Using the fear of God to promote a Anti-Vaccine agenda

Yesterday I saw an article making rounds on pro-science and anti-anti-vaccination Facebook pages that was written by a "Christian" blogger who was claiming that God does not support vaccines. (Read the article here)

The author of the article uses several classic anti-vaccination claims to spreed her propaganda, although the one that was mostly talked about in that article is the claim that vaccines contain parts from aborted fetuses, which is false.

She combines this along with passages from the bible and her "interpretation" of those passages in an attempt to make it seem like God does not approve of vaccines.

Before I begin I'm very well aware that many of you reading this are atheists, but for the moment just for fun consider the possibly that God exists, and if you are someone that believes that God exists then please and hear what I have to say.

First, God is, according to Judea-Christian beliefs, an all powerful being that created the Universe and everything about it, including what does and does not work.

If God is all powerful and didn't want people to use vaccines, then couldn't God just will vaccines not to work?

I asked this question in the comments section, and the author responded to me:

First, before anyone points it out I believe she meant to say (although I could be wrong) that research into vaccines have not been proven to be clinically effective. This is ofcourse not true. Vaccines are very effective, and there are multiple published research papers showing how effective vaccines are. Doing a simple Google Scholar search for vaccine effectiveness will bring up thousands of papers concerning vaccine effectiveness.

The second thing the author claims is that no vaccines have a life time immunity. This is completely false.

Certain vaccines (as seen here) only provide immunity for a few years, but for other vaccines they could give a person immunity against a disease for the rest of their life, although for most additional vaccinations are recommend just to be safe, and with certain vaccines, such as the MMR vaccine, getting another vaccination several years after the first one is usually all that it takes for lifetime immunity.

I replied to the author's reply to my comment pointing these things out to her, and also once again asking her the question if God did not want people to use vaccines then why didn't he just make them not work at all:

I asked my question in this way (although I did make a little typo near the end *grumbles*) in hopes of preventing her from skirting around the question.

Not only did she not answer my question, she didn't even publish my reply. This is not surprising since she is well known for not publishing comments she doesn't like and doesn't fit her views. Infact it's very surprising she published my original comment in the first place.

So why exactly did she not answer my question that if vaccines were against God's will then why would they work at all?

Probably because the answer is (atleast for people who believe that all that works in the Universe is a result of God's will) they wouldn't, but they do work, and even she doesn't say vaccines don't work, she just thinks they're not effective.

With this in mind only one logical conclusion can be made: Vaccines are okay with God.

So why does this woman insist that God is not okay vaccines? There are two possible reasons:

First, she truly feels that God is against vaccines, but when she's confronted by someone whom can poke holes in her logic she just ignores the person and anything that person may present that questions her beliefs and would force her to reconsider them.

Second, her beliefs about vaccines are separate from her belief in God, and that she is using the fear of God's wrath, along with cherry picked passages from the bible, her own interpretation of those passages, disinformation, misinformation, and good old fashion fear mongering to promote her own anti-vaccination propaganda.

Facebook needs to start enforcing it's own rules!

Yesterday I saw something on Facebook that really p*ssed me off!

Granted I see lots of things on Facebook that p*ss me off (sometimes on an hourly bases) but the things that usually get my teeth grinding are just rude, or offensive, or ignorant, or all of the above. What I saw wasn't neither rude nor offensive, but it sure was ignorant, and it was definitely dangerous.

What ticked me off was an infograph posted on Green Med Info's Facebook page concerning a "study" about "GMO" insulin (which all insulin is) that claimed that certain people with type 2 diabetes can develop type 1 diabetes from injecting insulin. (Link to original post here)

While people with type 2 diabetes can develop type 1 diabetes over time there are usually several factors that can cause this, such as a person's diet, or whether they exercise, or if they take the medication that has been prescribed to them, or genetics. Insulin is not one of the causes. Infact it could prevent a person with type 2 diabetes from developing type 1 diabetes.

What gets me so angry about that post isn't just the sheer ignorance of it, or how outright dangerous it is for the people at Green Med Info to promote something like this (because despite the fact that it promotes quackery and fraud medicine, better known as alternative medicine, people do listen to and take "advice" from that page) this type of "info" could kill a person with type 2 diabetes if they take it to seriously and decide to stop taking insulin. Either that or result in a person developing type 1 diabetes, or slipping into a diabetic coma, or losing a body part. The very worst thing that could happen is that the parent of a child with type 2 diabetes reads that and decides not to give their child insulin and what I listed above happens to that child, and there is little they can do about because they are at the mercy of their parent (unless they tell a teacher or family member about what their parent is doing and that person gets the authorities involved).

Now, back to the original reason why I'm writing this.

I, along with many other people reported this post to Facebook hoping that the social media website would take down the post due to the fact that it could cause some people to do something that was dangerous and hazardous to their health, and warn Green Med Info not to post something like that again.

