• Published 9th Oct 2016
  • 1,800 Views, 1 Comments

(SiC) Part 9 - Sailing Through The Storm - Brian Jacko



Sailing through the storm is never fun. It can be dangerous and scary, but also necessary. The ponies are facing some of the hardest times of their lives, some much worse than others. Could this be the end of SiC, or will they somehow prevail?

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Twilight Talks

Princess Celestia walked up the stairs to the balcony where royalty sat to watch plays. At the top of the stairs, there were two curtains that the guards held open for her to enter through. There she saw Princess Luna with her two front hooves resting on top of a golden railing that acted as a decorative safety precaution. She turned and saw Princess Cadence who was holding her head up with her two hooves against her cheeks. Luna and Cadence were both wearing fancy dresses; Celestia was not wearing any attire. Celestia walked over and took a seat in-between the other two princesses. She noticed that there was a microphone for her to speak into that was attached to the railing and there was a rope that was hanging from the ceiling. "Hello, my sister. Is that microphone off?" Clestia asked quietly.

"Welcome," Princess Luna said. "It is indeed off and you can turn it on if you wish to say something."

"Well, it's nice to see you both here," Celestia said as she quickly examined each princess. "Why the fancy dresses?"

"Cadence and I have a grand party to attend to after this debate," Luna answered. "We shall be gone for most of the night."

"I see," Celestia said. "I sure hope you both have fun." Celestia looked over at Cadence and asked, "Aren't you excited to see Twilight? I am so proud of her and I cannot wait to hear her speak."

Princess Cadence didn't make eye contact with her. "I don't really want to be here, nor do I think that this event is a good idea."

"Why not?" Celestia asked. "I thought you loved Twilight."

"She's a good pony, but I sense that she'll say something extremely controversial that will get many upset."

Princess Celestia looked confused. "Well, that sometimes happens with debates when you state your opinions."

"Yeah, I get that," Cadence said. "But I was with Twilight ever since she was a little filly, and judging from the way her parents raised her, I think she might say something that's extremely upsetting if a certain topic gets brought up. I'll tell you right now, I feel that her parents raised her in a very dangerous way, especially since they used the Bible in support of their decision to refuse life saving medicine."

Celestia put her hoof to her chin and thought about what Cadence might be referring to. "I have a feeling that I might know what you're hinting at, but I guess we'll just have to wait and find out if she actually talks about that topic."

Cadence sighed. "You can't go anywhere without hearing about it. If there's one thing I know about her, it's that she will not stop talking about a certain topic until the pony she's talking to actually understands what she's trying to get across to them."

"That's why we have a moderator," Celestia said with a wink.

Cadence put her hoof to her forehead and shook her head no from side to side. "I just don't see anything good coming out of this debate, and I'm afraid that it's going to get really messy from here. I know this has been requested for quite a while, but..." Cadence's words trailed off for a moment. She spoke louder and said, "I just don't think choosing Twilight was a very wise decision when it comes to speaking abut various controversial topics that have already divided our ponies so greatly. Twilight's beliefs are far too radical for an event like this."

"Relax," Celestia said. "I know that sensitive topics are going to get brought up, but this is what everypony has asked for and I think this is a great opportunity for Twilight to make herself known and to tell us about what she stands for and what she thinks is ultimately right. I do hope that she will one day become a great princess." Celestia looked at Cadence as if expecting her to reply, but the pink alicorn simply sat there with a frown on her face.

A voice from behind her startled Princess Celestia. "Eh-hem, your majesty. Would you care for some fine wine and a scone?"

The princess turned and saw a servant dressed in a tuxedo with a silver platter that held glasses of different assortments of wine and a few scones. She leaned over and sniffed a few glasses of wine before making her decision. "I think I'll have the glass of red wine, sir."

"A wise decision," the stallion said as he used his magic to levitate the glass of wine onto the table in front of her. "And would you fancy a scone, Princess?"

"Oh dear," Celstia said as she perked up. "Why surely, kind sir. Thank you."

"It is my enjoyment to serve others, "the stallion said as he placed the scone next to her glass of wine. He then extended his front leg out that was holding the tray and bowed. "Do enjoy this event."

"Please, no need to bow, but I must say how impressive your manners are."

"Thank you," the stallion said as he picked his head up. "If you desire anything else, simply pull that rope next to you and I will return."

Celestia nodded her head and turned her focus back to the other princesses. She took note that her sister had a glass of wine and a pile of scones while Princess Cadence had a half eaten scone on her table with five glasses of wine; two of them already empty. Celestia leaned over and looked down at the audience. It was quite an impressive thing to see from this bird's eye view because every seat seemed to be taken throughout this massive auditorium. It was certainly a good turn out and she wished that Twilight would do well. She turned and looked at her sister. "Do you think Twilight might be nervous? I can't recall her doing anything like this before."

Luna let out a chuckle. "The better question to ask is who wouldn't be nervous in front of an audience of this magnitude?"

"Fair point," Celestia said. "How much time is left until it starts?"

Luna awkwardly looked above at a clock hanging on the wall. "Just a few more minutes until we start. I shall update them on how much time is left."

"Celestia tilted the microphone over to her sister. "Shall I turn the microphone on?" she asked.

"I don't need that," Luna said with a smirk. Princess Luna stood up and spoke in her traditional royal Canterlot voice. "Five minutes until the debate will start!" Her voice boomed through the auditorium as if she were speaking through a microphone.

Twilight Sparkle stopped pacing around backstage and took a deep breath before she opened up the red curtains and peeked her head out. She saw her parents directly in the front row; they waved at her and smiled. Twilight awkwardly waved back with a smile that spoke of uncertainty. She scanned the huge auditorium for her friends, but could not find them. They were supposed to be here sitting in the front row where there were five empty seats specifically reserved for them. Her heart was sad that it seemed like her friends were not going to show up. "How can they not be here by now?" Twilight thought to herself. "Did they forget?" Twilight's thoughts were interrupted when she heard a loud horn go off.

"Yeah! Whoo-hoo! Go Twilight! Knock 'em dead with the love of Jesus!" Spike cheered as he waved a giant yellow foam hand with the number one on the index finger. During his cheering, he accidentally smacked a pony upside the head with the foam hand. Other ponies sitting next to him stared at him with annoyance. Spike slid down his seat and blushed when he realized that perhaps this kind of cheering was not proper at an event like this. He knew that Twilight was discouraged about this whole situation, but he wanted nothing more than to show her how much he cared and appreciated a pony like her.

"Put that silly thing away!" the pony who got whacked with the foam demanded. "You'll take someone's eye out, kid."

Spike sighed and obediently took off the foam hand. He slid it under his seat and then crossed his arms as he looked down at the floor.

Twilight face-hoofed and then disappeared behind the curtains. She grabbed her cup of coffee off a table nearby with her magic and took one final chug of the bitter tasting liquid before setting it aside. She was so shaky that even when using her magic, the cup was shaking unsteadily in the air and fell to the floor when she tried to place it on the table. She was a nervous wreck and consuming coffee wasn't going to help her with her jitters, but she had to keep her mind sharp. This was her first time doing something like this and no matter how many ponies she spoke to in the past about topics like this, a crowd this size that would be judging her every movement and word made her feel sick to her stomach. On top of all this, she was being watched by the Princesses which added more pressure on her because in many ways, she was representing what the Princesses stood for and Princess Celestia chose her out of many possible choices when it came to well known ponies who studied apologetics. She just hoped that she wouldn't have to interrupt the debate in order to use the bathroom since she found herself frequently running back, sometimes within minutes of previously going. Twilight looked down at her notes on the table. Because she had become a bit obsessive and compulsive about rewriting her notes and opening statement in an attempt to get it as perfectly as she could before, she scrapped the writings that she had rewritten entirely. She reduced herself to using flash cards because none of her writings were satisfying to her anymore as she could not make up her mind about how to write her words in a way that sounded perfect to her. This alone was going to hurt her in this debate because the flash cards simply had a few written words or sentences on each one. It wasn't a very scholarly thing to do, but it was better than nothing. She used her magic and flipped through each card as she tried to remember the connection between some of the single words she wrote and how she wanted to expound upon them. Her memory was blank and many of these cards made no sense to her at this moment. She felt as if she were trying to read Pinkie Pie's notes and attempting to figure out her bizarre drawings that she drew on her notes. "This is so sloppy, what am I going to do or say? I can't recapitulate so many of these points," Twilight said as she bit her lower lip and placed the cards back down.

"The debate will now start, please welcome and cheer for our debaters," Princess Celestia said as she spoke into a microphone.

Twilight felt the panic and fear overtake her mind. She began to take some deep breaths. "This is going to be disastrous," she muttered under her breath.

"Are we ready, Miss Sparkle?" A voice with a strong yet charming accent from behind her asked.

Twilight turned and saw her opponent, Hoofty Cuffs. He was dressed in a tux and his dirty blonde mane was gelled over in such a fancy manner that made it look like he put way too much effort into it. His brown eyes matched the color of his coat and he had a white stripe of fur going down the center of his snout. He was a bit on the chunky side and his cutie mark was a book with two cuff links on each side. For such a pugnacious name was even represented by his own cutie mark.

Twilight grabbed her flash cards and walked over to him. "I guess so. Um, best wishes out there, Mister Cuffs."

"And to you as well." The stallion opened up the curtain enough for her to enter through. He bowed and gestured his front leg for her to pass. "Ladies first."

"Why, thank you," Twilight said as she ducked down and passed through.

"Tis my pleasure," the stallion said and then followed her out before proceeding to his podium.

The crowds cheered for the two on stage. Twilight's parents stood on their hooves as they stomped on the floor in great approval.

Twilight Sparkle suddenly became a bit lightheaded and clumsily tripped over her own legs. She fell and landed face first on the stage. The flash cards she was carrying scattered across the stage floor all around her.

Some laughter could be heard in the crowds.

Twilight quickly picked herself back up. Her face was bright red with embarrassment and she used her magic to pile the cards back into a stack. The only problem was that the cards were now completely out of order from how she had originally organized them. She put her head down and trotted quickly over to her podium on the right side of the stage. Twilight picked her head up and glanced at the five seats reserved for her friends and not a single one was occupied. "They truly forgot about me," Twilight whispered to herself. "I can't believe they forgot. I don't even want to be here. Why does this have to happen?"

"Twilight," Princess Celestia said as she spoke into her microphone. "The microphones are on; please remain silent until we are ready to start."

An even greater sense of fear and embarrassment overwhelmed her mind. "Oh," Twilight awkwardly said into the mic on the podium. "I'm so sorry," she quietly added. Princess Celestia's statement made Twilight's face turn bright red with embarrassment once again and she held her breath as she thought about what she had just previously said. She whispered it so quietly to herself and she prayed that the Princesses simply heard mumbling and didn't hear her just complain about being here. Twilight focused on the little sign that said exit in red letters above the two giant doors. She stared at it wishing that her friends would either enter through that door at any moment or if she could simply cast a very advanced invisibility spell and walk through the center aisle undetected and leave this building.

A pony walked up onto the stage and sat down at a table where there were two clocks on each side and a microphone in the middle. The pony had a yellow coat and green eyes. His cutie mark was a picture of a microphone and his tail and mane was a dark shade of blue. The pony tapped the microphone to make sure that it was on. He looked over at Twilight and said, "Talk about breaking a leg. Are you alright, Miss Sparkle?"

Some more laughter in the crowds could be heard.

Twilight Sparkle nodded her head yes, sheepishly.

The pony turned his attention back to the crowd. "Greetings! I am your moderator for tonight and I'd first like to point out that I'm Agnostic, so I can really care less who wins this. And yes, I am a legitimate Agnostic and not a soft Atheist or as they say, an Atheist without any balls." He let out a chuckle and continued. "My job is to be fair and make sure that each speaker has a set time to speak and I will give them a two minute warning before time runs out. They may have an additional thirty seconds to finish up the points they are making if time runs out and that's it! I'd also like to mention that Princess Celestia has prepared a wonderful snack for all of us to enjoy as we watch the debate. Scones will be served to all of you as the servants make their way down the aisles with the fancy cookies. Without further ado, let's hear our opening statement from Hoofty Cuffs, our Atheist debater!"

The crowd cheered shortly for a moment.

The stallion shuffled his papers around on the podium and rolled up his two cuff links on his hooves. He put on his reading glasses and spoke. "Well now. I understand that this debate supposedly covers a lot of random topics, so I shall first start off with saying that I believe God exists." He looked around the audience and was content that everypony remained quiet after that remark. Feeling satisfied that he had his audience captivated, he then continued. "I believe God exists purely in the minds of others. I am here to tell you all that religion is a poison in the world and has brought us more harm than good. In fact, I'd argue that religion has brought no good into this world and Christianity has been a major hindrance in helping us develop a better society. I don't have to tell any of you to open a book that is littered with contradictions like the Bible and see how much of an awful tyrant the God of the Bible is. He is jealous, He is genocidal, and He is evil. He commits genocide against his own and He floods the earth drowning everyone including little fillies and colts. We have no evidence for God and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that there is no God in this world by simply taking a walk into a hospital for fillies and colts who are dying of terrible cancers and other diseases. Why do so many of them die? Why do newborns die and are never given a shot at life? I thought God said that children were precious, yet in the book of Psalms, it says blessed or happy shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock!" the stallion slammed his hoof against the podium. "Can you all imagine how twisted and sick this God is to permit such a terrible thing for His own ponies to do? And on top of that, He blesses them and makes them feel happy. I'd like you all to imagine religious fanatical nuts grabbing your fillies and colts and smashing their helpless torn open bodies against rocks, covered in their own blood as they scream out in agony and the ponies doing this horrific killing are smiling sadistic grins and are blessed! If this does not make you sick to your stomachs, then you are part of the problem with our society! It is totally acceptable to kill innocent little fillies and colts in such a manner like this, but you hypocritical Christians and other religious folks freak out when the secular society would like to make abortions legal again for the sake of saving more lives. Let me remind you all that the Bible is also used to support horrific things like slavery. This is acceptable, yet there are so many cherry picking Christians or what I like to call, buffet Christians who pick and choose what they want to follow in the Bible. How many times do I see ponies going out to eat and ordering shellfish? The Bible makes it very clear that shellfish is to be avoided or wearing clothing that is made of certain fabrics like cotton. The Bible promotes bigotry against homosexuals by calling homosexual practices an abomination to the Lord." The stallion tapped his hoof against the edge of the podium. "To prove my point about how absurd this God is, let's do a little experiment. I want everypony to think of two ponies having hot sex together. It doesn't matter if it's two stallions or two mares going at it, just think about whatever pleases you." He paused for a moment as he looked at the faces in the audience. "Did you all think of that? If you did, then you are normal because that is natural to think about what I have just said. However, this brutal God that Twilight follows punishes us for thought crimes. You can be sent to Hell for thinking about something which is absurd, because we should be judged by our actions and not our thoughts! Yes, my ponies, thought crime is a real thing according to religions like the one that Twilight follows, and I'd like to say something about Twilight. She is an Atheist."

Twilight Sparkle looked over and cocked an eyebrow at such an odd statement.

The stallion continued, "She is an Atheist when it comes to outdated Gods like Zeus, Anubis, Athena, Poseidon, Ares, and so on and so forth. All I am asking her tonight is to cut one more false God out of her life and join me into living life logically for the first time."

