dreamer_easy: (we are as gods)
dreamer_easy ([personal profile] dreamer_easy) wrote2009-12-29 08:17 am

woo

Discovered the term "woo" at a particularly smug militant atheist blog this morning. Can't quite work out if it refers to falsifiable superstition and/or divisive OTWism, or to all forms of spirituality. These things are always confusing when you're a naturalist freethinker up to your elbows in gods. Require advice.

(Also need advice on an alternative term for "militant atheists" so as not to piss off majority of atheists who are not ignorant evangelising twerps. In the meantime here's something we can both enjoy: Fred Nile nosedives after distributing Islamophobic "survey". OWAG.)

ETA: By a circuitous route, however, that annoying blog did lead me to Dr. Scudder's Tales for Little Readers About the Heathen.

[identity profile] endis-ni.livejournal.com 2009-12-28 10:41 pm (UTC)(link)
My understanding of the term "woo" relates to dubious medical claims that at best can't be proved by double-blind randomised testing, and at worst can be proved by those same methods to be actively harmful. Bad Science possibly popularised the term (http://www.badscience.net/).

I reckon therefore that atheist blogs have taken the term for things that can't be empirically proved in religion. I could be wrong, though.

[identity profile] kateorman.livejournal.com 2009-12-31 02:34 am (UTC)(link)
Ah! *goes for a rummage at Bad Science* Say, what's with the nutritionist rubber ducky?

[identity profile] endis-ni.livejournal.com 2009-12-31 06:26 pm (UTC)(link)
Ah, the unofficial mascot of everyone debunking, well, quacks. It was possibly Andy Lewis with his Quackometer (http://www.quackometer.net/) that started it.

[identity profile] kateorman.livejournal.com 2009-12-31 11:59 pm (UTC)(link)
*slaps forehead* Of course! :D