#anti science

[creature-wizard]

Most people who believe in some "weird" thing like magic, ghosts, extraterrestrial visitors, cryptids, or whatever are not "anti-science." They generally believe that science is fundamentally correct about most things, but cannot adequately explain the "weird" thing they believe in.

If there is strong evidence against said weird thing, it's much more likely that they're just unaware of it, rather than being aware of it and actively choosing to disregard it. It's also more likely that they're unaware of scientific models that adequately explain it, rather than choosing to completely disregard said models.

Also, some people have genuinely had bizarre experiences that scientific models simply cannot explain yet. Like "three people in a small community independently had the exact same prophetic dream about an event they had no reason to expect" kind of bizarre. And when shit's this weird, the "scientific" explanations are just insultingly reductive.

Scientific literacy is good and should be encouraged, but being rude and dismissive to people who believe in "weird" things isn't the way to go. Most people who are into "weird" stuff tend to be curious by nature, so if you just present them with accessible scientific material that doesn't talk down to them, they'll often happily dive right in.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Colin Wright

Published: Oct 2, 2023

On September 25, the American Anthropological Association (AAA) and the Canadian Anthropology Society (CASCA) announced that they were cancelling a panel discussion titled “Let’s Talk About Sex, Baby: Why Biological Sex Remains a Necessary Analytic Category in Anthropology,” originally scheduled as part of their annual conference in Toronto from November 15–19. The cancellation and subsequent response by the two organizations shows the extent to which gender ideology has captured academic anthropology.

The panel would have featured six female scientists, specializing in biology and anthropology, to address their profession’s growing denial of biological sex as a valid and relevant category. While terminological confusion surrounding the distinction between sex and gender roles has been a persistent issue within anthropology for decades, the total refusal of some to recognize sex as a real biological variable is a more recent phenomenon. The panel organizers, eager to facilitate an open discussion among anthropologists and entertain diverse perspectives on a contentious issue, considered the AAA/CASCA conference an optimal venue to host such a conversation.

The organizations accepted the “Let’s Talk About Sex” panel without incident on July 13, and planned to feature it alongside other panels including those on politically oriented subjects, such as “Trans Latinx Methodologies,” “Exploring Activist Anthropology,” and “Reimagining Anthropology as Restorative Justice.” Elizabeth Weiss, a professor of anthropology at San José State University, was one of the slated panelists. She had intended to discuss the significance in bio-archaeology and forensic anthropology of using skeletal remains to establish a decedent’s sex. While a 2018 article in Discover titled “Skeletal Studies Show Sex, Like Gender, Exists Along a Spectrum” reached different conclusions, Weiss planned to discuss how scientific breakthroughs have made determining the sex of skeletal remains a more exact science. Her presentation was to be moderate; she titled it “No Bones About It: Skeletons Are Binary; People May Not Be,” and conceded in her abstract the growing need in forensics to “to ensure that skeletal finds are identified by both biological sex and their gender identity” due to “the current rise in transitioning individuals and their overrepresentation as crime victims.”

Despite having already approved the panel, the presidents of the AAA (Ramona Pérez) and CASCA (Monica Heller) unexpectedly issued a joint letter on September 25 notifying the “Let’s Talk About Sex” presenters that their panel was cancelled. They claimed that the panel’s subject matter conflicted with their organizations’ values, jeopardized “the safety and dignity of our members,” and eroded the program’s “scientific integrity.” They further asserted the panel’s ideas (i.e., that sex is a real and important biological variable) would “cause harm to members represented by the Trans and LGBTQI of the anthropological community as well as the community at large.” To ensure that similar discussions would not be approved in the future, the AAA/CASCA vowed to “undertake a major review of the processes associated with vetting sessions at our annual meetings.”

The following day, the panelists issued a response letter, expressing their disappointment that the AAA and CASCA presidents had “chosen to forbid scholarly dialogue” on the topic. They rejected the “false accusation” that supporting the “continued use of biological sex categories (e.g., male and female; man and woman) is to imperil the safety of the LGBTQI community.” The panelists called “particularly egregious” the AAA/CASCA’s assertion that the panel would compromise the program’s “scientific integrity.” They noted that, ironically, the AAA/CASCA’s “decision to anathematize our panel looks very much like an anti-science response to a politicized lobbying campaign.”