Many ponies in the audience applauded for a brief moment.

"Religion encourages us to burn witches and heretics at the stake, but Atheism takes us into logical reasoning and real science. We secular ponies are tired of being plagued by Christianity! We hate being ruled by a tyrant who takes away our freedoms and is corrupting our society because she is bound to a book that is illogical and immoral. Let's not forget that she destroyed an abortion clinic and turned a strip club into a church after she banished a very well known pop-star, Sapphire Shores for running such a place like that."

Princess Celestia closed her eyes and bowed her head partly in anger and partly in sadness. A tear drop fell from her eye and landed on the floor. It hurt her to hear this kind of criticism in front of such a large gathering. She always seemed to be getting negative criticism of all kinds through letters sent to her. For she was not a perfect Princess, but she tried to be as good and as fair to everypony. All she wanted to hear from Sapphire Shores was a simple apology and Sapphire literally asked her to send her away to the Everfree forest and she granted her that wish. She believed that all ponies had the right to life no matter how young or old they are and she would have had the same belief if she was faced with a concentration camp instead of an abortion clinic. To be belittled like that when there were secular rulers like King Sombra who enslaved his ponies and ruled with an iron hoof hurt her very much. The near constant gossip and slander about her was starting to get under her fur coat. She opened up her eyes and picked her head up when he began to speak again.

"I believe the world would be a better place without religion and I believe my opponent cannot give me one good reason to believe that God exists or why religion, especially Christianity, is good for our society. The Bible says that God is not the author of confusion, yet I cannot think of another book that has caused more confusion and division in society more than the Bible. And it's a shame because Christians are supposed to be united over this book, yet they bicker and cut each other off because of different interpretations. It is common knowledge that ponies like Twilight in ancient times invented stories about various gods creating the earth and ponies because they lacked the scientific knowledge necessary to comprehend the origins of the universe. I have a bit of shocking news for her, we are not living in those times anymore. Scientific progress has helped us to understand these things so it is no longer necessary to fool ourselves into thinking that some silly God created us." The stallion shuffled his papers on the podium and smiled smugly. "Thank you."

The crowd cheered in approval and many ponies stomped their hooves for him.

The moderator spoke into the microphone. "Miss Sparkle, you're up."

Twilight Sparkle stopped scribbling down some notes and picked her head up when she noticed the lights from above her were now shining down upon her. She leaned over and spoke into the microphone that was attached to the top of the podium. "First of all, I'd like to thank the Princesses for holding this event and I'd also like to thank all of you for coming." She pointed her hoof in the air and said, "I'd like to start off by saying that...."

Some laughter could be heard in the crowds.

Twilight heard this and became confused. She looked at her front leg and realized that it was shaking with great intensity. Twilight looked at the crowd and felt a wave of nausea and panic overtake her. She began to perspire and feel a sense of dread overtake her mind because she was so nervous. She put her other front leg on top of the one that was shaking, but that did no good because now both of her front legs seemed to have this strange tremor. "I-I-I want to s-s-say that f-f-for..." Twilight stuttered into the microphone which made her more uneasy. She took one last look at the crowd before her eyesight became filled with little black dots with rainbow colors in them which started to cluster until she could no longer see anything. "Help," Twilight said before grabbing onto her Bible on the podium and passing out on the stage.

Princess Celestia stood on her hooves, looking down from the balcony with great concern.

Spike and Twilight's parents were also just seconds from running up onto the stage to see if she was okay.

Her opponent and the moderator were already standing over her. The moderator splashed some cold water onto her face and that seemed to make her at least open up her eyes again.

Twilight took some deep breaths before rolling onto her belly.

Princess Celestia turned her microphone back on and spoke into it. "Twilight, you may go home if you are not feeling well."

Twilight spoke to the moderator, "Would you please hand the microphone to me down here?"

The moderator did so and she spoke into it. "I'm very sorry everypony. I am okay and I will stay and talk. I would just like a pillow for me to lay on because I'm having trouble standing and also a cup of tea might be helpful. I'd also like to request that the lights be turned off above me, thank you."

A pony from below the stage handed the moderator a cup of tea and a pillow for Twilight to lay on.

Twilight laid on the pillow and was laying on an angle so that she couldn't see much of the crowd. She put the steaming cup of tea down by her side and tried to regain her thoughts.

The ponies in charge of the lights turned them off, but the moment they did that, a light even brighter beamed down upon the lavender mare. Twilight was oblivious to this mysterious light and had no idea that anything was shining down upon her.

Hoofty Cuffs grabbed the microphone from his podium and spoke. "Excuse me, but she asked for the lights to be turned off, not make them brighter!"

One of the ponies operating the lights signaled with his hooves that they were all turned off.

The moderator and Hoofty looked up at the lights and sure enough, they appeared to be off, yet there was this unexplained light that was cast down upon Twilight.

"It must be some kind of reflection," Hoofty said.

While under this light, Twilight was not bothered so much by the crowd and felt more calm and better able to think. "I seem to be slightly nervous and I apologize because I have never spoken in front of a crowd of this magnitude. I also would not like to be timed, so if he wants to give statements and ask me questions, I would be more comfortable with that. I need something a bit more casual and less nerve racking."

"Fair enough," her opponent said. "I just request that I get a cup of tea and a pillow as well because that looks quite comfy. We don't have to have any debate tonight; let's just talk and go over some great concerns I have with religion and our Christian ruler. I'll even allow you to do most of the talking if you wish so I don't overwhelm you with my logic and reasoning. I understand that this is your first time speaking in public and it's pretty obvious that you're not ready for something like this. I've also heard some things about you, so maybe we can take this time to hear all about your passions and beliefs as well."

One of the ponies from below the stage handed the moderator another pillow and a cup of tea to be handed to Hoofty Cuffs.

Her opponent set himself up across from her but moved himself a little bit further back when he realized how bothersome and bright that strange light was shining down upon her. "So, my dear. Let's start off with something basic. Do tell me what evidence you have for this God of yours."

"Flying Spaghetti Monster!" Somepony in the crowd shouted.

"The answer is forty-two!" Another pony yelled.

"The answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything," Twilight said. "That's a great and hilarious book series that I have at my library."

The audience became louder and continued shouting random phrases.

"How about we have some manners and allow her to speak?" the stallion politely suggested to the crowd.

Twilight rubbed the side of her head that hurt from the fall. "Well, there is good evidence for God. When something is contingent, we seek a reason for why it exists. Everything that exists contingently has a reason for its existence. The universe exists contingently, therefore the universe has a reason for its existence and if the universe exists, then it has to be necessary. If the universe has a reason for its existence then that reason is God. God is a necessary being because God explains His own existence. God's nature and what He is, is simply existence itself. If you..."

Her opponent cut her off and shook his hoof in the air as if he were shooing away a pesky fly. "Yes, we all know that argument, it's old and unimpressive. Give us something better to think about."

Twilight felt that it was a bit rude to be cut off like that, but he was kind enough to not make this debate so intimidating for her so she moved on to another example. "Let's take the argument from motion for example. A thing moves because something else moves it. You don't see things move by themselves or else you get spooked and call ghost busters. It's normal to think about this. So what moved the things causing the movement? Something else, but what moved that? This is a chain reaction and cannot be infinite. Something that moves others without itself being moved by anything; an unmoved mover. We can't explain the motion in the universe with an infinite number of movers, each borrowing something from something else. This is where God comes in and you can't give to creation what you don't already have. Since something cannot come from nothing, it follows that the universe began to exist from a material state of nothing, it would have a cause. Any cause that created space and time cannot be bound by the things it created, so the first cause would have to be immaterial, eternal and extremely powerful because it brought being from non-being." Twilight Sparkle tapped her hoof against the wooden stage and continued. "I can link this point to my next one. One reason to believe the past is not infinite is because the past is formed one day at a time, but you can't form an infinite past one day at a time because no one can count to infinity, as hard as we tried when we were little colts and fillies. No matter how many days transpire in an infinite past, today could never happen because there would always be an infinite number of yesterdays taking place before today. But today did in fact happen, therefore it makes sense to say that the past is not infinite but finite and thus the universe began to exist. We also have compelling scientific evidence for the beginning of the universe. According to the second law of thermodynamics, an enclosed system, matter and energy tend towards disorder. If the past were infinite, then the level of disorder in our universe would be at its maximum level and life could not exist. A finite past best explains why the universe has reached maximum disorder. Even if a universe existed prior to the big bang in something called the multi-verse, any expanding universe must have a past boundary. Along with being immaterial, eternal and powerful, this first cause must also be personal because an impersonal eternal force cannot choose to make a non-eternal universe. Any appropriate name for a first cause with these attributes would be God. I can provide a great example and..."

Hoofty Cuffs put his hoof in the air. "That's enough. Not an impressive argument and again, this is all from old textbooks."

"Um, just because these are arguments from old textbooks doesn't mean that they are automatically wrong. What about the argument from fine tuning? If you adjusted the values of the constants or conditions related to the basic laws of nature, even by a fraction of a fraction of a percent, we would not have a life permitting universe. An example would be called the cosmological constant which is the strength of vacuum energy in deep space. It's represented by the Greek letter lambda and it's fine tuned to the one hundred twentieth. That's a one followed by one hundred twenty zeros. To put that into perspective, a one followed by eighty zeros are the number of atoms or what are called bariums in the entire universe. If this constant were not finely tuned, we would either have a lifeless universe that's smaller than an atom or a massive universe that only contains hydrogen. Other finely tuned features of our universe include the strong nuclear force, the strength of gravity and the low level of disorder at the beginning of our universe. Even big name Atheistic scientists admit that this fine tuning exists. So what explains these finely tuned constants and conditions? If you wouldn't accept a poker player getting ten royal flushes in a row by chance alone, then you shouldn't accept getting far more improbable constants by chance alone either. If you think we can get them by chance alone, I will gladly play poker with you after the debate."

Some ponies in the crowd briefly laughed at that statement.

Twilight continued. "We should also reject the idea that the laws of nature are necessary or that the constants and conditions have to be this way. That's because we can develop scientific models where the constants and conditions are different which implies they aren't necessary; string theorists for example do this all the time. The best explanation for a universe that is fine tuned to produce intelligent life, is an intelligent creator who wanted to make other intelligent beings, or what we call, God."

Hoofty had his head down and was busy searching through his notes about fine tuning while Twilight was talking. He picked his head back up when he found the point he wanted to make when she first started talking about this topic. "Rubbish!" Hoofty said. "You Christians are so silly to speak of turning these supposed dials slightly and destroying all life, but you fail to acknowledge the fact that we might be able to sustain life if we turn a dial one way while simultaneously turning another dial at the same time in order to keep everything balanced; sort of like riding a bicycle if you were to imagine."

Ponies began cheering for Hoofty's remark.

Twilight wondered if he actually cared at all about what she had just previously said. "Would you like me to reply to that?" Twilight asked.

"No," Hoofty said. "I already know what you would argue next; let's hear something better."

"Let's talk about objective moral truths. Most Atheists say that they can be moral without believing in God, and this is a true statement. Atheists can follow personal or cultural codes of morality without believing in God. However, without God, certain objective moral truths cannot exist. Moral facts are bizarre because every other natural fact in the world like the facts of biology or astronomy only tell me the way the world is; it doesn't tell me the way the world or even my own life ought to be. But a universal moral law grounded in a transcendent and perfectly good law giver explains why I am obligated, even at great personal costs to do what's objectively right. It also explains why there is an objective right or an objective good at all and that these qualify as immaterial moral facts that govern our universe. This is where it gets tricky for Atheists who say that..."

The stallion waved his hoof in the air as if brushing off everything that she had said. "Nonsense, this and all of your arguments are old reasoning from textbooks. Let me ask you, what kind of pony would follow such a wasteful God who allowed so many species to die out and sat there and watched with indifference?"

"Wasteful?" Twilight asked. "When you have unlimited resources as God, there is no such thing as waste."

"Why are there so many variants of the Bible? Which one is the true interpretation?"

"Take your pick," Twilight said. "Ninety nine percent of variants don't impact the text."

"Why do you Christians cherry pick Bible verses and eat and wear the things that are forbidden? Apparently, you ponies obviously love to skip over the book of Leviticus."

"This is probably the most common question I hear," Twilight said. "Apparently, many of you tend to skip over reading the Bible in its entirety. For one example, If you look in the book of Acts, the Bible makes it quite clear that we can eat the once forbidden foods. You see, there is the moral law which is found in the ten commandments like you shall have no other gods, don't murder, don't commit adultery and so on. The ceremonial law is found mostly in the book of Leviticus that the Israelite ponies were required to observe; things like don't eat pork or shellfish. The Bible also teaches that the moral law and the ceremonial law have two very different purposes. Look at Romans five for example. The purpose of the moral law is to show us our sins so that we can see our need for Christ and His mercy, and because all of us are sinners who need to have our sins set before us in order to see our need for Christ, then the moral law still applies to us today. When we look at Exodus Nineteen, things with the ceremonial law are quite different. The purpose of the ceremonial law was to mark the Israelites as the ponies from whom the messiah was going to come. The ceremonial law formed the way the Israelites worshiped, ate, worked, dressed and practiced justice. This was God's way of reminding the Israelites that the savior of the world would come from them. So when our savior came in the person of Jesus, then the purpose of the ceremonial law was then fulfilled. After Jesus died and rose again, it was no longer necessary to follow the ceremonial law. This is why in Acts, God tells Peter that the food is clean, and that the gentiles who didn't follow the ceremonial law were welcomed into the Christian faith. So the reason that Christians can eat things that were once forbidden isn't because we cherry pick but because doing so would make us Judaizers, and the Bible very clearly tells us that we are now free to eat these things. You'll notice that some of the things forbidden in the ceremonial law is also forbidden by the moral law, and because of that, when the ceremonial law was fulfilled, we were no longer required to punish this stuff according to the ceremonial law, but the stuff itself still remains sinful. Why? Because the moral law remains. This is made very clear when the Apostle Paul tells Christians that while they are now free to eat the once unclean foods, they are none the less forbidden from taking part in sexual immortality. This is also why we don't stone ponies for sexual immoralities. Think about Jesus rescuing the mare who was caught in the act of adultery." Twilight opened up her Bible and found the passage almost immediately. "Jesus returned to the Mount of Olives, but early the next morning He was back again at the Temple. A crowd soon gathered, and He sat down and taught them. As he was speaking, the teachers of religious law and the Pharisees brought a mare who had been caught in the act of adultery. They put her in front of the crowd. Teacher, they said to Jesus, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. The law of Moses says to stone her. What do you say? They were trying to trap Him into saying something they could use against Him, but Jesus stooped down and wrote in the dust with his hoof. They kept demanding an answer, so He stood up again and said, All right, but let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone! Then He stooped down again and wrote in the dust. When the accusers heard this, they slipped away one by one, beginning with the oldest, until only Jesus was left in the middle of the crowd with the mare. Then Jesus stood up again and said to the mare, Where are your accusers? Didn’t even one of them condemn you? No, Lord, she said. And Jesus said, Neither do I. Go and sin no more.” Twilight closed the book and looked at Hoofty who appeared to be greatly agitated.

"Don't read me silly fairy tales like that again! Don't even open that Bible once more; I don't want to hear it!"