Facebook has done nothing.

As many of you have probably found out over time this isn't the only time that Facebook has failed to remove a post or a page that promotes stuff that's either dangerous and/or violates it's own rules.

There are lots of pages on Facebook that promote a great amount of medical misinformation that in the hands of an uninformed person could cause that person to do something that results in their death or the death of others. The biggest violators of this would be anti-vaccination pages and HIV denialism pages, two types of groups that promote medical misinformation that has led to multiple deaths. Such pages should not be allowed because the "information" they a spreading is harmful.

Then there are the pages that promote bigotry, which antisemitism seems to be the the one mostly promoted.

While the spreading of medical misinformation may be dangerous and for some people questionable whether or not it violates the rules, promoting bigotry in what ever form it may come in clearly violates the rules.

Now sometimes Facebook will do the right thing and remove a bigoted post or page, but more often than not it just doesn't happen and the person or people running the page continues to spew hate speech.

Facebook needs to better enforce it's own rules and take down posts and pages that violate it's own rules and promotes things that are dangerous.

I'm aware that the main reason why the people at Facebook do not often take down these pages is because of free speech concerns, and while I do understand that reasoning the fact remains is that Facebook has a set of guidelines and rules that everyone is suppose to obey, and when they don't enforce those guidelines and rules they become meaningless.

I know that Facebook is a private company and can remove any content it so chooses to. I just wish it would start doing so.

Anti-vaccers go to far... again.

This weekend members of the Anti-vaccination movement/cult proved once again just what type of people they really are, and just what lows they are willing to go to inorder to spread their propaganda.

And by "people" I mean scum bags.

This whole thing that I'm p*ssed off about starts off with something that has nothing to do with either vaccines or autism, but actually has to do with the kidnapping of over 200 school girls in Nigeria by the terrorist group Boko Haram, who are threatening to sell the girls off as "wives" (i.e. sex slaves).

So far there has been a huge outpouring of both condemnation against the terrorists who kidnapped these girls, and support for bringing the girls home.

Infact First Lady Michelle Obama recently posted this picture on the internet to show her support for these girls and their hopefull rescue, and also encouraging the terrorists to let them go:

Unfortunately there are some people who don't care how serious or sensitive a situation such as this is and will take a photo like this and digitally manipulated a photo such as this inorder to promote their own propaganda...

That is exactly what happened with this photo:

Now I could get into how BS the information on this poorly photoshopped picture is, or how insulting it is to autistic people, but I just want to focus on the group that decided it was okay to manipulate a photo of the First Lady showing her support to bring home a group of kidnapped school girls who may very well be sold as sex slaves if they aren't found and freed!

The group who manipulated the photo is call The Canary Party, a Anti-Vaccination group that barely pretends to be a political group.

Besides just publishing lies about and conspiracy theories about vaccines, they also publish anti-GMO propaganda, pro-alternative medicine propaganda, insist that autism is an epidemic, makes autism look like it's something that is life destroying and that autistic people can't function in society, both of which are horrible lies, and declares that anyone that says they are wrong to be bullies.

All of that is bad enough by itself, but then they go and manipulate a photo of the First Lady showing support for those many kidnapped school girls inorder to promote their lies while completely and totally disregarding the seriousness of the kidnappings, as well as being completely insensitive to what these girls are going through.

I guess there really is no low for the Anti-Vaccination movement. But on the bright side it does appear that this "stunt" has backfired on them, as they are receiving a bunch of negative comments on their Facebook page.

One last thing: I really hope these girls are freed and freed soon, and that the scum bags who kidnapped them are left in such a way that they can never do something like this ever again.

Anti-Vaccination Critics shutdown: How Facebook should prevent and punish Anti-Vaccination supporters (or anyone) who wrongfully get their critics banned from Facebook?

Over the past couple of weeks it's been revealed that Anti-Vaccination groups and their supporters on Facebook have been launching false flag attacks (and I don't mean types that Alex Jones thinks happens every time a shooting or a bombing or a natural disaster occurs in this country) against groups that are pro-vaccination and/or critical of anti-vaccination groups and their supporters and propaganda. These false flaggings have unfortunately resulted in the temporary (yet still wrongful) banning of multiple people and groups from Facebook who are critics of the Anti-Vaccination movement. This needs to stop. Infact not only does this need to stop, but the people who are making these false flag reports need to be punished.

While many of you have some ideas on what should be done inorder to curb false flag reporting (which I would love to hear from you in the comments section) I have a few suggestions of my own:

The first thing that needs to happen is that Facebook needs to make it easier to challenge a complaint and a ban. While you can do this even now, it's not an easy process. Plus a person should be given a chance to defend themselves before a ban is about to occur. No more automatic bans unless a certain amount of time has gone by after a complaint was sent (I say a minimum of six hours).