I spoke with Weiss, who expressed her frustration over the canceled panel and the two presidents’ stifling of honest discussion about sex. She was concerned about the continual shifting of goalposts on the issue:

We used to say there’s sex, and gender. Sex is biological, and gender is not. Then it’s no, you can no longer talk about sex. Sex and gender are one, and separating the two makes you a transphobe, when of course it doesn’t. In anthropology and many topics, the goalposts are continuously moved. And, because of that, we need to stand up and say, “I’m not moving from my place unless there’s good scientific evidence that my place is wrong.” And I don’t think there is good scientific evidence that there are more than two sexes.

Weiss was not the only person to object. When I broke news of the cancellation on X, it immediately went viral. At the time of writing, my post has more than 2.4 million views, and the episode has ignited public outcry from individuals and academics across the political spectrum. Science writer Michael Shermer called the AAA and CASCA’s presidents’ letter “shameful” and an “utterly absurd blank slate denial of human nature.” Timur Kuran, a professor of economics and political science at Duke University, described it as “absolutely appalling.” Jeffrey Flier, the Harvard University distinguished service professor and former dean of the Harvard Medical School, viewed it as “a chilling declaration of war on scholarly controversy.” Even Elon Musk expressed his disbelief with a single word: “Wow.”

Despite the backlash, the AAA and CASCA have held firm. On September 28, the AAA posted a statement on its website titled “No Place For Transphobia in Anthropology: Session Pulled from Annual Meeting Program.” The statement reiterated the stance outlined in the initial letter, declaring the “Let’s Talk About Sex” panel an affront to its values and claiming that it endangered AAA members’ safety and lacked scientific rigor.

The AAA’s statement claimed that the now-canceled panel was at odds with their first ethical principle of professional responsibility: “Do no harm.” It likened the scuttled panel’s “gender critical scholarship” to the “race science of the late 19th and early 20th centuries,” the main goal of which was to “advance a ‘scientific’ reason to question the humanity of already marginalized groups of people.” In this instance, the AAA argued, “those who exist outside a strict and narrow sex/gender binary” are being targeted.

Weiss remains unconvinced by this moral posturing. “If the panel was so egregious,” she asked, “why had it been accepted in the first place?”

The AAA also claimed that Weiss’s panel lacked “scientific integrity,” and that she and her fellow panelists “relied on assumptions that ran contrary to the settled science in our discipline.” The panelists, the AAA argued, had committed “one of the cardinal sins of scholarship” by “assum[ing] the truth of the proposition that . . . sex and gender are simplistically binary, and that this is a fact with meaningful implications for the discipline.” In fact, the AAA claimed, the panelists’ views “contradict scientific evidence” about sex and gender, since “[a]round the world and throughout history, there have always been people whose gender roles do not align neatly with their reproductive anatomy.”

There is much to respond to in this portion of AAA’s statement. First, it’s ironic for the organization to accuse scientists of committing the “cardinal sin” of “assuming the truth” of something, and then to justify cancelling those scientists’ panel on the grounds that the panelists refuse to accept purportedly “settled science.” Second, the panel was organized to discuss biological sex (i.e., the biology of males and females), not “gender roles”; pivoting from discussions of basic biology to murkier debates about sex-related social roles and expectations is a common tactic of gender ideologues. Third, the AAA’s argument that a person’s “gender role” might not “align neatly” with his or her reproductive anatomy implies the existence of normative behaviors for members of each sex. Indeed, this is a central tenet of gender ideology that many people dispute and warrants the kind of discussion the panel intended to provide.

The AAA’s statement made another faulty allegation, this time against Weiss for using “sex identification” instead of “sex estimation” when assessing the sex of skeletal remains. The AAA claimed that Weiss’s choice of terminology was problematic and unscholarly because it assumes a “determinative” process that “is easily influenced by cognitive bias on the part of the researcher.”

Weiss, however, rejects the AAA’s notion that the term “sex determination” is outdated or improper. She emphasized that “sex determination” is frequently used in the literature, as demonstrated in numerous contemporary anthropology papers, along with “sex estimation.” Weiss said, “I tend not to use the term ‘sex estimation’ because to estimate is usually associated with a numeric value; thus, I do use the term ‘age estimation.’ But just as ‘age estimation’ does not mean that there is no actual age of an individual and that biological age changes don’t exist, ‘sex estimation’ does not mean that there isn’t a biological sex binary.” She also contested the AAA’s claim that anthropologists’ use of “sex estimation” is meant to accommodate people who identify as transgender or non-binary. Rather, she said, “sex estimation” is used when “anthropologists are not 100 [percent] sure of their accuracy for a variety of reasons, including that the remains may be fragmented.” But as these methods improve—which was a focus of her talk—such “estimations” become increasingly determinative.