Twilight looked concerned. "But you're criticizing my faith and calling me a hypocrite because you think that I only read what I find appealing in the Bible. I'm sorry, but it just seems that you're the one who goes about nitpicking when it comes to scriptures. I was only trying to clear up some common misunderstandings; I apologize and I won't open it up again."

Hoofty's breathing became calmer again and he did not look so enraged anymore. For he passionately hated hearing ponies read from that book unless it was being read to somehow attack Christians. He took a deep breath and continued. "How do you feel about Galileo being charged with heresy by Christians and being locked up in a dungeon and tortured to death?"

"That's a very widely misunderstood topic," Twilight answered. "He was never charged with heresy, locked in a dungeon or tortured to death. He was simply under house arrest and he died a peaceful death of natural causes."

"Right," the stallion said. Feeling that there was some truth to her reply, he decided to move on to another part of the debate. "Perhaps we should move on and talk about a more important and vital topic in this debate. Let's discuss why Christianity is a plague to Ponyville and why we need to replace the Princesses with secular rulers. Let's start off by talking about something serious, like mares who are dying left and right thanks to Princess Celestia refusing to allow medical access to those who need abortions. Whenever laws like this are passed, the wealthy will always find ways to get abortions, leaving paupers to suffer from having botched abortions which are incredibly life threatening to the mare. Truly you agree that this law needs to be gone, right, Miss Sparkle?"

Some ponies yelled out, "Down with Celestia! Celestia sucks! Crucify Celestia!" Other ponies began talking loudly in the audience.

Twilight Sparkle spoke to the crowd in an aggravated tone of voice. "You know, the princess didn't need to hold this debate in the first place. Whoever yelled out those words should be ashamed of yourselves. I expected the audience to be of a more mature level, but many of you are proving me wrong on that."

The audience became so silent that a pin drop could be heard.

"Now, as for Princess Celestia's law against abortion, I agree with her and support her fully. Generally, when a law is passed, it should discourage ponies from breaking it and the princess does not want any blood on her hooves by allowing such an act to be legal." Twilight Sparkle looked at her opponent. "Since we are on a new topic, would you agree that the unborn are actual ponies?"

"How can I not?" answered her opponent. "They are complete living organisms and it is a scientific fact that life begins at conception, but that shouldn't matter because in a perfect world there are no unwanted pregnancies, especially when there are no health or financial related issues."

"Good, at least we can agree on that. If it's wrong to kill a two year old, then how much more wrong would it be to kill someone younger than that? If you truly believe that the fetus inside the mother is a real developing pony, then there shouldn't be an issue if a mare lacks enough resources to raise a new foal and decides that maybe she doesn't like one of her already born foals and would rather terminate that pony instead of the one she is carrying inside of her. Maybe the pony already born has some kind of disability and is hard for her to take care of so she'd rather eliminate him or her and see if this new pony is easier to raise. Would we allow that in society? Of course not. We don't kill unwanted born ponies, so why should we get rid of unwanted unborn ponies? In the same sense that it would be immoral for a mare to hire an assassin to take out an unwanted husband for whatever reason, we should also feel the same way about the lives of the unborn. I believe that all ponies have the right to life no matter what their age is and abortions not only end the life of one, but also scar another for the rest of their life, and I'm speaking about the mother. It's not healthy mentally or physically since having abortions done are well known to cause cancer and even death."

"But what if she's been raped? Surely you'd allow for abortions if it was a family member of yours or your own daughter. Giving birth is dangerous and destroys a mare's body and figure."

Twilight Sparkle sighed. "Getting an abortion performed won't make a mare un-raped and killing the foal will only add more hurt in a mare's life. The decision for a mare to abort leaves her scarred for life and we need to strive for non-violent solutions for unwanted pregnancies. We don't kill the rapist who did wrong so why would we kill an innocent little foal who has done absolutely no wrong at all? Princess Celestia forbids the death penalty because it's wrong since so many innocent ponies die because of it and the word of God says that vengeance is the Lord's. I have a very close friend who was raped and she decided to be brave and do the right thing, which was giving birth and raising the foal on her own. Her body was not destroyed nor disfigured in any way either; she is just as beautiful as she was before."

"And let me remind you all that these scumbag ponies in jail for rape and murder in this land are being fed and taken care of thanks to Princess Celestia stealing our hard earned money through us paying taxes."

Many ponies began to cheer and shout for a moment.

"Let me ask you, Twilight. If there was a mob demanding that a suspected murderer or rapist was handed over to them or they would kill hundreds, would you give that pony over or not?"

"Not a chance," Twilight said. "I'd never allow that to happen and mob mentality is foolish and dangerous. Princess Celestia is a mare of peace and there was a time when this land was in great chaos, where millions upon millions were dying horrible, violent deaths until she came to power. The Princess has killed zero ponies and yet she is ridiculed and mocked like no other leader that we have had in the past because mocking them would be a death sentence for all of you. When it comes to abortions, it makes my heart sad because we view the husband or father as this sort of phantom figure who gets no say when it comes to wanting to keep the foal. I notice that most couples who do not want their foal call him or her a fetus, as if they think that word means the foal is just a simple clump of cells that can't develop into anything special, yet when a couple is happy for their unborn foal, they always call him or her their baby or foal." Twilight looked at the crowd and added, "I'd like to remind all of you that you are not a mistake by the way you came into this world and I'm sure that there are some of you here tonight who were conceived by rape."

"Thank you, Twilight!" some pony in the crowd shouted.

Hoofty rolled up one of his cuff links that was starting to slide down his front leg. "Well, in most abortions performed, the fetus can't feel pain and viability must be put into consideration. If the foal can't survive outside of the womb, then it can be killed."

"But there are ponies born disabled where they can't feel pain," Twilight said. "Are you suggesting that those ponies aren't viable as well? What is the womb for?"

"Well, uh, it is for creating new life."

"And sustaining it," Twilight said. "Just because a fetus can't survive outside of the womb shouldn't matter. If a pony were to take a foal and dump it into the ocean or leave it in a harsh environment that's too hot or too cold, that foal isn't going to survive. Much in the same way, a fetus can't survive outside of the womb like you're talking about because the womb is its environment that it needs to survive in. No pony should be allowed to use their body to hurt somepony else and in the sense of abortions, it's not just your body and it shouldn't be a choice. Your body is being shared by two living beings; yourself and your foal or foals. What do we say when somepony has a miscarriage and the couple are mourning the loss of their foal? We say that we're sorry and we try to comfort them, but think about how awkward it is when somepony asks how somepony else's unborn foal is doing and they reply that they had an abortion. How does one reply to that? Do you say I'm sorry that your foal has died because you chose to do something that would kill it? How abortions are carried out is incredibly sickening to watch and it's quite odd how clumps of cells magically become intact livers and hearts once it's time for that doctor to harvest that baby for cash by selling his or her organs to the highest bidder."

Hoofty Cuffs was starting to become a little impatient at this point. "But you are a hypocrite in the sense that all you care about is the unborn. Go look at other lands across Equestria and there are ponies starving or dying from fighting, yet no Christian cares about them. You are pro-birth, not pro-life."

"Well, sir. Princess Celestia, Luna, and Cadence as well as many churches and other religious organizations make it their mission to help all around the world. We need to be concerned with both, but I'm afraid if we visit some culture and tell them to stop killing others or their own, they may point a hoof back and say, well in your land, so many ponies are killed by abortions. Why not clean your own house before you dare tell me how to clean mine?"

The stallion brushed his mane back away from his eyes. "The bottom line is that whenever laws are passed, either the mother will have all the rights or the fetus will have them all. I don't understand how you could allow so much suffering by not aborting a fetus with genetic defects or not granting somepony the right to death and allowing them to suffer for the rest of their lives."

"It's not a black and white thing like you're trying to make it sound and don't we all have to give up some rights when raising foals? We can't drink or smoke during pregnancy or when we are around our born foals. We have to make sure that the fillies and colts are being taught if home schooled, as well as being taken good care of in general. I think it's important to remember that if you're not mature enough to raise a filly or colt, then you shouldn't be partaking in an act that brings new life into this world."

Some cheering could be heard from the audience for Twilight.

Twilight put her hoof up in the air to signal for the crowd to be silent. "Now let me give my input on his second statement. We do not have a right to end our lives or to willingly allow someone else to end our life for us. Many ponies now speak of such a thing, but without the proper understanding of the terminology they use. A right is a moral claim. We do not have a claim on death, but rather, death has a claim on us. We do not decide when our life will end, any more than we decided when it began. Much less does somepony else like a relative, a doctor, or a legislator decide when our life will end. I'd like to remind everypony that none of us is the master over life and death. One thing that we do have a right to is proper care and it is never care in any sense of the idea to terminate life, even if that life is full of suffering. We have no right to terminate life, and the core evil of euthanasia is that an individual or group of ponies think they have the right to put somepony else to death. Killing anypony is not a very nice concept, so to make it more acceptable, they start toying around with the vocabulary. For example, they say that the one who is incurably ill or comatose is a vegetable. A vegetable? Really? What kind? A stalk of celery? A carrot? A string-bean? This kind of degrading name calling is similar to the topic we were just talking about when it comes to wanting an abortion and calling the unwanted unborn child a simple clump of cells. No matter what the ailment he or she suffers from, a pony is always a pony, and always has a right to life which nopony, of any philosophical, political or religious persuasion is ever able to take away. In fact, it is precisely when life is afflicted by weakness and illness that it is all the more deserving of our care. Advocates of euthanasia see the ill only as a burden and it is my prayer that God may forgive and have mercy on them. Central to their utterly false philosophy is the notion that some lives are not worth living. These lives, they maintain, are more trouble than they are worth. They have too much suffering, and are too much of a burden on the resources of society." Twilight put her hoof to her chin for a moment as she thought to herself. "You know, if we were talking about a chariot, or a typewriter, or some other thing, we could say that when enough things go wrong with it, it becomes more trouble than it's worth. Repairs would be too costly, too involved, so it's better to just throw it out and get a new one. This same logic cannot be applied to ponies because a pony is never more trouble than he or she is worth. Notice, I do not use the pronoun it to refer to a pony. The reason for that is because a pony is not a thing, an it, or some kind of object whose value is to be calculated on some kind of economic cost or benefit analysis scale. A pony is worth more than the entire physical universe! Think about that for a moment. A pony's life is of infinite value, and this remains true no matter how small, weak, uncommunicative, disabled, diseased, or unproductive some may be in the eyes of a materialistic, consumerist society like ours may often be sometimes." Twilight reached her hoof out and continued. "Life is the most basic gift of a loving God. A gift over which we have stewardship but not absolute dominion. Seeing these things reminds me of the ancients that practiced these horrible crimes against God, such as exposure and abandonment of foals, the disabled and the elderly. I thank the Lord that we have a kind, caring leader like Princess Celestia who shoots down these laws that many want to see get passed. Arbitrarily deciding that one's life is worthless because of one's circumstances would push the door wide open to full deprecation of the right to life. Such a proposal can only seek to diminish the advance and progress of medical science as well. Why work on treating anything when we can just flip the kill switch? Putting this right into the hooves of the Government is also horrifying, because how many governments actually seem to care about life to begin with? I also have a friend who suffers from debilitating pain and chronic fatigue. She can sometimes spend up to twenty hours in bed and can't be active depending on the severity of her flare ups. To think for a moment that her life might be deemed as useless and too unproductive angers me because she is irreplaceable as a friend to me and she makes my heart glad whenever I get to see her. She has also shattered just about every single Wonderbolt record and you can find her name in the history book of the Wonderbolts. Rainbow Dash."

"Yes, yes," the stallion said as he shifted his weight around on the pillow. "Although I wasn't quite finished with the topic of abortion and preventing unwanted pregnancies. I hope you can at least accept the fact that contraception and education needs to be available to all. Does your religion allow for contraception and how do you feel about contraception, Miss Sparkle?"

"Well, personally, I don't exactly like the idea of contraception, but I agree that education should be provided and it should be available as long as the type of contraception being used does no damage to the fetus, or the mare or stallion. That would include chemicals or so-called enhancements that disrupt hormones and are toxic to their bodies. As far as a plain old latex condom, I don't have many issues with this, and I would agree that contraception is very effective when it comes to preventing diseases and pregnancy, but I think it's important to remember that it's never one hundred percent guaranteed."

"I'd like to ask one more question before moving on to another topic about how religion is poisoning our society and taking away our freedoms. Would you allow an abortion if the mare's life was endangered? This is why abortion has to be a necessary evil just like how sometimes war is. It's complicated and I don't see too many of us getting uptight about schools being bombed."

"I'd first like to point out that the overwhelming majority of abortions performed are social in the sense that some may want them done to fit into that prom dress, or they believe that they aren't ready to raise a foal, or they feel like they lack the funds, or maybe they don't want to raise a filly but would rather have a colt. After all, many like to point out that the mare population compared to the stallion population is quite dramatic in terms of size where we live. In this case, abortions aren't about choice, but rather about escaping the consequences of your choices by taking all choices away from another pony. I would like to imagine that if the unborn are truly ponies just like you and I, and we already concluded earlier that they are, then I would hope that the mother would be willing to give up her life for the foal and if the fetus has to be removed from the womb for whatever complication, then at least give him or her some kind of chance to live and not just kill them. We now have technology that allows us to perform surgery inside of the womb to save the foal. This procedure is extremely rare, but what would be the purpose in doing something like this if the unborn were not real foals? After all, we tend to freak out about unborn animals that are listed as endangered species, claiming that we're destroying life by harming their unborn babies, yet we don't seem to give much thought about our own unborn species since many like to use the excuse that we're such a burden to this world and are so environmentally destructive. Yes, I believe that protecting species that are endangered is a very important thing, but I do think our priorities are skewed. And sure war is complicated! It's confusing when ponies are fighting and trying to kill us, but when has a defenseless and helpless fetus ever tried to kill someone? Also, we do get uptight when we hear about schools getting bombed and when innocent civilians are dying during war. This is why we call such acts war crimes; we discourage these sort of things."

Hoofty Cuffs rested his face against his hoof, looking rather bored now. "You would be willing to give up your life for a tiny fetus?"

"A good parent should always be willing to give up everything for their foal, even their life whether that foal is born or unborn. I would do so without hesitation. Heroes in books and movies often sacrifice everything to save; we love and crave to hear these kinds of stories, so I would hope that we may recognize the mothers who die for their children in reality as heroes too."

Hoofty Cuffs slammed his hoof down on the stage. "Well, you're only one mare out of many who would disagree with that. I find it sickening how certain denominations preach that you can't use something so simple like a condom and then these religious ponies start multiplying like rabbits and eventually start putting their own foals up for adoption since they can't afford to raise them. It makes me more angry when so many of you Christians want to criticize gay couples for adopting and claiming that it's damaging to the foal to have two mothers or two fathers. Look at Jesus, He had two dads and he came out alright!"

"Oooooooh!" a pony shouted out in the crowd. Many others started applauding for that statement.

Twilight frowned. "First of all, that statement about Jesus having two fathers is incredibly ignorant in the way you are trying to compare it to. Secondly, I agree and am sometimes ashamed by how so many Christians choose not to adopt when there are so many fillies and colts in need of homes. I do feel that more Christians should be open to adopting and I hope that might be a change I will see in the future."