Now the second thing that should happen to help curb false flagging abuse on Facebook is that those that do abuse the reporting system need to have their ability to report posts and groups and individuals that they don't believe should be on Facebook more difficult. Granted I'm not saying they should be left unable to report someone or some group that really does contain offensive or illegal content (unless they continue to abuse the system even after restrictions have been placed on them, then their ability to report groups and people should be taken away, and they should be banned temporarily) but the process should be made more difficult for those that abuse the system, and probably should include a screen shot of any content that is being reported upon, as well as include more details about why something is being reported.

Going along side with the second suggestion that I believe Facebook needs to do inorder to curb false flagging abuse, after a person has already had restrictions put against for false flag abuse, if they do report someone or some group for their content and Facebook determines that it doesn't violate their policies, the person or group should be informed that someone sent a complaint against them that was struct down, and the person or group should be told whom that person is, and given the option of whether or not they want to block that individual.

Now these couple of suggestions might help against individuals who abuse the reporting system, but what about groups that do the same thing and organize their followers to report individuals and groups inorder to silence them (this can apply to any group, not just the anti-vaccination groups)?

First, for groups that do frequently abuse the reporting system, first give them a warning, then a ban if they continue, then a longer ban with a warning that if they continue to abuse the reporting system that their page will be removed and deleted, and if they continue to abuse the system, then Facebook should remove and delete that group.

The second thing that should be done to these groups that abuse the reporting system is that they should have the ability to control what is and isn't posted on their page and who can and cannot post on their page restricted as well.

Anti-vaccination groups (along with chemtrail, anti-GMO, fundamentalist groups, and generally any group that promotes conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, and bigotry) are notorious for blocking people and deleting any posts that they make that either counter-argues something that was posted in the group, or criticizes the group. One of the things that Facebook can do as a way to punish a group that abuses the reporting system is to alert the person whom has had a post deleted, or has been blocked, and give that person a chance to dispute the deletion or blocking. If they chose to try to prove that the deletion or blocking was unwarranted and didn't violate any of Facebook's rules, then Facebook will restore the post or unblock the person from the group, and also leave the group unable to delete anything else from that person, or block that person.

Now, do I believe that Facebook would do any of the things that I have suggested here? No, but I think that we all can agree that Facebook does need to do something inorder to curb false flag abuse.

Is that a FEMA... truck?

Reposted from my other blog site Is that a FEMA Camp?

Recently on a Facebook skeptics group that I belong to someone posted a very "curious" looking photo, along with the commentary by the person whom posted photo the somewhere else on Facebook:

Now the first thing that came to my mind when I saw that photo was, "Wow... that trailer needs a good wash."

All joking aside ofcourse what really came to my mind was that the words on the truck looked like it was put on there via digital photo manipulation (i.e. photoshopped) and even if it wasn't, then so what?

Now my first argument for why it is photoshopped is because of another photo that looks almost exactly like the first one provided to me via Illuminutti.com:

Now clearly the second picture is photoshopped, and to be all honest it's not even that good of a photoshop job either.

Ofcourse just because the second photo has clearly been digitally manipulated, I have to admit that it does not mean that the first photo has been digitally manipulated as well. If you look closely at the bottom words "FEMA DISASTER RELIEF" that while the font style used for the letters are similar to the ones on the top, they are infact different.

If the first photo was photoshopped, the second photoshopped photo was probably done by someone else whom used the closest font style that they could find to the original words... unless the person whom created the original photo forgot the original font style that they used.

Now another reason why I think the photo has been digitally manipulated is because of the trailer itself.

Besides just being in need of a good wash, it is clearly a used trailer due to the fact that there is a company logo right next to "FEMA DISASTER RELIEF", as well as a logo on the truck that is pulling the trailer.

So if this photo was real, what it would tell me isn't that FEMA is planning on "something" evil, it's that they're moving a trailer from one location to another to another, probably for some bureaucratic reasons, or it's being driven around just to make sure that everything is okay with it and the truck that's pulling it (and before you point out that the person claims that it's coming from a FBI building in Virginia I should like to point out that I don't take such claims seriously unless I have more proof that it really did come from a FBI building in Virginia).

Also, if the photo is real then it tells me is that FEMA is pretty underfunded if the only big rigs they can afford to buy are used and can't be washed every so often due to funding...

Now this brings me to another reason why I'm pretty sure the photo was photoshopped, that being that the government does not buy used stuff (with the exception of law enforcement buying used vehicles for undercover purposes). Even if the government did infact buy used vehicles, they would have atleast have given it a new paint job, and have put FEMA's actual logo on it rather than in big red words "FEMA DISASTER RELIEF".

Also, there is one more thing about the photo that has lead me to believe that it is fake, and that being the comment of the person themselves.

The comment made on the photo says that it's heading north after "leaving" the FBI building in Virginia. My question which one?