After making that unfounded allegation against Weiss, the AAA further embarrasses itself by claiming that “There is no single biological standard by which all humans can be reliably sorted into a binary male/female sex classification,” and that sex and gender are “historically and geographically contextual, deeply entangled, and dynamically mutable categories.”

Each of these assertions is empirically false. An individual’s sex can be determined by observing their primary sex organs, or gonads, as these organs determine the type of gamete an individual can or would have the function to produce. The existence of a very rare subset of individuals with developmental conditions that make their sex difficult to assess does not substantiate the existence of a third sex. Sex is binary because are only two sexes, not because every human in existence is neatly classifiable. Additionally, while some organisms are capable of changing sex, humans are not among them. Therefore, the assertion that human sex is “dynamically mutable” is false.

Weiss appropriately highlights the “false equivalency” inherent in the claim that the existence of people with intersex conditions disproves the binary nature of sex. “People who are born intersex or with disorders of sex development are not nonbinary or transgender, they are individuals with medical pathologies,” she said. “We would not argue that because some people are born with polydactyly (extra fingers or toes), often seen in inbred populations, that you can’t say that humans have ten fingers and ten toes. It's an absurd conclusion.”

On September 29, the AAA posted a Letter of Support on its website, penned by anthropologists Agustin Fuentes, Kathryn Clancy, and Robin Nelson, endorsing the decision to cancel the “Let’s Talk About Sex” session. Again, the primary motivation cited was the panel’s opposition to the supposed “settled science” concerning sex. The authors disputed the panelists’ claim that the term “sex” was being supplanted by “gender” in anthropology, claiming instead that there is “massive work on these terms, and their entanglements and nuances.” They also reiterated the AAA’s false accusation that the term “sex determination” was problematic and outdated. Nonetheless, the canceled panel could have served as a prime venue to discuss these issues.

In response to these calls for censorship, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) issued an open letter to the AAA and CASCA. FIRE characterized the groups’ decision to cancel the panel as a “retreat” from their scientific mission, which “requires unwavering dedication to free inquiry and open dialogue.” It argued that this mission “cannot coexist with inherently subjective standards of ‘harm,’ ‘safety,’ and ‘dignity,’ which are inevitably used to suppress ideas that cause discomfort or conflict with certain political or ideological commitments.” FIRE implored the AAA and CASCA to “reconsider this decision and to recommit to the principles of intellectual freedom and open discourse that are essential to the organizations’ academic missions.” FIRE’s open letter has garnered signatures from nearly 100 academics, including Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker and Princeton University’s Robert P. George. FIRE invites additional academic faculty to add their names.

The initial letter and subsequent statement by the AAA/CASCA present a particularly jarring illustration of the undermining of science in the name of “social justice.” The organizations have embarrassed themselves yet lack the self-awareness to realize it. The historian of science Alice Dreger called the AAA and CASCA presidents’ use of the term “cardinal sin” appropriate “because Pérez and Heller are working from dogma so heavy it is worthy of the Vatican.” Indeed, they have fallen prey to gender ideologues, driven into a moral panic by the purported dangers of defending the existence of biological sex to people whose sex distresses them. The AAA/CASCA have determined that it is necessary not only to lie to these people about their sex but also to deceive the rest of us about longstanding, foundational, and universal truths about sex.

Science can advance only within a system and culture that values open inquiry and robust debate. The AAA and CASCA are not just barring a panel of experts with diverse and valid perspectives on biological sex from expressing their well-considered conclusions; they are denying conference attendees the opportunity to hear diverse viewpoints and partake in constructive conversations on a controversial subject. Such actions obstruct the path of scientific progress.

“When you move away from the truth, no good can come from it,” Weiss says. The AAA and CASCA would be wise to ponder that reality.

==

I miss the days when anti-science meant creationists with "Intelligent Design," flat Earthers, and Jenny McCarthy-style MMR anti-vaxers.

It's weird that archaeologists are now denying evolution and pretending not to know how babies are made. Looks like creationists aren't the only evolution-denial game in town any more.