"Speaking of gay couples adopting, why are you Christians so bigoted against homosexuals and refuse to allow them to marry? Do you realize how hard we fight for equality and yet Celestia's laws keep holding us back? Did we not learn anything from the civil rights movement?"

"I really don't think you ought to be comparing gay marriage to the civil rights movements for very obvious reasons and these are some points I believe what marriage should be. Marriage must be between a male and a female, they must not be related, they both must be adults and..."

The stallion cut her off, "Why male and female!? You do realize that your bigotry encourages ponies to refuse services to gays like something as simple as baking a pretend wedding cake just for fun."

"Because if I open my idea for one perverted idea of marriage, then I have to be open to other perversions and that would be the start of degrading marriage. Marriage is a holy and sacred union in which the government should never have any business in. The right to private business owners refusing to take part in something that would be considered offensive or degrading should be protected. We wouldn't think twice about a member of the Klan getting rejected after going into a cleaner shop to get their robe cleaned by perhaps a Jewish cleaner. A big problem about this is how the media tends to report only Christian business owners who may be refusing certain services that would be controversial. No one is denying services like serving food because a customer is gay, and it's kind of silly that one would want a gay wedding cake just for giggles or to make others mad since gay marriage isn't legal as of now. Freedom of the press doesn't always mean fair reporting and Christians tend to get all of the backlash and bullying because we're called to turn the other cheek. If you're not careful, the newspapers will having you hating the ponies who are being oppressed and loving the ponies who are doing the oppressing. Think about all of the Christian business owners who gave up their business because of death threats from the LGBT community, yet we never once hear any carping about a Muslim baker refusing to provide certain services for others. Ponies around the world are too busy running around with protest signs about a Christian owned business not wanting to do something very specific that's bothersome to them like providing contraception for their employees or making something that would be considered degrading to their religious values when ponies of different sexual orientations are being killed daily by Islamic radicals in horrible ways over in the East. I'd just like to know where our priorities are and where the backlash over that is."

A few ponies in the crowd cheered for that statement.

Twilight noticed the little teacup on the saucer next to her and picked it up. "Gay marriage is something you'll never see me marching in the streets against, yet you'll also never see me marching for it. In other words, there are far more important issues that are worth fighting for and it wouldn't be the end of the world to me if gay marriage did happen to get legalized over here."

"Fair enough," the stallion said. "But just because there are other issues greater than this still does not negate the fact that this is okay and that this will only fuel hate and discrimination for others."

Twilight put the cup to her lips and took a sip. The taste of honey and mint melange tea was delightful to her taste buds.

"I hope you can at least agree that ponies don't actually choose their sexual orientation, unless you're one of those Christians who like to defy things that are already scientifically proven."

"I talk to a lot of ponies around town, and truthfully, I have come across at least a couple of ponies who admit they have had sexual relationships with the same sex simply for the experience, not because they are gay. However, I do agree that nopony can help who or even what they are attracted to. This is not an issue to me. No one can control this, but ponies can completely control their sexual urges. Just because some may be gay, bi, asexual, straight, or classify themselves as something else, does not mean they can't control who they sleep with. Many times, straight Christian couples sin by having premarital sex or lusting after somepony.

"So you said, that ponies cannot in anyway control who or what they are sexually attracted to? What about gender identity?" Hoofty asked.

"That's pretty much what I said," Twilight answered. "I talk to a lot of ponies who struggle with all kinds of sexually immoral desires and they come to me for advice. I have a bit of a group therapy open from time to time for those who ask for it. Ponies are making way too much of a big deal over this topic of gender identity. A common view point is that no one choices their sexual orientation or gender identity but everyone choices their lifestyle and expression. Some will point out that females have two X chromosomes while males have an X and a Y chromosome, and then they'll ask why we began to think that gender is based upon what you think and not by what kind of chromosomes you have. Now, I know that the meaning of words can sometimes be altered in response to change in usage, and that ponies are going a bit batty with the word gender, and that even chromosomes can get slightly more complex in extremely rare cases with abnormalities, but hear me out on this. I don't think we need to make things so overly complicated, and there are certain things I absolutely do not want to see. I'm actually okay with the many demands that there be unisex bathrooms available, but the only concern I have is that if we are going to give into the demands of transgender ponies when it comes to using any bathroom they feel like going into, then I'd like to know what we're going to do when they demand that they use whatever gym or work locker-room they feel like going into where there basically is no privacy when it comes to showering with others or undressing in front of others. I'm a member of a gym, and I would certainly feel quite awkward shampooing my tail in the shower while standing close next to two stallions who are scrubbing their, uh, parts while having to listen to them loudly talk about dude stuff. Are we going to set up locking shower stalls and changing stalls so that everyone feels safe and happy? That would be quite inconvenient, and even if we did that, it is still an invitation for unwanted harassment be it sexual or not. I understand the argument that creepers are still going to creep, and that there are those who would behave, but I can't find myself agreeing or being comftorable with a situation like that even if this isn't exactly a black or white issue. I also can't imagine how unfair it would be for female athletes who are forced to compete with other males who wish to compete as females. Now, regarding children, I do think it's damaging to the child if we allow them to choose if they are a boy or a girl based upon their feelings. That's not appropriate or healthy, but what I'm totally not okay with is when ponies take things to extremes, like allowing children to have surgeries or getting them injections to make them appear more like the opposite sex. There are ponies out there who want to hack off their genitals because they believe that they are somehow supposed to be the opposite sex, or we have ponies who have mental disorders like BIID, which stands for body integrity identity disorder, and is similar to GID, gender identity disorder. Some ponies literally want to cause harm to themselves in order to become a paraplegic, and they are more than willing to pay money for doctors to do this. Think about the stories of ponies who get their wings chopped off or their unicorn horns surgically removed because they believe that they are destined to be earth ponies. One of the most common things I hear from ponies like this is that they'll use the excuse that they can't fly or use their magic as well as others in order to believe that they were born as the wrong type of pony. Yeah, this is not okay, and choosing your species is also now a thing theses days thanks to the idea that we can make up an endless amount of gender identities. Are you a pony who wants to be a cat? Cool. How about a pony that wants to be a transgender seahorse? Go right ahead. It seems that this generation is so sensitive about being criticized or labeled, yet they make up tons of labels for themselves or others and they criticize anyone who doesn't approve of it. Want to know something neat? I have a dragon that lives with me, and he's a pretty awesome little guy. He has been around ponies ever since the time when he was hatched and he has lived with me all of his life. He practices friendship and does very feminine things. His whole life would be shamed by dragon culture, but ask him what he thinks he is. Today's generation would probably expect him to admit that he'd say he's a female equine, but nope. He'll tell you that he's a boy and that he's a dragon. Some dragons are labeled as greedy, violent, and selfish; others aren't, but that still doesn't change what they fundamentally are. The same thing applies to stallions who are great care givers and raise babies, and mares who are great in the workforce. Gender is becoming a meaningless term based on arbitrary standards which seems kind of pointless to have gender in the first place. Why not just call ponies by what their actual biological sex is so we can at least have an objective definition? I actually heard someone claim that their gender identity is a veggieburger. Who is to take something like that seriously? Or what about ponies who base their gender on what day it is or what the weather is like? Come on now. These are things I also don't want to see happen no matter how passionately some ponies believe that their warped fantasies are somehow supposed to become a reality. Most Atheist ponies are quick to say that reading the Bible to a child or raising them to be Christian is abuse which is quite silly, but look at what is going on in this world with raising kids today; they are more confused and damaged than ever before."

"Galatians three twenty eight!" a pony shouted out.

"Huh?" Twilight asked as she and Hoofty looked at the audience.

"Read it! The verse is transgender!"

"Uhhhh, I don't have to open my Bible to recall that very popular verse. The verse says that there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for you are all one in Christ. You are completely taking this verse out of context and it might help to read what is said before it, which may give you a bit more clarity. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. The verse you brought up is a continuation of the proof that all Christians are in the fullest sense, children of God. In other words, there are no inequalities or exceptions. All are Christians no matter their sex, status, or race. We all stand on the same footing before God. God loves transgender ponies just as much as he loves everyone else, but we can't be twisting scripture to our liking." Twilight looked at Hoofty and asked, "What do you think about this topic, Mister Cuffs?"

"I agree that this whole gender identity crisis is silly, but even if there were more of these gender-neutral washrooms, you know, and kind of already mentioned, that others will still insist that they will be able go to whichever bathroom they feel like going to, especially since nearly all of these family restrooms you mentioned are simply one small room with no stalls and a locking door. This is the day and age where everyone wants to party and potty together." Hoofty looked at Twilight and said, "Twilight, did you know that I was once trapped inside a female body?"

"Wait, what?" Twilight asked as she stared at him with uncertainty.

"I was, until my mother gave birth."

"I feel like I should have seen that one coming," Twilight said as she brought her eyes back to the teacup next to her.

"Yes, but anyway, you did mention genital mutilation before, so wouldn't you agree that circumcision is wrong? What would you do if you had a son?"

"I would agree that it should be an independent decision to be made as an adult."

"Wow, really? I thought it wouldn't matter to you since the baby won't even remember it happening anyway, and that some Christians do it based on religious beliefs."

"We already had that discussion before when we talked about the ceremonial law, but I will say that I don't agree with it being practiced today even if the pony will not remember. While I am interested in learning about all kinds of things, I have to admit that this is really not a topic that I'm comfortable talking about in front of an entire audience since I'm obviously not a male, but it is known that the foreskin does have important functions. A foreskin is not a birth defect; it is a birthright, and if I had a son, I would not allow him to be circumcised regardless of what the CDC says. The reasoning for this practice is rarely religious, but check out the CDC's guidelines to see what I mean. Female circumcision is also a thing too, but I don't hear it being discussed too much because it's mainly a cultural thing that's not an issue over here even though it has harmed the lives of hundreds of millions of mares that are alive today. Just because someone won't know something or even notice something different that's done to them even as an adult doesn't make it okay."

"Like what?" Hoofty asked.

Twilight Sparkle thought to herself for a moment. "Like, let's say for instance that someone is going to get some kind of surgery done and when that pony is unconscious from the anesthesia, the doctor comes in and molests the patient. When the patient recovers, he or she will not know what happened since there was no psychical harm done to their body. Is this morally wrong? I sure as heck would hope that you would agree."

"Fair point, but on the topic of sexuality, you do believe that pedophiles can't control their feelings even if they identify themselves as Christians, correct?"

"Scientific evidence shows that they cannot help how they feel."

"Great!" Hoofty said. "So that's where we get all our Catholic priests. Statistics show that you're four times more likely to get molested in the Catholic church than any other religious organization."

"Wow," Twilight said as she held her teacup. That was really low and unnecessary."

"My dear, the truth hurts sometimes, doesn't it? As they say, a silver medalist and a priest have one thing in common." Hoofty looked at Twilight and continued. "Do you know what they have in common, Twilight?"

The expression on Twilight's face made her look extremely uncertain and even a little confused. "Um, I don't think now is the time for levity, Mister Cuffs," Twilight answered. "We're supposed to be having serious discussions."

"They both came in a little behind," Hoofty said with a smirk on his face.

Some laughter could be heard from the audience.

Twilight opened her mouth as if she were about to say something, but she simply shook her head slowly from side to side in disbelief. She was tempted to use her magic to summon her newspaper from her kitchen table and whack Hoofty on his snout with it for what he just said.

"Are all churches good, Twilight?"

The question surprised Twilight. "Huh? What kind of question is that? Is this some kind of ploy? There is only one church and Christ is the head of it. What are you trying to get me to say?"

"Well, there are lots of denominations out there and I was just wondering if the folks over at Westboro are going to Heaven."

"Westboro?" Twilight asked.

"The God hates fags church," Hoofty answered sounding slightly annoyed.

"Oh, them," Twilight said sounding disappointed. "It's not my job to judge who gets into Heaven and who doesn't. As Christians, we are to judge righteously, but that's one judgement that I have no say in, and I'm thankful for that."

"But they believe in Jesus as their savior, so they must be Christians. They're called to be the way they are based upon the same book that you read."

"But if Christians are called to be anything, it's to be holy, and if Christians are called to do anything, it's to love and share the good news. I am sad to say that I just don't see any of that going on over there."

"Then wouldn't you like to have them silenced?" Hoofty asked. "They protest at funerals and hate just about anyone who doesn't share the same opinions. To me, they seem dangerous like all religious ponies, but I would imagine that to you, they are radical Christians like how there are radical Muslims. Don't you consider them to be your enemy?"

"As much as I can't stand them, they have the right to freedom of speech. The fact that a tiny hate group like them exists doesn't make me nearly as sad as how much attention they get. I especially can't stand it when ponies confuse their beliefs with mine. As for them being dangerous, let me know when they actually physically harm someone. From what I see, they are all bark and no bite. In some ways, I do feel sorry for them, especially for those who are young and are raised to to be hateful and fearful of others. The goal is to pray for them and not return hate for hate. They are not my enemy; my enemy is Satan, and if Christ is not the center focus of the church, then the church will fall apart."

"Fascinating," Hoofty said. The stallion scratched the white fur on his snout with his hoof as he thought about his next topic that he would like to talk about. "My biggest concern is over Princess Celestia's refusal to make sure that every foal is given the protection they need through vaccination and not allow diseases to spread through un-vaccinated ponies. There have been some measles and chickenpox outbreaks recently and this is a huge concern for many. Would you agree that a change needs to be made in order to achieve herd immunity? Religious fanatics are getting in the way of science once again and ponies are refusing to vaccinate based upon so called religious morals. Foals, fillies, and colts are suffering because of misguided religions and you have everypony flipping out because of autism, which has been proven that there are no connections between vaccinations and autism."

Twilight Sparkle almost dropped the teacup in shock after listening to his words. She carefully placed it back on the saucer and pushed it aside. "Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on for a moment," Twilight said. "I find this very amusing since you're complaining about religions poisoning everything and taking away our freedoms, but you ignore something important like the freedom to choose or deny medical treatments for themselves or their fillies and colts. If you actually believe in the theory of herd immunity, then you shouldn't be acting like everypony needs to be vaccinated in the first place. Let's also not act like only the religious try to avoid vaccines either. There are medical and philosophical exemptions aside from the religious exemption and there are plenty of non-religious ponies who do not wish to vaccinate. There are also some religious ponies who strongly support vaccines despite the risks. If we have any rights, surely one of them is the freedom to decide what is injected into our bodies. I can't think of a more horrifying idea than having the government mandate vaccines and using force to inject us without allowing us to make our own informed decisions, especially when the outcome of vaccinating can lead to serious health complications. I may not be pro-choice for abortions, but I am certainly pro-choice for vaccinations."

The crowds became enraged with Twilight. "Booo! Anti-vaxxer! Anti-Science! Foal abuser! Quack! Hypocrite! Medical heretic! Disease spreader! God damn tree hugging hippie! Radical! Conspiracy theorist!" ponies from the audience began shouting in anger.

Hoofty smiled when he heard the crowd's reaction. For he knew that ponies who did not support mandatory vaccinations were looked down upon. His new goal was to keep her talking about this topic for as long as possible in hopes to gain more favor from the audience. "Oh, this should be interesting. Why can't we all just get vaccinated, Twilight? What's the problem?"

"Methylation," Twilight said.

"I beg your pardon?" Hoofty asked.

