The freedom to make wrongheaded claims

May 23, 2009 Letters

Dear Editor,
Guyanese seem to have developed a new characteristic; the ability to shamelessly and boldly make a public exhibition of their ignorance.
And when this brazenness is broadcast to the wider world of educated and intelligent people it embarrasses others who are also of Guyanese origin.
Recently, I was reading an international newspaper which carries a section on weird and stupid news; imagine my chagrin when I saw an Associated Press (AP) story headlined: “Guyana warns TV station airing religious claims”.

Apparently the Advisory Committee on Broadcasting had to instill common sense and a modicum of intelligence to a religious TV programme which was claiming that their pastors have “healing powers”.
The AP report says the Advisory Committee on Broadcasting believes that people might be persuaded to reject conventional medicine.
Apparently this small body of sensible people is afraid that some of our citizens will opt for the “snake oil” instead. The report added that the church should not broadcast such statements unless verified by medical experts.

Just checking the letter columns in the newspapers, one would see how many outrageous and misleading claims made by religious fundamentalists are debunked on a daily basis.
Freedom of expression is allowing just about anything to be said in Guyana and religious charlatans are having a field day abusing this privilege. It is the citizens’ responsibility to investigate all of their claims. In this regard, Justin de Freitas’ schooling of Pastor Daniel Singh and others is legendary.

Pastor Singh in his (GC) letter of May 20th says, “I would suggest to him that maybe the missing link is not in the monkey cage, but under the sea — the mermaid! Why not?” This is brazen sarcasm.
The Mermaid, as even a child knows, Pastor Singh, is a mythical creature, except perhaps to you and others who believe in mythical things, that’s why not. Also, no one with a high school science education would think that a “missing link” is in “the monkey cage” at a zoo.

And any child with a brain capable of logic will know that something is not “missing” if it could be “found” in a cage. “Earth’s composition is made up of both matter and anti-matter,” Pastor Singh unashamedly declares. I hope no school child read this and believed it. The fact is that matter and anti-matter would annihilate each other on contact. Claiming that earth is made of anti-matter, among other things, is so wrong that is unbelievable that anyone would make this claim.

Scientists in Switzerland are not “building a gigantic time machine”, as Pastor Singh claims. The Large Hadron Collider, run by CERN, is simply the world’s most powerful particle accelerator and it is being used to study how the fundamental units of nature behave when they collide at very high speeds.
Matter, as some of us believe, is a very concentrated form of energy. We know, thanks to Einstein, that matter and energy are interchangeable. Colliding particles in CERN experiments can help reproduce conditions that existed shortly after the Big Bang, giving us both knowledge of the subatomic world and expanding our knowledge of the universe.

Of course, some people believe that such experiments are wholly unnecessary; they will instead ask their God about the nature of universe and he will “reveal” it all to them. They will then write letters to the newspapers telling us what we need know – about mermaids, ancestral tree monkeys, miraculous polio cures, and a magical giant in the sky who, equipped with a pencil and paper, is creating a diary of our lives.
Pastor Singh ended his letter by saying “it is much more entertaining to watch a re-run of Planet Of The Apes.” Perhaps, for him it is.
Lutchman Gossai