[abronia-graminea]

I hate you homeopathy, I hate you astrology, I hate you flat earthers, I hate you anti vaxxers, I hate you chiropractic, I hate you talking to water, I hate you holistic bullshit, I hate you anti science

[anti-science-cohost]

When something is flawed, it’s imperfect! This makes perfectionist start decaying, they decay so hard they cry!! The moisture creates mold, not to be confused with milfs. Milfs are mothers who are elfs, however it has to be spelled phoneticly otherwise 100 years dungeon. It’s sad to think about. It makes me lose my mind. It loosens out of its place and starts jumping all over!! It’s so sad to think about. It makes me cry!!! When I cry, I c rye. Since rye bread is disgusting, this makes me see the truth. That’s why crying isn’t real, since rye bread has no possible way of being that ASS tasting. Not confused with SAS, the stupid geometry method. Shapes are annoying. Everything is made of shapes, except when they’re not. When they’re not. They turn into knots. This makes a cat grab your tounge as they are afraid of knots, and that’s what your tongue is in. It’s hard to believe that a cat would do that, but it isn’t. Anyway, cats have bats. They bat at people and make you rat people out. Then they catch you because you’re a rat. It’s interesting to think about and truest a fascination.

[gramarobin]

[atheostic]

[joy-haver]

“Science is a tool of oppression”

and

“science has saved many lives and is necessary for species survival”

Are not contradicting statements.

And this is (partially) due to the fact that scientific production is often goal oriented. And that the products of science can be repurposed to reinforce power structures whether that was the initial goal or not.

The creation of insulin: one of humanities great accomplishments. Now insulin prices are being used to extract as much money as possible from diabetics before inevitably letting them die of neglect and lack of access. Because it’s not about saving you. It’s about taking every last drop of money from you.

Vaccines: genuinely one of the most helpful changes in how humans live is that we can now get vaccinated against many diseases. Many of the people you love are only alive because of vaccines. However, because they are so effective, they can be used as bait to do experiments on marginalized people, like the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment. Who has access to vaccines can also be a form of eugenics. Diseases that effect majority White nations are far more likely to get vaccines made. even when vaccines already exist for diseases effecting majority POC nations, those vaccines are not distributed. Even a tool as effective at saving human life can be a tool of destruction, because you get to choose who not to save. Because the goal is eugenics, not preservation of life.

Climate change: climate change is real. It is human caused. But more so, it is caused by science and industry. By the accumulation of power. Humans are not inevitably some blight upon the earth. Those in power have chosen for us to be. They have spent several hundred years using every resource at their disposal to strip the earth of all life sustaining resources. They have advanced science to make areas on this planet uninhabitable. They have advanced science to make it impossible to live off the land, to live outside their power. In order to subjugate the world, they have to destroy any alternative way of survival. They must extract every resource possible. They have to lock it away and sell it to you. But you know what, it doesn’t have to be that way. We can use science to increase ecosystem complexity. To build food forests. To manage invasive species and encourage native ones. To mitigate so many of the harms we have caused. But that has not been the goal of science as an institution. Subjugation has.

Neither rigid belief in science nor science-denial will save us.

Only we can save us.

We have to comb thru and find what’s useful. We have to create our own uses. We must make our own medicines. We must not let them use these tools against us. We must provide for each other. We must orient our goals at actually helping the world, not controlling it.

[mali-umkin]

OP from the IQ post I reblogged blocked me, for, I quote, saying that the WAIS test is a valid scientific tool measuring... What it measures. They're comparing IQ tests to astrology and labelling it a marker of privilege. If y'all want to see another example of terminally online anti-science 'leftist' (in quotations marks because this is precisely what leftism must strive to avoid) propaganda, here you have.

Also a heads up, in France IQ tests are being performed for free at hospitals which literally allows people to be eligible for life-long financial help from the state. This is going exactly where progressist discoursed have to go online at some point and that's a pity: a test that actually tells us that people are differently abled isn't a good thing because it tells us people are different and apparently that makes them less worthy... Equality taking over equity as always... Might it be that it's actually the people that are critical of the IQ test that are prejudiced and for some reason consider that getting such or such number makes you less worthy, as opposed to simply meaning you might need help or look for further diagnosis? What do you not understand about the fact IQ measures IQ?

[winglssdemon]

Omg

Weight loss does not automatically mean your body is eating your muscles and organs. The antivaxxer level of anti science on this site when it comes to weight loss is unbelievable.

