I will not dignify any of those with entertaining suggestions I'm mentally ill or have a brain tumor.  UFOs are not something to believe in, any more than you believe in a toaster. (And for Pete's sake do not say "we know what a toaster looks like, but we don't know what a UFO looks like!") (Actually we know what UFOs look like; they look like triangles, and cylinders, orbs, spheres, stars, diamond shapes, cigars, ... we have thousands of pictures of them all over the world.) For that matter, Bigfoot isn't something to believe in; I don't pray to a Bigfoot carving in my room or go to Bigfoot church.  I have what I suppose you could call "faith" aliens exist, based on personal experience and evidence, but I don't KNOW for a fact. And either do you.

Well, seems I went off on a little rant/tangent of my own there. Anyway, thanks for stopping by!