#88 buddy larsen – The fact remains that there is only one Western country where anyone even listens to those that believe the following; that rather than believe the truth, unearthed by hundreds of years of hard work, of modern science (in particular an ancient Earth shaped by such things as erosion and plate tectonics) one should instead take as literal and unquestionable truth the drug-addled ramblings of various members of a tribe of Bronze Age nomads, poorly translated several times by people with an axe to grind.

The Origin of Species versus Genesis? No contest. Or at least, only in America is there a contest.

Genemod crops? Maybe. I’d like to see someone hybridise tomatoes and flounders by any natural means, however, for example.

Alternative medicine? Well, two points here. For most of history, up until about 1900, there was none of what is now called “conventional” medicine. I disapprove just as much as you do of the really weird stuff – such as crystal therapy, distance healing, diagnostics by dowsing, etc. However, herbal and nutritional therapies are an entirely different matter. And quackery is not confined to “alternative” practitioners either. I remember a case I was personally involved in; that of a workmate who was sent from GP back and forth to just about every sort of specialist under the sun over more than a year, with no results and at horrifying expense, only to be cured in the end by a simple nutritional therapy.

What therapy? Very simple. Vitamin C, and he had scurvy.