"If you have the MTHFR genetic mutation, you should not ever receive a vaccine. Those who have poor methylation will have an adverse reaction to vaccines. If you can't take the time to understand the importance of methylation, then you have no right to demand anyone to just get vaccinated. This is how I know that you have not researched vaccines enough to even take you seriously. At least forty percent of the population has some genetic mutations called MTHFR that affect their ability to process toxins from the body."

More ponies in the audience began to get upset and shout out insults at Twilight.

"Well, Miss Sparkle, the Christian science pony, why not give us some more details about the horrible dangers that these scientifically proven safe and effective vaccines don't have."

The audience continued to mock and laugh at Twilight. For her to be known to have a strong interest in science and yet be opposed to forced vaccination was like a huge joke to them.

Twilight sighed. "I guess this is the point in the discussion where I lose all favor, isn't it?" Twilight shifted her weight around on the pillow and spoke again. "Alright, I'm going to give my input about why it is important to have the freedom to not only avoid vaccinating ourselves, but keeping our little ones safe from vaccines as well. I feel that we first need to educate ourselves about what is injected into our bodies and into our foal's bodies. It really upsets me when ponies say that documented neuro-immune toxins such as mercury, aluminum, formaldehyde, MSG, and polysorbate eighty, which is an emulsifier, are elements and perceived toxins because it is very misleading. Assuming that one hundred percent of the population has the ability to dispose of these toxins at the same rate is absurd. Now, let's talk about fillies and colts getting sick with things like chickenpox, whooping cough, measles and other childhood illnesses. It was only a few decades ago, when they were considered a normal part of childhood, with no long term health issues. In fact, it has been widely understood until scare mongering and misinformation took over, that catching these illnesses as a filly or colt and fighting through them benefited the pony with strengthened immunity, not only for the particular virus or bacterial infection, but for other, similar viruses and bacteria to be encountered in the future. We have traded for what most were benign childhood illnesses which conferred natural immunity for long term to life and instead we now have epidemics of childhood cancers of the brain, blood, and bone, and epidemics of chronic autoimmune diseases such as allergies and asthma. We also frequently see things like type one diabetes, lupus, degenerative diseases of bone and cartilage, ischemia, hyperactivity, behavioral and learning problems, tics, hearing loss, sleep disorders, language delay, coordination disorders, chronic infections, especially in the ears, and so on thanks to vaccines. Think about how crazy it is that parents often times have to be deathly afraid of a peanut or other normal foods that are so import and healthy to eat. It makes me sad when I see these often times overweight and malnourished ponies walking around with five different colored allergy hoof bands around their hooves in order to signify what food ingredients they can't have. Allergies this extreme never existed back then and it's no wonder why so many of these ponies are unhealthy because they often can't get the vital nutrients they need since natural foods have become the enemy to the body. So many food products might contain peanut dust or trace amounts since they are processed in a place where nuts are. I can't believe that when you pick up a bag of peanuts, there's a warning label that says, warning: contains nuts. This also ties into the most obvious result of vaccine damage. It's called gastrointestinal damage and that's when the child’s gut is permanently damaged. He or she is no longer able to absorb nutrients necessary to produce neurotransmitters which are required for proper brain function and that leads to all sorts nasty side effects like mood swings, sleep difficulties, learning disabilities and so on. And even if the topic of vaccines and autism debate will not go away, there is no debating that vaccines can cause serious brain damage. It is also kind of amusing to note that if you read the package insert for the vaccine Tripedia or the original MMR vaccine, it actually lists adverse events reported which includes autism and SIDS, sudden infant death syndrome. If you have any grandparents, I dare you to ask them about how they feel when the media goes berserk and cries epidemic over one or two small outbreaks of measles when back in the old days, ponies used to gather around together and have measles, whooping cough, and chicken pox parties so they could get the infections over with. Did you know that the natural chicken pox infection lowers rates of a certain brain cancer called glioma? And the vaccine targets different proteins so it will not give you this protection. So, when ponies are terrified and use fear tactics when it comes to something like chicken pox, let’s talk about something that is really serious, like, say for instance, shingles. In the past, when little ones were allowed to catch chickenpox, older fillies and colts in their teens and adults who were around those ponies received a natural booster to their immunity against the varicella virus. That’s why shingles used to be an old pony's disease because it was typically only seen in ponies of quite advanced age since they were the ones who were no longer caring for fillies and colts when they were sick, and their immunity was not boosted as a result. Thanks to the vaccine, we now have epidemics of shingles in teens and young adults. Shingles is exponentially more dangerous for young adults than chickenpox ever was for ponies, but it gave the vaccine manufacturers another excuse to develop a product from which to benefit. More money for them and more vaccines for us. With proper care and nutrition, no one should be deathly afraid of these common illnesses. Many may try to argue that they'd rather raise a gifted pony with something like a mild case of Asperger's syndrome than a pony who could become infected with the measles, but let's be real here. For every pony with a mild mental disability, how many more can you find that smear poop on the walls, buck, bite, and hit others, or pull their own mane out? It's so rude to tell other parents that their pony's disabilities are a gift when the parent's life is miserable and taking care of their kid is exhausting and expensive. Some may be afraid of a mild disease like the measles, but go talk to a parent who vaccinated their kid and watched them regress and developed horrible mental disorders and compare the outcomes of having a child who needs to be dependent for the rest of their life compared to someone who catches a mild illness like the measles before being so quick to judge. We need to stop fighting so hard and let the body do what it's meant to do even when parents and doctors are terrified of something so simple like a fever. Trying to stop a mild fever when you're sick is like trying to stop your attack dog from saving your life when an intruder breaks into your house with the intent to kill you; it's like forcing a shut down of the sprinkler system during a fire in a building. Fevers might not be fun to go through, but they serve a great importance."

"Until the fever gets so high that your kid gets brain damage," Hoofty said.

"With a fever, most doctors and parents seem to instantly worry about heart or brain damage, but a fever cannot cause brain or heart damage unless it reaches one hundred seven point six degrees Fahrenheit, forty two degrees Celsius, and stays there for an extended period of time. Some authorities, however, say that fever is still highly unlikely to cause brain damage in a previously healthy child. During most infections, the brain keeps body temperature at or below one hundred four degrees Fahrenheit, forty degrees Celsius. So in nearly all cases, you don’t need to be afraid that your child’s temperature is going to continue to rise above that point. See, our bodies know to literally cook the bugs that come when our immune system is suppressed. The viral core molecule of RNA cannot reproduce if the body temperature is above one hundred one degrees. We rush right to the store and give kids drugs when they have a runny nose or perfectly normal fever. I'm even more horrified when the foal starts crying a few hours later after vaccination and Tylenol is given to them because that should be such an obvious never since that can be extremely dangerous and can very likely further the damage that vaccines have already done. Why do we do this? Because we think everything is a major, scary problem in life and the products we use are safe because we see happy, healthy looking ponies who jump-rope and skip in the advertisements of the drug products we buy. Don't fight your fever, it's your friend and our bodies know how to deal with these now feared diseases and illnesses."

"And what about polio!? Is that now a not feared disease to you, too? We completely eradicated that terrible disease thanks to the vaccine!"

Twilight Sparkle shook her head no from side to side. "That's another thing I'm really tired of is the topic of polio. We need to understand the disease and the supposed eradication by the vaccine. Polio is still with us. For approximately ninety five percent of ponies who get polio will have no symptoms and four to eight percent will have minor symptoms which may include fever, fatigue, nausea, headache, stiffness, and pain in the limbs which resolves completely; fewer than one percent of polio cases result in permanent paralysis of the limbs in usually the back legs of those paralyzed, and five to ten percent of that one percent actually die when the paralysis strikes the respiratory muscles. Nobody is tested for polio when they have a viral bug. The paralytic polio scare of the past was concentrated in the summer months and in areas of this land where fillies and colts were swimming in rivers, lakes and streams contaminated with dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane from run-off of farming operations. We'll abbreviate that long name and simply call it DDT. If you research DDT poisoning, you will see that the symptoms of paralytic polio are identical. DDT is a highly lethal poison for all species of animals, but scientists back in those times said that it was not only nontoxic, but safe for us in any quantity. It was even said that it would make us healthier, so ponies put it on drawers, sprinkled it on windowsills, covered their children's lunchboxes with it, and put it directly on sandwiches. They also put it in water to rinse clothes, they put it on bedding, mattresses and painted it on the walls of children's rooms. You could even purchase wallpaper with DDT already inside it. This stuff was literally everywhere, and it should come to us as no surprise that the well-to-do had such a problem with polio. There were many other problems during that time including arsenic and lead poisoning, the rise in feeding our infants with synthetic liquid trash called infant formula, diets high in processed foods including refined sugar and white flour, alcohol, tobacco, antibiotics, vaccines, as well as the popular surgery during that time of removing healthy tonsils which dramatically raised the risk of getting the most serious form of polio called bulbar poliomyelitis. The eradication of polio was not accomplished by the vaccine contrary to popular medical myth belief. The numbers actually went up after the vaccine came out because it was a live virus and it caused polio in those who received it. This is still happening in other lands, where three different types of vaccine-induced polio have been identified, many from the Sabin vaccine. Over here, what happened was that they changed the diagnostic criteria, which meant that approximately ninety five percent of those cases that would have previously been diagnosed as polio were now reclassified as other diseases, including Guillain-Barre syndrome and meningitis which was yet another reason to develop more vaccines and rake in the money. Changing the diagnostic criteria always happens whenever there is a massive campaign to vaccinate. Poliomyelitis was also hidden behind other names like transverse myelitis, viral or aseptic meningitis, Chronic fatigue syndrome, AFP, enteroviral encephalopathy, traumatic neuritis, Reye's syndrome, and so much more could have been diagnosed as polio in the past. Parents actually asked the hospital for a polio diagnosis because the March of Dimes paid for treatment of paralytic polio. The current inactivated polio vaccine that we use today does not even stop transmission of the virus, meaning that you can't make an argument that it can be used to protect the public health in anyway since it does not prevent you from getting polio and spreading it to others. My friends, this is all just smoke and mirrors."

"So what you're saying is that they have renamed polio multiple times?" Hoofty asked. "I swear, what you say keeps getting more bizarre by the second. What source do you get this nonsense from that almost one hundred percent of polio cases are asymptomatic?"

"That source of information comes from the Communicable Disease Center, or what they are now referred to as, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Yes, ninety five percent of the time polio is asymptomatic and presents itself as the flu. It has never been eradicated, they just keep changing the name so that you think it has been. The practice among doctors prior to nineteen fifty four was to diagnose all ponies who experienced even short-term paralysis with polio; short term is defined as twenty four hours. When the Salk vaccine was released, the diagnostic criteria became much more strict. If there was no residual paralysis sixty days after onset, then the disease was then not to be called paralytic polio. This adjustment was a huge game changer because most ponies who experienced paralysis recovered prior to that cutoff time. Let's not forget about the cancer causing simian virus forty as well as the AIDS virus that we were exposed to thanks to the next improved polio vaccine. They swore to us that everything was perfectly safe with the improved polio vaccine despite their previous lies about having a safe polio vaccine before, and the only thing larger than the pile of broken medical promises, is the pile of broken and dead bodies. The polio vaccine was originally worked on by a quack named Doctor Salk, and the vaccine was experimented on fillies and colts in orphanages and churches since parental signatures were not required. As a result, the polio vaccine gave forty thousand ponies polio; hundreds were severely paralyzed and some of them died. Of course, all injuries and deaths were under-reported by the same authorities who orchestrated the atrocity. This is called the Cutter incident, and many pro-vaccine doctors will admit that this incident was a fiasco like many other vaccine blunders such as the huge failure of the swine flu vaccine. The worst part about the entire incident was that scientists knew in advance that there were major problems with this vaccine, yet they were quickly subdued. Mister Salk testified before a senate subcommittee that since nineteen sixty one, nearly all polio outbreaks were caused by the oral polio vaccine. Vaccine inventors are the same as drug makers; they both make claims that their version of the drug or vaccine is superior to their competitors in hopes to sell more. The wild polio virus was never the big paralyzing killer that the public was led to believe. It took decades for the medical community to accept that they had been incorrectly treating polio and were responsible for much of the residual paralyses, deformities, and stiffness that would not go away. If you want to hear an amazing story of a mare who was despised by the medical authorities yet did great work in rehabilitating those with paralytic polio, then please read about Sister Elizabeth Kenny."

"And the iron lungs? Where are they now?" Hoofty asked. "That's proof that we don't have them anymore because of the vaccine."

Twilight sighed at his reasoning. "One of the most common tactics ponies use to prove that the polio vaccines were a success is to show you old black and white video clips or pictures of all those children in iron lungs. They were rather terrifying to see; eight hundred pound tube-like machines with paralyzed patients helplessly laying inside. It certainly has a horror movie, torture chamber-like feel to it and it was the worst nightmare for any concerned parent during that time. The machine was simply used to administer prolonged artificial respiration by means of mechanical pumps. In the old clips and photos, you can see what looks like row upon row of these machines. It's made to appear as if every city had thousands of children in iron lung machines, and that ponies were being permanently paralyzed or dying from polio just about everywhere. From the statistics I gave you just a moment ago which comes directly from the CDC, this was not the case. So, where are all those iron lung machines? We've still got plenty of them. Except, of course, technology has improved, and we don't refer to them as iron lungs. They're now called positive airflow ventilation or CPAP, continuous positive airway pressure machines. They're vastly more portable devices, and they're not nearly so scary looking as those old iron lungs, but they're everywhere in hospitals, ambulances, homes and so on. We are indeed still suffering from polio-like paralysis, but as I said before, they now prefer to call it Guillain-Barre Syndrome or the more aggressive form, Acute Flaccid Paralysis. The CPAP industry is booming big time over here and the polio vaccine is a massive fraud."

Hoofty appeared to be deep in thought for a moment. "Wait a second."

"Hm?" Twilight said.

The stallion began laughing. "I just realized that you said something incredibly contradictory about your little rant on the polio vaccine."

"Oh, do tell," Twilight said.

"As we know, Doctor Salk was behind the first injectable polio vaccine which contained inactivated, or killed strains of the polio virus."

"Mmmhmmm," Twilight replied politely.

"You said that there was this big incident gave thousands of ponies polio because of the Salk vaccine."

"That's correct," Twilight admitted.

"So, how can that happen if it's inactivated!? See, you don't even know what you're talking about. Should we be surprised that you say contradictory things when you base your entire life off of a religious book that is filled with contradictions?"

Twilight smirked. "What if I told you that what I said is still true?"

"Yeah, you go on and explain that," Hoofty said. "Let's see you wiggle out of this one."

"The polio virus that Doctor Salk supposedly killed with formalin or formaldehyde was not always actually killed; they sometimes only appeared to be killed. So when this virus appeared to be inactivated right after it was made, it would sometimes resurrect in the vial, and the formaldehyde didn't kill off all the polio viruses in these vaccines which led to live polio viruses being injected. Of course, disaster soon followed shortly after this. Cutter Laboratories was not the only manufacture of the Salk IPV; Wyeth Laboratories also produced a defective Salk vaccine that caused paralysis, and other pharmaceutical companies are believed to have done this as well, but only Cutter's vaccine was actually recalled. That means that tens of millions of doses of improperly inactivated Salk vaccine were sold and injected into little ones all around the world until the nineteen sixties when the live oral Sabin vaccine replaced Salk's IPV. Guess what? Still to this day, it is causing polio all over the world and is mainly used in poorer areas because it is incredibly cheap to produce compared to our polio vaccine. Later on, a modified inactivated Salk vaccine was reintroduced in the nineteen nineties which is what we currently use."

