I've noticed recently that Frank Davis and I think very much alike. We both appear to be typical of a more than significant minority of people who are both confused and angry at this NuWorld that is being enforced upon us without allowing us a stake or a say in it.
Twice in about a week, for example, we have said much the same sort of thing on the false allegations from the Anti-Smoker zealots that dismissed we ordinary pissed off people as somehow paid, professional lobbyists of the evil child catcher and this subject raised for intellectual debate
Frank's also put into words something that has been on my mind a lot lately - Healthism and Environmentalism as the Religion of the 21st Century.
The thought followed a conversation I had with a smoker a few weeks ago about all this NuHealism that doesn't allow contradictory opinions and dismisses any disagreement as a blasphemous sin - "heresy" as Frank puts it.
You should hear the abuse I get when debating a pregnant woman's right to choose to smoke, for example, and challenging that Healthist belief that only the pure will be perfect despite the ample evidence to the contrary.
I get called "irresponsible" and they are always "very concerned" at what I have said and then "aghast" in case my view influences anyone else to actually think for themselves and question the Healthist logic based on dodgy science by manipulation and not biology.
People don't believe in God and The Church as much as they did two generations ago and now worship at the temple of Good Health and Environmentalism. Maybe it gives them something else they believe can give them Everlasting Life and some form of Spiritual Harmony and Absolution for being less than physically perfect.
Certainly anti-smokerism has it's roots in religious Zealotry as the image above put up by a religious lunatic shows. He also believed the world was flat by the way.
As Frank says :
The old religious authorities wore cassocks, and the new ones wear lab coats. And that’s really the only difference.
Modern science was begun by people like Galileo who were prepared to throw out religious and philosophical orthodoxy, and think and experiment for themselves. It’s ironic, therefore, that this science has itself now become a new religion, with its own priesthood, and its own congregations of the faithful, who are expected to believe everything they are told, or else be accused of ‘denialism’ (which is the modern name of heresy).
For questionnaire-driven antismoking science, and its attendant statistical sleight of hand, is very arguably not science at all. Nothing is measured accurately. And the conclusions have usually been drawn before any ‘research’ is undertaken. It is research which is a parody of science.
I must admit that I do find it very odd that technology and science have progressively improved much in life and taken huge leaps and bounds in making new and beneficial discoveries. The only thing that remains as stale and true to the antiquated anti-smoker religious zealotry of the early 1930s is the anti-smoker healthist zealotry of this supposed new age.