The obvious answer would ofcourse be Quantico, which is the location of both the FBI Academy and the FBI Laboratory. But thing about all of this (besides the fact that the person making the comment might have been mislead about where the truck is coming from and going to, or is just outright lying) is why would the FBI employ FEMA to do something that it itself could do? More importantly if the FBI was trying to do something secretive then why wouldn't it use either a blank vehicle, or a vehicle that has a name on it other than the name of another government agency on it in such clear, bold letters?

All the evidence put together has lead me to concluded that the photo is fake, and that either it was created for the purpose of fooling conspiracy theorists and having a good laugh at their gullibility, or by a conspiracy theorist whom wished to make his or her claims about police state conspiracy theories seem more legit.

5 Things I've noticed about... Social Media

Social media is probably one of the greatest inventions of the computer age.

It allows people from all over the world to interact with other people that under normal circumstances they would never have had a chance to interact with, and it has become an outlet for many to express either their thoughts or emotions.

Now there are a lot of things that I have noticed about social media (trust me, it's a lot) but I have narrowed to five different things.

So here are five things I've noticed about social media:

5. It's basically blogging.

Probably one of the biggest things that I really have noticed about social media that a lot of people probably overlook (mostly because they don't have a real blog site) is that everything that I can do on social media I can basically do on here. From posting photos and videos, to writing up long, drawn out rants that I hope people would read first in it's entirety before commenting on it, I can just as easily do here as I can on Facebook (only I can be a little more creative here with my posts).

I guess you could say that blogs (especially those that you can comment on and interact with the author) are the first types of social media. Infact some websites that are considered by many to be social media websites are actually blogs. Probably one of the best examples of this is Twitter which many people regard as one of the largest social media websites in the world. Infact it's actually a mirco-blog website in which many people express their thoughts on... 140 characters at a time.

4. They always change stuff.

Probably one of the biggest complaints about social media websites is that every once in a while they will change something about it that some people will complain about, regardless if the change is a good or a bad thing.

Many times these changes are minor, and are often times not that noticeable, and is really nothing to get in an uproar about, but sometimes the changes are major (like a complete redesign of the whole layout of the site's pages) and is something that no one has any say in whether or not they want to keep the old style that they have gotten use to and have modified to their liking.

3. They have a weird way of enforcing they TOS agreements.

Whats easier to get removed from a social media website? A picture that a model has uploaded of themselves in a skimpy bikini that doesn't actually violate the site's TOS agreement, and might be being used for legitimate business purposes, or a rant about Jews that clearly violates that website's rules about hate speech?

If you answered the picture of a model in the skimpy bikini, then you answered correctly.

The fact is that social media websites are probably far more likely to remove content from a user, or punish that user in some other way, for content that would only be offensive only to the most uptight or jealous of individuals and doesn't actually violate the TOS agreement, and doesn't hurt anyone, rather than remove content from someone whom post harmful and/or bigoted content that really does violate the TOS agreement of the website, and could incite a person to commit violence or do something else that is harmful.

Because of social media websites seeming unwillingness to remove content that really is or could be considered harmful or bigoted, and because it's just so easy to create a new account incase a person is kicked off of a social media website...

2. It has become a haven for whack jobs.

Social media is a great place to interact with like minded people who share the same or similar interests as you do. If I want to join a group for Walking Dead fans that's no problem because there are several of them on Facebook. Or if I want to join a group for skeptics, no problem there either. If I want to join a group that promotes conspiracy theories, or alternative medicine, that unfortunately is also no problem because there are a lot of groups like that on Facebook alone.

The fact is that social media has attracted a lot of people who believe in either really strange and/or possibly harmful stuff (i.e. conspiracy theorists, pushers of alternative medicine, bigots) mainly because it's both far easier and cheaper (most often times free) to set up a page on a social media website than it is to completely create your own website. You also have a better chance of reaching more people as well.

Now of all of the different types whack jobs on social media, there is one type of whack job that truly loves it, because...

1. It's become a paradise for stalkers.

Back in the pre-social media days if you wanted to stalk someone you really had to put some effort into it. Now many stalkers don't have to do much of anything inorder to stalk someone. All they have to do is check their victim's social media page and know where they're going or where they are at and really don't have to do much if any investigating inorder to do their stalking. Heck some stalkers don't even do that and stalk people exclusively online.

Social media is such a time saver for stalkers that if they are psychologically capable of it they can actually have a social life while screwing with someone else's life...

All joking aside, stalking is a big problem on social media, and while it is partially because some people put out more information about themselves then what they really should be putting on the internet, the main reason why stalking is such a big problem on social media is because people who stalk via social media do it because it is easy, and because they believe they can get away with it, which is not always the case. Infact some people might stalk a person over the internet and not even realize it. Also many people might get stalked on social media and not even know it.