Hoofty Cuffs looked beyond disappointed that what she said wasn't a mistake earlier.

Twilight continued. "We only praise a quack like Doctor Salk because we're not taught about the whole story when it comes to history, and while all vaccines cause harm and many have the potential to even kill, some vaccines are far more dangerous than others."

"And why don't you name us one of the more harmful vaccines," Hoofty suggested. "You're already on a roll with this, so let's keep it going."

"There's one that comes to mind called Gardasil and that vaccine seems like it's a direct attack on the female population, and now apparently, the pony papillomavirus vaccine is recommended for males as well. The vaccine is a complete nightmare and so many little fillies and mares died from receiving this shot that was supposed to protect them from dying and thousands upon thousands of health complaints were filed because of it. Many of those deaths were from blood-clots which is the most common diagnosis in Gardasil related deaths and some healthy ponies even died within just a few hours after getting injected with no negative medical history. This was a time when vaccine manufactures were playing fear games and spewing propaganda when they were claiming that a lack of vaccination would lead to cancer. Many vaccine advocates and lobbyists were fighting for this vaccine to be mandated for little fillies to be able to go to school. It's not about protecting our little ones as the companies would like you to believe, it's about politics and greed since by the time when most fillies need the supposed protection the most, the vaccine has lost its effectiveness long ago. That's why it's silly that they were shooting up fillies as young as six years old. Their target age group was nine years old, but even then it's still too young and ridiculous to even consider vaccinating little fillies with an STD vaccine. Yes, I called it an STD vaccine because in most cases, cervical cancer is the result of sexually transmitted disease, specifically PPV. Many only reacted differently to it because they kept hearing about cancer, and some even viewed it as some kind of safe sex vaccine. If you wouldn't get your nine year old daughter a syphilis vaccine, if that actually existed, then you most certainly wouldn't want to get her the Gardasil vaccine. This vaccine is one of the dumbest and most dangerous vaccines ever made and it gave many a false sense of security since there are over one hundred different viral strains that can cause PPV, yet very few of these strains actually contribute to cancer or cause genital warts and almost all of them clear up on their own, usually within one to two years. If someone has previously been exposed to the PPV strains contained in the vaccine prior to injection, then Gardasil actually increases the risk of precancerous lesions by nearly fifty percent and does not provide any protection. Many of these ponies suffered from premature menopause from the vaccine, and if you look at some of the listed side effects alone and see that that the vaccine causes fainting, vomiting, seizures, convulsions, paralysis, Guillain-Barre syndrome, bell's palsy, anaphylactic shock, comas, and even death, then why on earth would anypony even think about considering getting this vaccine even if they do truly believe that vaccines aren't a pseudo science. Let's face it, those little fillies who first got the shot were the guinea pigs for the vaccine makers. They were the test lab rats and the vaccine manufacturers got away with literal murder of young, Innocent fillies and mares who do not get to come back again, they are gone forever. If there is anything worse than a group of ponies who are openly committed to causing harm among others, it's a group of ponies who dress up as wolves in sheep clothing and pretend that they're on your side and for your health when it reality, they are ruining lives for profit and not taking any blame. That is what makes me sick to my stomach and I hope that many of you may start to rethink vaccines and take the time to educate yourselves because while you can decide to vaccinate at any time, you can never decide to un-vaccinate. Cervical cancer has declined by ninety-five percent over the past sixty years because of pap smears. If you're truly worried about cervical cancer, there are some things you can do to fight it. PPV cancer is very slow growing, so you can get a pap smear every three to five years, get adequate amounts of vitamin D, don't smoke, consume a diet rich in antioxidants with high micro-nutrients that includes beta-carotene, foods rich in iodine, selenium and folic acid. Avoid immuno suppressing circumstances like taking drugs, staying up all night, and not eating properly, and most importantly, don't be a slut. Most of this is really common sense."

"And I assume that you get all of these horrible cases from reading up on the program VAERS, the vaccine adverse event reporting system. I hope you know that it's a horrible system where a pony can get a vaccine and then later bang their hoof on a hammer and go crying out that they had an adverse reaction to the vaccine that caused them to have pain in their hoof and it will be documented. Who is to even takes such nonsense seriously?"

"The system is there for a reason," Twilight said. "It may not be one hundred percent perfect, but the example you gave is simply ridiculous. There is no reason why somepony would report something that silly unless they are trying to cause trouble in the first place. No one knows a child better than the mother and those who vaccinate usually go to get their vaccines with the utmost confidence that their shots are going to make them healthier. Only one to ten percent of adverse reactions ever get reported by doctors. If there is one thing that gets totally overlooked when it comes vaccine damage, it's the damage that happens over time. Not all vaccine reactions happen shortly and some can take years to develop. Vaccines have been linked to cancer, diabetes, Parkinson's, arthritis, MS, Tourette's, autoimmune disorders, Alzheimer's, and so much more. The common toxins found in vaccines can get lodged in the vital organs and fester for years, causing all kinds of health problems over time which is probably why there has never been any long term studies done on vaccines."

The stallion leaned his hoof against his face and said, "And I suppose that you anti-vaxxers get all your facts from misguided celebrities instead of real doctors, huh?"

"Not at all, and you act like there aren't scientists or real doctors who speak out against vaccinations. Heck, even many expert doctors who advocate for vaccines speak out against certain ones and warn the public that we are being over vaccinated. The amount of vaccines given has increased dramatically over time. Compare it to just a few decades ago when ponies were given no more than four vaccines. Now a days, ponies receive anywhere from thirty-seven to fifty vaccines and that number continues to grow. You would be surprised how little your average doctor actually knows about vaccines. In fact, it wasn't that long ago until doctors were given special guides on how to use fear tactics on parents who were smart enough to do some studying on vaccines and wanted to avoid vaccinating their kids. Most doctors aren't taught about how vaccines are made or what’s in them. They are taught how to give them according to the schedule. Most nurses have never even seen a vaccine manufacturer’s insert unless they are showed by a patient. If there are any doctors out there who understand vaccines well, it's surprisingly holistic chiropractors. You would be surprised how much more they know about health issues and nutrition than just simply knowing how to adjust bones in your back. I have a lot of respect for many holistic chiropractors and I have talked to some in person. Many are really on their 'A' game when it comes to true medicine and knowledge about vaccines. Your typical doc in the box is like a walking encyclopedia when it comes to knowing his or her pharmaceutical drugs, but usually lacks much knowledge when it comes to topics like this. So how about before we get all hysterical about a few incidents of chickenpox or measles happening today, we actually take a break from listening to the media that attempts to pump us full of fear and do some research while we are really still able to think for ourselves about the diseases vaccines are supposed to prevent, and about the vaccines themselves, so we can do a cost-benefit analysis for our own families? As part of that research, how about we consider our families medical histories, and especially consider if we have autoimmune diseases in first or second degree relatives, which indicates there is something about our immune systems that may lead our ponies to respond differently than the norm when they are injected with adjuvants designed to ramp up the immune system? And how about we stop to consider that within the world of medicine, there is not a single thing that is safe or effective for one hundred percent of the population? And let’s think about how it doesn't make sense to apply a complex medical procedure of receiving seven to eight vaccines at their two month well visit, which has never been studied for synergistic effects between the vaccines or their ingredients, to one hundred percent of the foal population and expect that there won’t be at least a percentage of those foals that will have serious adverse effects. How about the fact that the EPA's safe limit for aluminium being injected into an eight pound foal is twenty-five micro-grams, yet the Hepatitis B vaccine is given within hours of birth and contains at least two-hundred-fifty micro-grams of aluminum. Most parents who spend hours researching safety issues when it comes to products or medicine for their foals are usually the same ones who are up all night spending countless hours researching vaccines. It is rude to assert that all ponies base their information off of a misinformed celebrity, and I can name plenty of of big time celebrities who encourage vaccinations. Just because somepony who may not have high credentials and may be misguided about something doesn't automatically mean that whatever side or view they are defending is wrong. You certainly wouldn't reject Atheism because a newly converted Atheist pony might say things that might make your side look foolish. You'll find foolish talk on both sides of any issue regardless of whatever side is more right or wrong."

"Okay, listen. I'm not a vaccine expert, but I am fairly certain that some of the things you claim are bogus. There's nothing to be afraid of when it comes to vaccinating. Heck, I usually get my flu shot every year and I'm perfectly healthy. There's absolutely nothing wrong with me at all!"

Twilight looked at his double chin for a moment and then looked down at his large sagging gut. "Yeah," Twilight said sounding apathetic. "You sure do look like you're the prime example of what it means to be healthy."

Hoofty smiled greatly and believed that she was serious about her comment. "Why thank you. I get compliments all the time from my doctor about how perfect my health is."

Twilight simply rolled her eyes at his response.

Hoofty suddenly began coughing loudly for a moment. His cough sounded deeply congested.

"Um, are you okay, Mister Cuffs?" Twilight asked. "You sound like you're about to cough up a lung."

Hoofty waved his hoof in the air as if to signal that he was fine. "No worries, Iv'e simply had this cough ever since I was a colt," he said in-between coughs. "Sometimes I get this cough after getting my flu shot which I got yesterday; it's just a harmless side effect." Hoofty continued to cough loudly. His inhaler for his asthma fell out of his pocket during his coughing fit.

"Shot today; sick tomorrow," Twilight said. "Some pony want to at least give him a bottle of water?"

One of the ponies from below the stage rolled a bottle of water over to Hoofty.

Hoofty Cuffs picked it up and opened it. He took a few sips and then placed it aside. "Thank you for the water, I must have simply needed a few sips of it. All I must be having is a natural immune response from the vaccine. It's obviously making my immune system healthier for this year's flu season. Have you ever had the flu? It's a terrible thing. Sometimes I get it shortly after my vaccine because I didn't vaccinate soon enough." Hoofty noticed his inhaler on the stage floor. He picked it up and put it back into his pocket.

"No, sir. I have never had the flu, nor the shot. They pick the most predominant strains of influenza to predict what will happen during next year's flu season. They often guess the wrong strains, but even if they did guess correctly, strains shift and drift throughout the year. So, by about three months later after you got your vaccine which somehow happened to be the right strains, the virus strains that are circulating around by that time would have changed and renders any protection that you might have had as useless. Flu shots also contain high levels of thimerosal which is a mercury containing organic compound."

Hoofty took a few deep breaths before thinking about what he wanted to ask next. "I would like to know where religion comes in for avoiding vaccination. Earlier, you said that ponies can use religion in order to avoid vaccinating, so let's hear what you have to say for all those Christians opting out of getting their shots."

"Before I answer that, I'd just like to make a point since we were previously discussing abortions tonight. Isn't it interesting that when ponies chant it's my body, it's my choice for abortions, ponies listen and agree with that statement which doesn't make sense in the first place, but when a pony who uses that same phrase when it comes to vaccinations, that phrase makes complete sense and yet that pony is ridiculed and mocked. We can somehow try to justify the end of an innocent life with that phrase, yet we can't accept it when somepony who reads and understands the risks and failures of vaccines and chooses not to have them. In fact, without abortions, we wouldn't have some of the twisted concoctions that we now have today when it comes to vaccines.

"Wait a second," Hoofty said. "Abortions have been illegal for the longest time now. How are little foals being aborted for vaccines when it's now illegal?"

"There was a time needed when making a vaccine, such as the rubella vaccine, required the killing of many baby fetuses. This is still desired to do for future medical experiments and I'm sure that you're aware that sacrificing lives to make medicine, or as I should call it for what it really is, modern day witchcraft, is a big no-no from my religion. Of course, with the making of vaccines, the cells reproduce themselves, so there is no immediate need to abort additional fetuses to sustain the culture supply, but older cell lines will have to eventually be replaced because the older those cell lines are, the more tumorigenic they become, which means that more abortions will have to be required again. Viruses are then collected from the diploid cell cultures and then processed further to produce the vaccine itself. Christians may not want vaccines because of this reason alone since abortions go against our morals. Scriptures say things like in the book of Timothy that parents have every legal right and by religious beliefs to make decisions on behalf of their ponies, and not the state. In the book of first Corinthians, the Bible says, do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies. Vaccine ingredients are toxic and extremely controversial. Injecting your body with damaging ingredients would not be honoring God with your body. As Christians, we are supposed to follow our conscience. According to the Catholic church, the definition of moral conscience is discussed in the catechism, which states that conscience is a judgment of reason whereby the person recognizes the moral quality of a concrete act that he is going to perform, is in the process of performing or has already completed. In all he says and does, man is obliged to follow faithfully what he knows to be just and right. It is by the judgment of his conscience that man perceives and recognizes the prescription of the divine law. The Catholic church also strongly warns that a person must always obey the certain judgment of his conscience. If he were deliberately to act against it, he would condemn himself. For Protestants, prayer for guidance is central to many of these denominations, and there are plenty of Bible verses that affirm the need for Christians to have faith in God and be guided by scripture, and follow their conscience. The book of Timothy says that the aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. One of my favorite verses I quote often is found in the book of Mark, Jesus said that it is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. Why would we give all these unnecessary medical treatments to a perfectly healthy newborn which can make them very sick or even kill them? After all, some of Jesus's most hated sins are hypocrisy and the harming of children. I think that's self explanatory."

"Why!?" Hoofty asked. "Because they're one hundred percent necessary and doctors say that they're safe and effective! Why can't you simply accept the fact that vaccines work? Do you even understand how vaccines work?"

"You have to define working first. There exists not one single ingredient in a vaccine that boosts the overall health of a population. We don't have a vaccine for every disease and not every disease is as dangerous as most think, so we must have another ability to fight diseases than only memory immunity which is what vaccines are supposed to give us in our blood. Vaccines are an attempt to target antibody levels, but antibody levels does not correlate very well to the amount of protection from disease, and if you have high antibody levels and get a vaccine, then your likelihood of having a negative reaction is much higher. No one has figured out how to tell for certain who has immunity by looking at antibody levels. Ponies without antibodies can be completely protected from clinical illness by cellular immunity, and If you don't know, there are branches of our immune system. We already have a line of defense called innate immunity. This refers to nonspecific defense mechanisms that come into play immediately or within hours of an antigen's appearance in the body. These mechanisms include physical barriers such as skin, chemicals in the blood called cytokines, and immune system cells that attack foreign cells in the body. This aspect of immunity is present regardless of vaccination and is extremely dependent on essential nutrients. And of course, we should know humoral immunity by now, which is also called the antibody-mediated beta cellularis immune system. It is the aspect of immunity that is mediated by macromolecules found in extracellular fluids such as secreted antibodies, complement proteins and certain antimicrobial peptides. It's actually very common for ponies to not respond to certain vaccines like tetanus or rubella. There are better ways of combating diseases and making our immune systems more resilient than getting shots. In case I didn't explain this well before, vaccines are an attempt to expose the body to a benign form of a disease so that the body can respond as if it were infected with the disease without getting sick, and then it can hopefully have memory of that infection for the future if it is exposed to the actual natural infection. Would you agree with that definition, Mister Cuffs?"

