Viruses Don’t Exist: Change My Mind 2.0

What do you think about all this?

 

Why? Your entire insane premise is based on fundamentalism. You may be attempting coy here, but it's nakedly transparent. My issues aren't with the Abrahamic God, they're with people who seemed determined to regress society and scientific progress to an archaic time where magic, in the form of ritual, substances, or prayer, somehow provided a curatic effect. You don't pray away cancer reliably anymore than you do so serious respiratory diseases.

Either you're convinced that every physician and researcher working in/around virology is intentionally fraudulent or more than a century of peer-reviewed research is grossly mistaken. Based on these replies and those in prior threads, I think it's the former. The same insane premise is found in most pseudoscience and science-denying fundamentalist circles that will move goalposts to irrational extremes to justify their woo. It's the same ridiculousness that empowers Young Earth Creationists, flat earthers, New Age homeopathy, and other fringe elements that wish to conflate baseless nonsense with well-established science.

Frankly, referring to virology as a "religion" is in of itself insane. Again, conflating methological empiricism with "religion" utterly ignores the materialistic grounding in the former. It's not a commentary on God, for or against, and using it as such is abusing the entire concept. Science is based on observation. Our understanding of the world changes with new observation(s) and is the complete antithesis of dogma. Cherry picking data, misrepresenting it, or even simply quoting pseudoscientific nonsense not rigorously put through peer-review (read: repeatability and sound procedures) should be dismissed. Waxing persecution and making YouTube videos or online woo articles your sources is, well, silly.

Note: Any research should be peer-reviewed. I've seen more than a few papers in my field rejected for procedural or data errors and one that tried to tie diagenic/catagenic processes to a presupposed age of the Earth, based on Biblical *hand waiving* ages. Mind you, the conditions proposed for such processes don't exist on the Earth, let alone explain most (if not all) reservoirs.

The meat is in the execution: woo methods of hydrocarbon formation fail to predict new reserves. The same is true with virology. Medicine has well-established diagnostic and treatment plans for an infectous agent that you seem to deny exists.

Both forms of denialism and pseudoscience (to be generous) fail to produce in-practice results. "I get better naturally" is simply survivor bias. It's no better than saying "I haven't died in a plane crash, so plane crashes don't happen."

 

The challenge with this argument for me is similar to arguing about climate change or even arguing with flat Earthers. They use phrases and terms that I don't understand and doubt they do either. I don't have the time or the academic background to try to figure out what they're trying to say and attempt to refute it. One thing that I do notice is that they will rarely present their own models and theories to be tested and examined. It's simply an effort to poke holes in existing theories. And it's fine to do that - even a good thing. But if they thought they had workable models, it seems like they would present them. They rarely do. How many flat Earthers have even tried to present a serious model that could be tested? How many who don't believe in viruses have willingly exposed themselves to Ebola to document that theory? How many people who think meteorology is crap are able to predict tornado outbreaks a week out without relying upon forecasts prepared by others? There just rarely seems to be any effort to build, create, or develop anything on their part, which is telling to me.

 

I suppose its a credit to the primacy of science and reason that hokum and bigotry have to be presented in sciency sounding words and language to get any kind of hearing, cant just say "the Bible says so" anymore and not get laughed out of any room (or forum).

 

Hadn't thought of it that way. That's an interesting point.

 

We get it, this is your one rhetorical trick and you aren't going to stop using it!

 

This is your standard argument for everything though, it always goes like "something generally accepted as true is actually fake/exaggerated and its like a religion/cult." I mean when you were doing light holocaust denial years ago on this forum that was basically your argument too. Its even the case when you are arguing esoteric religious doctrine. And in this case viruses.

 

The basic problem for all your arguments is that just because all human knowledge is unstable/impermanent, it doesn't make religious doctrine, hokum and flim-flam true.

 

You are the first person to use "virus denier" on this thread as far as I can tell, but I suppose your bit doesnt work as well without a persecution complex attached

 

Great, there is plenty of pseudoscience around and even accepted as legitimate (especially in criminal justice), but again, that doesn't make you right about your pet theories.