Your body will only start "eating" your muscles if you're losing weight AND YOU DONT NEED TO AND ARE HEADED TO BEING UNDERWEIGHT.

WEIGHT LOSS CAN BE SUSTAINABLE. WEIGHT LOSS IS A VIABLE AND SOMETIMES A NEEDED OPTION FOR SOME PEOPLE.

HUGE REMINDER THAT THERE ARE TIMES WHEN WEIGHT LOSS CAN HELP DISABLED FOLK ESP FOLK WITH CHRONIC PAIN. It's not a cure-all but people with chronic pain experience large amounts of inflammation in the body and having excess adipose CAN cause inflammation just by itself. Compound that with extra weight on joints can make movement that may already be difficult even more difficult.

And while I'm on this rant, I'm SO sick of people acting like overeating and binging aren't disordered eating and also forms of self harm. I'm sick of the "body positive" activists who get SO mad that some fat people HAVE become fat through overeating and binging and want to talk about it. Like why can't those of us who gained weight through disordered behaviors actually talk about it? Why don't you talk about or let others talk about the fact that some people go from a restrictive eating disorder to a binge eating disorder.

Reasons Why I a Disabled Person decided to lose weight:

1. I knew I was eating too much junk food and not eating enough fruits and vegetables. So I started working on moderating how much junk food I was intaking and I have been trying really hard to make sure I choose healthier options.

2. My chest was/is too big. It was beginning to cause actual dysphoria issues along with the excess weight giving me constant shoulder and neck pain. Weight loss cannot be targeted at any specific part of your body, but overall weight loss can help you lose cup sizes.

3. The food was making my chronic pain worse. Many ultra processed foods are known to increase pain in people with chronic pain and it's been proven in multiple studies that eating a healthier diet can help decrease pain. It won't get rid of it, but it can help.

4. I was using food as a maladaptive coping mechanism. Stress eating is not actually helpful in the long run. Sure it makes you feel better while you're eating it, but once it's gone the problems, the pain, the stress is all still there.

5. I want to be able to use my crutches and KAFOs more often and having already lost a fair amount of weight, I can definitely 100% say that I have less difficulty using them than when I was at my heaviest. It's easier for myself to push myself in my wheelchair, and it's easier to propel myself in sled hockey. Among this, getting a bigger chair was just out of the question when I last ordered my most recent chair. The world is already so hostile to wheelchair users and spaces are already so narrow, it's easier to have a smaller chair if possible. Like we can talk all we want about how things need to be more accessible and universal design needs to be implemented everywhere so people in all sizes of wheelchairs esp those in power chairs, can get around easily without this being something to worry about, but at the end of the day, I want to be able to get through as best I can, and making sure I'm not going any bigger with my wheelchair is legit just something I have to do.

And you know what, even with all of these reasons, there's still the fact that people deserve bodily autonomy so if I want to safely lose weight for ANY reason, then that's my choice.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Daisy Stephens

Published: Jul 24, 2022

The Black Trowel Collective, a group of American archaeologists, claimed there are suggestions that many historical cultures had more than two genders and so archaeologists should be "wary of projecting our modern sex and gender identity categories onto past individuals".

The group claimed scientists have a "long history of imposing modern patriarchal gender and sexual norms onto the past".

"Human gender is highly variable and... human beings have historically been comfortable with a range of genders beyond modern 'masculine' and 'feminine' binaries," the group wrote in a blog post.

The Daily Mail claims that some academics are beginning to label ancient human skeletons as 'non-binary' or 'gender neutral'.

The idea has been criticised by historian Jeremy Black, who said gender is key to understanding history.

"It is an absurd proposition as the difference between genders, just as the difference between religious, social and national groups, are key motors in history," he told the Daily Mail.

"This very ideological approach to knowledge means that we're in danger of making knowledge itself simply a matter of political preference."

==

Life continues to imitate parody. 🤡

"projecting our modern sex and gender identity categories onto past individuals"

Current gender woo is the invention and imposition of bored, modern first-world academic elites, which makes this absurdly ironic.

"we're in danger of making knowledge itself simply a matter of political preference."

This is literally the postmodern, social constructivist belief and objective.

No one ever needs to respond to this deranged ideology with anything other than "no."