"Yeah, I guess that sounds reasonably accurate," Hoofty said feeling rather disappointed. "But I will still stand by the fact that vaccines are ultimately safe and that genetics are to blame for everything."

"Good," Twilight said. "They can only say that the vaccine is safe in relation to the condition of you when you're given it. You can have a disease that they don't know about like an immunoglobulin deficiency, or cancer, or a mitochondrial disease, or a genetic disorder. When you get the vaccine, it can trigger a problem and then they will blame you because you had this preexisting condition and not necessarily is it a problem of the vaccine to them. There's also this thing called epigenetic alternations which is not a gene mutation, but a gene activation. We used to think that our genes are our destiny and still to this day, many like to blame nearly everything on genetics, but we now know that only a small percent of our genes dictates what happens to us. Our destiny is about what those genes are told to do, and what they're told to do has so much to do with what we're exposed to. Smoking, vaccines or even eating certain things will change this profile. Vaccination, as I hope you may all know, has been a disaster on the immune system that not only causes many chronic illnesses, but actually changes our genetic code which is a horrifying thought. If I may try to paint an image for you with words, I'll attempt to briefly explain this. When we think about cells, imagine the cell as a ball and think of the genes on the inside of the ball. On the outside of the ball, there are about two-thousand receptors that respond to what's happening in the broth that the cell is bathed in, so depending on what's hitting the outside of the cell be it in the instance of vaccines like aluminum, formaldehyde, or the tetanus toxoid, we will see different signals go into the cell and different instructions will be given to the genes which will make protein. We see epigenetic alterations resulting in the up-regulation of genes that are associated with things like, genetic disorders, cardiovascular disease, cell death, gastrointestinal disease, immunological disease, developmental disorders, connective tissue disorders, metabolic dysfunction, energy production problems, cell signaling problems, and so on. So, When doctors say that vaccines are safe and effective, they really mean to say GRAS, or generally recognized as safe and not one hundred percent safe. Good luck attempting to sue a company from a product or medical procedure that has already been given its GRAS label blessing by the Bureau of Chemistry or as they like to now be called, the Food and Drug Administration. Their job is to shield and protect the chemical companies from being sued by ponies who have been injured or killed by the products that they have approved of, and to also go after those who make unapproved FDA claims, even if those claims are truthful. It is important to note that all drugs and medical technologies are considered unavoidably unsafe. I'd also like to recommend that you go and witness the horrific abuse done to animals when it comes to making these vaccines and do not read the sugar coated stories. I have tried to observe what happens to the animals myself but couldn't bear to watch for very long. If you have any compassion for animals like my friend Fluttershy, then you'll specifically want to avoid supporting the cruel and unspeakable torture that these animals go through by refusing to vaccinate. God gave us amazing immune systems for a reason and no prophecy in the Bible ever says that ponies will eventually need to come up with vaccines to save us all or else our entire species will die off because God forgot to complete our immune systems. The Bible I know and read says that we are wonderfully made."

"Alright, you made somewhat of a good point even though your overall view of medical science is incredibly disappointing and upsetting. What about the theory of herd immunity and the fact that the most well known doctors believe that this is our only way of eradicating diseases? You can't disagree with that."

"That's simply a myth and if you want to point your hoof at me and tell me that I get my arguments from old textbooks, I'd like to point back and say that the theory of herd immunity is an incredibly outdated concept from old medical textbooks and yet doctors still cling to this idea just like how some doctors still preach in the flawed belief of the lipid hypothesis. When we look at things like the vaccination campaign for measles in this land from a while back, the Equestrian Public Health Service planned to vaccinate over fifty five percent of the population, and it announced that it fully expected to eradicate measles in only a few years. When they failed in their mission, the Public Health Service came up with vaccination rate figures of seventy percent to seventy five percent as the way to ensure herd immunity. When eradication was still not achieved at those rates, public health officials continued to raise the rates to eighty percent to eighty five percent, and ultimately to ninety percent. The rate is currently up to ninety five percent to achieve herd immunity, but as we see with the continual outbreaks, even at ninety five percent we still do not have full immunity. We have seen other lands with higher vaccination rates going well above this. Some have vaccination rates above ninety nine percent, but there are also still measles as well as other outbreaks there. So if we are advocating for one hundred percent, what will we all do or say when there are still outbreaks? We have gone from herd immunity which was originally promised to be achieved at fifty five percent to herd immunity that is clearly not achieved at ninety five percent or above ninety nine percent. At what point will the public health officials have to confront the possibility that herd immunity may not be the best theory on which to base vaccination policy? Especially since most of these vaccines lose their effectiveness between two to ten years after being given. There was a time when getting vaccinated was once believed to provide immunity for the rest of one's life. I find it amusing how angry ponies get when a little one might not be vaccinated, but how many adult ponies seriously keep up to date with their vaccines? We seem to treat non-vaccinated fillies and colts like they are biological terrorists but what is the difference between a non-vaccinated filly or colt and an adult pony who may have had their shots when they were young, but the effects of the supposed protection are completely gone now? In my eyes, diseases and outbreaks are going to happen regardless of what crazy policies happen and basing your luck on getting a shot is not the best or healthiest way to go about matters since we see countless times of vaccines not only failing to provide protection, but also severely damaging individuals who get them, or even giving the disease to the victim who gets vaccinated against the same disease that they don't want. As I said before, In the real world of medicine, there is never such a thing as a one size horseshoe fits all treatment anyway. There's also a little thing called medical freedom that gets in the way of achieving a one hundred percent vaccination rate as well. I wouldn't be surprised if that freedom gets completely ignored some day as we continue to see an onslaught of anti-medical and anti-religious freedoms in this land. We are trying to be herded, but it seems like it's certainly not towards immunity. For the only thing vaccines have ever truly eradicated is a healthy immune system. I know at least as long as Princess Celestia is still Princess, she will respect those who want the best for their families and allow them to be free from the devastating effects of vaccines. If you really want to protect the herd, you can start by not vaccinating and eating nutritiously instead. Poor nutrition alone can very well be the reason why outbreaks of disease happen."

Hoofty Cuffs smacked his hoof on top of his other hoof to emphasize. "But it's logical and agreed upon by most doctors."

"Why?" Twilight asked. "Why do ponies keep parroting what they hear about herd immunity? Herd immunity, like the way you're thinking of, is a hilariously bad concept that assumes that the vaccinated are immune to the diseases for which they've been vaccinated, and they cannot carry the diseases for which they are vaccinated and immune from. Lastly, because most of the ponies are vaccinated, other ponies around them can't catch the disease. A good analogy for vaccine herd immunity is that if ninety five percent of ponies in a building are wearing hard hats when the ceiling falls in, the five percent are protected. This is the kind of silly logic that ponies in the pro-vaccination community swear by and I'm not impressed at all by how they think. I think we should all be thinking and asking important questions like, why are newborn foals vaccinated on their first day of life against a disease that is primarily transmitted sexually and by needles in drug users? Pregnant mares are already tested for STDs prior to birth so there's no reason to give it to an infant. Why are foals given vaccines to produce antibodies when they do not produce antibodies until after the age of three to six months? They get the required antibodies from breastfeeding. Why does the medical establishment tell parents to delay breast feeding and get more vaccines when breast feeding foals produce higher levels of antibodies? Why aren't vaccine manufacturers held responsible when their product injures your child? Why would these companies need to be protected from the effects of such wonderful products? Why are vaccine manufacturers allowed to reduce antigens and insert cheap and toxic additives that aggravate the injection site? Why is it that if vaccines are so great, that they often have to be forced on nurses or doctors who try to avoid them or the fact that well over fifty percent of health professionals avoid the flu shot like the plague? Why is it that the more wealthy and educated a family is, the less likely they are to vaccinate? Ponies in Canterlot have a very low vaccination rate with very little incidents of disease. Why is it that..."

"Enough!" Hoofty cried out. I think as long as we can agree that the un-vaccinated should stay locked in their homes and not be allowed to dwell with the vaccinated population, most of us would be very happy with that. We don't need families being biological terrorists to society. Isn't it bad enough that the un-vaccinated are causing the outbreaks of measles?"

Twilight Sparkle stomped her hoof against the stage. She felt slightly angry that Hoofty cared nothing for what she had previously stated. "Really!? I have a little news for you. The non-vaccinated do not cause measles outbreaks; the measles causes outbreaks of measles. I find it sad that you would still think the non-vaccinated are biological terrorists when in many instances, the vaccinated can spread diseases to the non-vaccinated and vaccinated alike. For one example, the FDA's own research suggests that individuals immunized with an acellular pertussis vaccine may still become infected with the bacteria without always getting sick and are able to spread infection to others, including young infants who are susceptible to the pertussis disease. This is why we see so many outbreaks of whooping cough among heavily vaccinated towns and it's not because maybe some non-vaccinated pony came within a certain proximity and caused the whole town to get sick, but because vaccines are known to fail and spread diseases. Did you know that after a pony gets vaccinated with a vaccine that contains a live virus, they can spread the disease for a month or more? They are the ones who should be quarantined in order to protect the public from the spread of diseases; we should not be going on witch hunts and terrorizing or discriminating against the non-vaccinated because of vaccine failures. Besides, It is a logical fallacy to believe that you have immunity after receiving your shots and then suddenly feel threatened by some non-vaccinated pony who isn't even carrying any diseases. The vaccinated are incredibly dangerous to those who have weakened immune systems. In fact, you can't donate blood or visit somepony with cancer in the hospital if you recently had certain vaccines because you can very well be responsible for their death. Infection from vaccines happens with other vaccines like the rotavirus vaccine, the oral polio vaccine, the flu-nasal vaccine, the measles vaccine, the chickenpox vaccine, and the rubella vaccine. Check the vaccine package inserts if you don't believe what I'm saying. Doctors will sometimes write up cases like an actual infection of the measles in a vaccinated individual as a measles like condition, or something else that resembles the measles, or they will assume it is the wild virus, but we now have the scientific methods to find out whether it is wild or the vaccine strain. Most of the time, cases of measles in the vaccinated are not counted or even recognized because the illness that comes with vaccine measles is incorrectly assumed to be less harmful than the natural measles. Did you know that the measles virus can infect and not manifest any rash at all? The virus itself does not cause any rash. Pretty crazy, huh? In cases of whooping cough, a nagging cough in children and adults may be the only symptom. Most do not seek any medical care for a persistent cough. If they do go to a doctor, their illness is not diagnosed as whooping cough, simply because the medical community perceives it to be a childhood disease that is not longer an issues thanks to vaccines. Doctors will never consider actual cases of whooping cough in vaccinated children or in adults, and no official statistics reflect on the true amount of circulating whooping cough in ponies of all ages. There has also been a mutation in the bacteria circulating thanks to the vaccine. We not only see vaccines failing to provide the immunity they claim to provide, but also causing the spread of diseases and I'm sure these facts won't phase many of you tonight. The non-vaccinated will always be the scapegoats for whatever problems vaccines may cause in society and Princess Celestia only keeps this medical procedure because the overwhelming majority of you beg for it. That's fine and everything, but don't for a second dare think that you have the right to bully other parents around because they want to raise their foals properly and build up their immune system naturally. I think it's also important that we remember that just because a certain disease may exist before the vaccine is made doesn't mean an outbreak or major epidemic is always happening with that said disease."

"Do clarify," Hoofty said as he scratched his chin with his hoof. He peeked at the audience and was satisfied to see that many of them still looked shocked and disgusted by Twilight's stance on vaccines.

"What I am saying is that when a major epidemic happens and the vaccine is introduced right at the very end of it, the vaccine should not be given praise for eliminating the disease when the outbreak or epidemic has already ended or has at least significantly declined to the point where the outbreak is almost gone. This is usually because of better sanitation practices and the best way to prevent diseases and epidemics is to practice good sanitation, eat foods that are highly nutritious and live healthy lifestyles. I think it's time that we listen to both sides of the story and make our own intelligent conclusions based upon un-biased studies and facts. I am not anti-science here. What I am against is when parents who do not know or understand the risks and failures of vaccines end up taking their foal to the doctor to get their shots believing that they are making their foal's immune system stronger and then suddenly watch the infant go into a seizure or die shortly after. These incidents are very real and are not exaggerated by the parents who are in deep regret about their decision. The courts have paid out billions upon billions of bits to families who lost loved ones from vaccine related fatalities or injuries and yet they are mocked among the pro-vaccination movement despite their loss and many of them still remain pro-vaccination. I would love to invite you to my library where I have a wealth of written peer reviewed studies about vaccinations and the real dangers they possess. It's crazy when you think about it. Vaccine related injures and deaths became so common that the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program had to be established. An actual court where ponies go to get compensation for vaccine failures and all the money that goes to the victims is paid by us through taxes."

"You're kidding me, right? A vaccine court?"

"No, I'm not. A special vaccine court also known as the Office of Special Masters of the Equestrian Court of Federal Claims had to be set up to shield Big Pharma from liability and responsibility. You cannot sue a vaccine manufacturer who made something that injured or killed somepony, nor can you sue the FDA who approved the drug or vaccine. It's kind of sad to say that the only true immunity these vaccine companies have are not against diseases, but against lawsuits. Many families never think to sue because they believe their or their pony's injuries are not connected to getting the injections even though the injuries often happen shortly after getting the shots. Parents trust their pediatricians and doctors, so they don't report any adverse reactions from the vaccines and believe in the fabricated stories that doctors tell them. Even when presented with evidence of vaccine related damage later on, many sadly refuse to acknowledge any of it because it would be too much of a guilt trip for them so they continue to stay left in the dark. Most ponies I have talked to don't really want to hear the truth anyway; what they really want is constant reassurance that what they believe is the truth no matter how damaging it may be, and they will go to great lengths to block out hearing anything that challenges their beliefs in the slightest bit. Some of the techno-babble I have heard preached from doctors is so ridiculous that it would even make an expert in techno-babble like Mister Spock blush. As I said before, nearly all deaths and injuries due to vaccines do not get reported by doctors and there are many thousands of cases thrown out because they hire good lawyers to fight grieving families. No matter how much money a family might get if they are lucky to get any, no amount of money can ever replace the hurt or the life of a lost loved one."

"And who knows just how many nutty parents try to take their damaged children to these courts for things in which had nothing to do with any vaccines. So many parents are so delusional and will blame vaccines for just about anything that goes wrong with their kids."

"Hold on a second," Twilight said. "First of all, you already kind of brought this topic up before when you mentioned the VAERS system, and secondly, no one knows the child better than the mother and I have heard of cases where loving mothers get sent to court because they shook their child gently when their foal wasn't acting right because of a vaccine injury. The courts unjustly ruled that the mother was responsible for harming her kid by violently shaking the child despite the fact that she gently shook him and that he had been severely harmed by the doctor. The horrible damage from vaccines are used as faulty proof that the parent was abusive and thus the confused parent wonders why they are being sent to jail for shaken baby syndrome when they were being gentle with their foal. For a doctor to blame the mother for the damage that he did to the foal is such a cop-out and a shameful way to avoid the responsibility of admitting the truth."

"Well, why don't you go talk to a doctor if you think you know so much more than they do?" Hoofty asked.

"Because it's the most arduous thing in the world to get someone to understand something, when their entire salary depends on them not understanding it."