[arctic-hands]

The most depressing part of Beyond The Curve, a documentary about flat earthers, is that it came out before covid and I think at this point that science denialism has become so irreparably ingrained in (American, at least, no experience with other countries) society at large despite the overwhelming evidence of the Earth being round, of human-induced climate catastrophe, of covid and the precautions we could be doing to prevent it, it's far too late to be able to patiently explain any of this to conspiracy theorists anymore. It's so entrenched in their very personalities that they'll never change at this point because if they acknowledge the evidence that they're wrong, they would be forced to strip themselves of their core identities.

[anti-science-cohost]

When a computer gets tired, it’s fan starts running to cool it down. However, to start a fan running it needs to have its blades start swinging. A tire swing can help with this, as it’s used to being tired and swings constantly because of kids on it. Especially glass children, as glass children are usually ignored by their parents because of reasons so they have to swing sadly on a tire swing. Along with that, due to being MADE OF GLASS, they’re are ignored due to being a freak of nature. This makes them also stare out of a window sadly as it rains. Especially during car rides. Only during 3 minute and 14 second ones though! Otherwise they’ll be staring to long. They’ll zone out then and zone into the twilight zone and get zoned all over the place. Speaking of the twilight zone, it’s it’s favorite show. It had twilight sparkle talking about communism. It’s symbolic, probably. But twilight sparkle has her own symbol, a cutie mark I think it’s called? Which doesn’t make sense, because in society’s standards at the time ‘nerdy’ people weren’t smart. Therefore. When computers get hot it proves twilight sparkle isn’t.

[benevolentdinosaur]

I think people who go "wahh Pluto is still a planet how could they kick him out 🥺" and people who are like "nooo dinosaurs shouldn't have feathers they look so lame now 😡" are actually the same people.

[quinnfabrayapologist]

TERF on twitter is complaining that she went to university, paid for lecturers to teach her psychology, and then found that her lecturers were pro trans.

Asked her if maybe, just maybe, the experts she's paying thousands to teach her psychology are pro trans for a reason. Clearly they know more about psychology than her, hence her learning from them, and they've been in the field for years. Maybe they know more than her?

Her response? "Nope". She then goes on to say they've been ideologically captured by the 'woke mob' and are betraying science for fear of being hounded out of their jobs.

Asked again, this time with different phrasing, if she was telling me that a minority (literally like half a percent of the population) had infiltrated every scientific body and school/university in the country (perhaps the planet) and infected every aspect of it, from the ground up, into betraying their principals and lying that trans people are valid, despite them not believing this and science disagreeing. Or is it more likely that experts in the field have drawn their own conclusions, and just happen to know more than a first year student?

Her response? Infiltration is more likely because the 'woke mob' have 'captured' every one of her lecturers and her university.

This is why you can't reason with TERFs. It's not that they won't listen to your argument, it's that they're so ruddy stupid they'll believe the most crackpot conspiracies before they accept they're wrong.

[undeadentropy]

After being stuck in this hellstate for some time, I think I've cracked to code of why Florida is Like That. So many people here are neurodivergent as hell. But they're also undiagnosed, and believe Bill Gates puts autism in vaccines in order to serve Satan's goal of total population control. Everyone masks as hard as they can, and believes everyone else does the same thing. If that mask falls off, you're just being a lazy baby, because everyone else deals with it too. They think disability is a weakness that you choose, so they hide it.

And I don't need to tell you what such a mindset will do to someone who's neurodivergent. Their self hatred and hatred of the world consumes them from the inside. Forget coping mechanisms. They aren't even at the point of admitting something is wrong. Because if there is, they're conditioned to think it's their own fault.

Florida's issues with education are much older than this governor. Many don't believe in climate change even as it ravages their state. It's much easier to believe democrats are controlling the weather. Mentioning evolution being a thing is bound to set many people off. Science turns people away from God. The only book you need is the King James Bible.

This is a very Christian state, and I mean that in a deeply fundamentalist way. They believe the suffering is the point, and they will be rewarded for it when they die. They believe God justifies their hatred, and it makes them good people to be blind to other peoples suffering. No one cared about their's, so why would they care about anyone else? They're angry, bitter, and miserable, and believe that's proof they're a good Christian. Anyone who wants things to be better is siding with the literal devil.

Anyhow, can't wait to get out of this miserable place for good. I never would have come here if I had any sort of choice. Don't get me wrong, there's still plenty of good people here. But the fucked up culture can be tasted in the sweltering wet air. It's a beautiful place, but tainted with ignorance, misery, evil, and hatred.