"And did you go to school, Miss Sparkle? Do you have a medical degree that says you're qualified to say the things that you're saying tonight?"

Twilight looked rather annoyed at his question. "I have went to school, but it certainly wasn't for a medical degree. I'd rather not pay for an education that simply indoctrinates you with misinformation and lies. I seek after the truth and you don't need a degree of any kind to do your own personal research, Mister Cuffs."

"Right, and I suppose you are one of the crazy religious fanatics who thinks that fillies and colts can't be taken away from their nutty parents for medical treatments when they have something extremely serious like cancer and the parents believe that prayer will save their little ones as they slowly die a terrible death; they refuse chemo and rely on God so to speak."

"I do," Twilight said. "But not in the sense that you're thinking of because I believe that prayer without doing anything about something serious like cancer is pretty crazy. There are many options for treating cancers that do not aggressively attack the body and leave the individual weaker, sicker and even more susceptible to other diseases as well as getting a much worse form of cancer again later on in their life. Medical foalnapping is a big no-no as well as forced vaccinations and the parent's rights need to be respected as well as thinking about the well-being of the pony suffering. There are plenty of non-invasive, safe and way more effective treatments for cancer that work with the body and not against it. If you don't know, the logic behind chemo goes something like this. Cancer cells are weaker than all of the other cells in the body so if you insert a poison, the cancer cells should die first. What's fundamentally flawed about this is that this will also weaken all of the healthy cells dramatically, leaving you vulnerable and susceptible to pretty much everything and anything that comes along as well as drastically increasing your chances of getting cancer again in the same place or in a different area of your body. There have been cases of ponies who had immunity to tetanus, but lost it and developed tetanus as a result of a weakened immune system due to the chemo. Chemo is also known to make patients retarded since chemo penetrates the blood-brain barrier. Isn't your brain an important organ? Some doctors actually give vaccines to those on chemo which is incredibly stupid and very dangerous. Of course, they give out cookie cut studies and totally biased statistics in an attempt to make the public believe that without conventional medical treatments, you're guaranteed to die without their perverted ways of treatments whether it's chemo, vaccines, surgery, pharmaceuticals and so on. Yes, it's true and sad that once in a while families will refuse to do anything but pray and their filly or colt dies, but in no way should we punish parents who are actually trying to do everything in their power to heal their little ones without submitting to the horrors of conventional medical treatments which almost always kills them first before any cancer can. Ponies getting cancer was almost unheard of and was considered a medical oddity back then and now you can't talk to someone without hearing a story about someone suffering with cancer." Twilight paused and added, "And it's not because of better diagnosing. Cancer is actually a normal part of life and a healthy immune system eliminates cancer cells at the same rate that they are created."

Hoofty Cuffs shook his head in disbelief. "Hundreds of years of scientific research and you act like doctors simply want to kill us. We have wonderful pharmaceutical companies as well as cancer and disease research organizations working hard to find a cure and all you can do is brush it all off like it's nonsense. Shame on you! I proudly support and donate regularly to disease research organizations because I want ponies to actually have a better life! You should know that I would not be here if it were not for the twelve different kinds of medications that I have to take daily so that I don't die."

Ponies in the audience stomped their hooves in approval.

"A dozen different medications every day and you're proud that you're fully vaccinated and think that you're in tiptop shape? My goodness, just think about what you just said and try to understand where I'm coming from. The companies and doctors don't want to kill, that would totally ruin their profit. They want to give us treatments that make us sick so that we may be fully dependent on the system in order to keep us coming back to the doctor so that we can be given additional treatments and drugs that have a horrible snowball effect on our health. The pharmaceutical industry never creates cures, they only seek to create customers for life. It is even ridiculous to say that we have a health care system. We don't have that; what we have is a disease creation and management system. For you can't profit off of a healthy pony. Look up how much money these vaccine and drug companies make, you'd be surprised. They want us sick, but not sick enough so that we can't fully function or work in society and by the time our premature deaths happen because of their treatments, they have already banked enough money from us and we are usually already useless to them because we are so sick and can't work enough to pay them anymore by that time anyway. It's especially sad when they are so filthy rich yet when a family wants to take their pony for chemo yet can't afford it, they won't do it and force the family to beg for family and friend donations so they can make sure they milk every single penny from the parents before they poison their pony with chemo. It's really sick and very greedy." Twilight paused for a moment and thought to herself before continuing. "Have you ever had one of those very old, stubborn grandparents who threw a hissy fit every time a family member suggested that he or she go to the doctor when they were sick but yet they refused? Yeah, that's actually a great indication as to why they lived so long in the first place since they avoided the doctor like the plague. The one important thing to note is that death by doctors is so common that they actually coined a word for it. Iatrogenic. Currently, doctors are the third leading cause of death and it's no wonder why that is when they give out vaccines, drugs and antibiotics like candy and they do pointless screenings that are often harmful as well as unnecessary butchery or as they like to call it, surgery. Even looking back at history and remembering how careless and arrogant doctors were when midwifery was abandoned and obstetricians took over who used unnecessary invasive birthing techniques; they caused millions of agonizing deaths to mothers by infecting them with puerperal fever, also called childbed fever because they refused to wash their medical instruments and their hooves. Doctors would often go from touching infected corpses in the cadaver dissection lab, to the maternity ward, where they delivered foals without any hoofwashing. What's really amazing is that there were two doctors who tried to help stop this problem and get doctors to wash their hooves, but they were mocked and ignored. Doctor Holmes and Doctor Semmelweis were their names. Both doctors ended up leaving the medical practice after watching so many mares die because their advice was not taken, and they were personally attacked. And poor Doctor Semmelweis was deceived into entering an insane asylum. He tried to escape, but he was severely beaten by the guards. A gangrenous wound to his body which was probably caused by the beating, ultimately led to his death two weeks later. How crazy is it that a doctor who simply wanted to save lives by the millions simply by washing hooves was seen as a lunatic and ended up in the loony-bin where he was killed? Doctors still kill in great numbers today and the numbers are astounding when you look at how many ponies die because of doctor prescribed drugs compared to ponies using street drugs. Even realizing how many millions of ponies will die this year due to antibiotic resistance alone should be enough to greatly concern you. No disease or cancer research organization wants to find a cure either. The ponies behind these organizations are getting money in by the carriage-loads and cancer is a huge money maker. If anything, they may come up with something else toxic and invasive that still harms the patient, but in no way would they ever want to find a cure to cut their funds because the only thing they are racing to is not to find a cure, but to the bank with all that donated money since they turned down the best and most accurate cancer treatments that are completely safe and noninvasive. I find it a bit ironic how so many companies sport the cancer ribbon on their products yet the products contain ingredients that causes cancer in the first place. There's also the embarrassing fact that..."

"What other best and most accurate cancer treatments?" Hoofty asked. "You said there is no such thing as a one size fits all in medicine."

"That's correct," Twilight said. "There is no one hundred percent cancer cure, but the good treatments out there have astounding results and some may be more favorable than other ones for certain cancers."

"Really? Name me some. Let's hear just how big of a quack you really are."

"Much of the treatments have to do with diet and if you want to know some treatments, there's the Budwig Protocol, the Hoxsey Regimen, Vitamin C therapy, Vitamin B-17 from bitter almonds, Essiac tea, Gerson therapy and Oxygen/Ozone therapy just to name a few. Twilight looked over at Hoofty and added, "You're welcome to stop by my library and read the books I have on these."

Hoofty began laughing. "You really are a quack and I already heard of some of those treatments from reading Wikipedia and Snopes articles. I think just about every one you named was proven to show no signs of curing any cancer. I heard Budwig was one of the biggest failures."

"Doing scientific research by reading Wikipedia articles that are heavily edited and rewritten frequently though unicorn magic is not very impressive. When it comes to sources, you shouldn't be a one trick pony when it comes to gathering information only from Wikipedia or extremely biased and misinforming Snopes articles. Those are some older treatments of the past and some of them can be safely combined together in order to be more effective. The only exception to an unsafe treatment would be laetrile because it may be damaging in certain situations, like those with kidney or liver cancers since it can place additional stress on these organs. Speaking of Doctor Budwig, I'll quote from her. I have the answer to cancer, but doctors won't listen. They come here and observe my methods and are impressed. Then they want to make a special deal so they can take it home and make a lot of money. I won't do it, so I'm blackballed wherever I go. End quote. There are a few true, good doctors who actually cared for their patients and they should be recognized. There are reports that she did not just cure specific or rare cancers, but cured all kinds of cancers quickly, easily, cheaply, and permanently. She used non-toxic ingredients which had no adverse effects and her medicine made her patients much stronger and healthier. She treated some of the worst terminal cases of cancer and many tried to demonize her and make fraudulent things up about her and her treatments just like all the other supposed quacks out there. Basically, when ponies were told by medical doctors that they were completely un-treatable and were so unhealthy that they wouldn't even bother to attempt to help them, they went to Doctor Budwig and other doctors like her. It disgusts me when doctors dare tell patients that they only have so much time to live as a means to dishearten them in order to get them to comply with their treatments. They are not God, nor do they know when someone will ultimately pass. It is even worse when doctors get caught taking advantage of their patients by putting them through chemo when the patients don't even have cancer to begin with. The stallion who won the Nobel Prize for discovering cancer even said himself that no disease or cancer can survive in an alkaline environment. When it comes to these modern day cancer treatments, I always Imagine two doctors sitting in a room while looking over their patient. One doctor arrogantly says, see, we did it! The cancer is gone and scientific progress moves on! The other doctor looks at the patient and says, yes, the cancer is gone, but so is the patient."

"But you can't give me any accurate cures these days that are agreed upon by the medical establishment."

"Actually, yes I can, and even if those treatments are vilified by the medical establishment, I'd prefer to go with a treatment plan like the true, original Budwig diet over any conventional cancer treatment if I truly did have cancer," Twilight said. "It is also important to note that a diet like the Budwig protocol is excellent for healthy ponies to do and is proven to greatly prevent cancer from happening in the first place."

"So what's the cure that the medical establishment agrees on?" Hoofty asked.

"Cannabis."

"I knew it!" Hoofty said.

"You knew what?" Twilight asked.

"You're nothing but a weed smoking hippie!"

"No," Twilight said. "I don't support smoking anything, but cannabis has been medically proven to kill tumor cells and cure colorectal, testicular, pancreatic, and uterine cancers. The medicine has been shown to also cure throat and mouth cancers, skin, breast, lung, prostate, blood, liver, and brain cancers. Basically, all cancers in general and it has so many other important medical and non-medical uses as well. There are plenty of official peer reviewed medical studies on this and I have them. It's only controversial because it's such an effective medicine."

"Even if what you say is true, I hate it when ponies keep saying that they want weed to stay legal because of some medical benefits and they only use that as an excuse to get high. This is why it should be banned."

"You really like banning things, don't you?" Twilight asked. "Princess Celestia refuses to ban a plant. Now, how silly would it be if she actually did ban it?"

"One of the very first things that your God did in the Bible did was making a plant illegal," Hoofty answered. "Marijuana is the called the gateway drug for a reason."

Some ponies in the audience laughed at that comment.

"I don't like it when ponies get high either, and I find ponies who are high to be about as equally annoying as ponies who are dunk. I would actually argue that marijuana isn't the gateway drug, but alcohol is. However, if there are treatments that cure many cancers, then how can we not support them? We know why so many doctors tend to look down upon treatments like cannabis because it would rob the big companies they get kickbacks from of billions of bits from their lucrative cancer industry, so they deny its effectiveness even though the medical studies out there prove it as being a cheap, safe, natural and effective cure, including treatments for well over one hundred other separate diseases and illnesses. There's no reason for us to be silent about its many wonderful medical uses, not just an effective weapon against cancer, but for so many other health related issues as well. Heck, I consume hemp for its high nutritional value, and even if the plant were illegal here, wouldn't you rather be illegally alive rather than legally dead? Why not stop over my library and read the scientific studies I have?"

"Because I'm sure that all of your scientific studies are old frauds that have been retracted, and the doctors behind the studies had to give up their profession because of their quackery."

"That's not true," Twilight said. "I have hundreds of scientific studies and none of them have been retracted."

"Yet!" Hoofty added."

Twilight sighed. "Have you ever read articles from Pubmed? I have so many important studies and I wish you would at least try reading a few of these studies that I have whether it's about vaccines, cancer, or something else. It might interest you that there are quite a few well known studies that have been up for decades, and are still confirmed as true to this day if you're so concerned about the more recent studies getting retracted."

"I think I'll pass on that offer and will continue to support the scientific research that suggests you know nothing about what you preach. You are simply making a fool of yourself tonight, and it seems that the longer you talk, the more radical and defiant you seem to become. Nopony here wants to hear your excuses to allow lazy, unemployed ponies to sit on their flanks and smoke weed all day, and I'm sure that there are some ponies with us tonight who have or have had cancer and are deeply offended and hurt by your callousness and indifference towards those suffering with cancer and other health issues."

A few ponies in the audience clopped their hooves together in support of Hoofty's remark.

Twilight lowered her ears; she was sad that he and other ponies in the audience felt that way since she truly did care and had a love and passion for helping others heal and be well through learning. "I just find it sad how many of us point our hooves at God and yell at Him for all this disease and cancer in our world when in fact, so many of us are born healthy and are given treatments that make us sick and gives us cancers. Our diets and life styles are a far more of a major problem when it comes to illness than genetics. The problem of diseases is on us, not God, and it seems that most ponies who criticize and talk about God the most are the ones who don't even believe in Him."

Hoofty brushed his wavy hair out of his eyes. "Rubbish! Your God kills thousands of religious ponies in other lands from supposedly harmless diseases like the measles and polio. You fail to mention what goes on across the seas because they aren't privileged like us and do not have enough vaccines in order to survive! So much for you claiming that these common diseases are harmless!"

"Really?" Twilight asked. "Are you seriously bringing me back to this topic again? It's almost like you're trying to keep me talking about vaccines and diseases for as long as possible." Twilight looked extremely agitated and said, "Look, when you hear about thousands of ponies dying from measles in other lands, there's something to be said about that. I get really tired of it when ponies continue to bring up death statistics from places where there is extremely poor sanitation and very little access to clean water and nutritious foods. How about you give me some recent death statistics from ponies who get the measles or polio where we live? As I said before, with proper care and nutrition, diseases like the measles should not be of a major concern. Ponies are dying in poor lands because they do not get proper care or good nutrition so it's no wonder that happens. These ponies need better sanitation practices, clean water and healthy food in which they do not have access to. Instead, they get vaccines and still die from poor conditions or the vaccines themselves. If you aren't healthy to begin with and do not receive proper rest and care, the common cold can kill you too, and I certainly hope that we don't start fear mongering over that as well. If you ever bring up a case of somepony dying from something like the measles where we live, then I would like to know some things about that pony. I'd like to know how many vaccines that pony had beforehand. Was the pony fed with the milk from his or her mother or a wet nurse? Did the pony get antibiotics? Did the pony get treated with vitamins A and C? When foals get pertussis, milk stops and formulas start. Antibiotics are given which napalms the bowel, and they're laid on their backs. These treatments lead to negative outcomes. Historically, there has always been times of ridiculous beliefs and practices. Did you know that there used to be a widespread belief that getting wet caused illness? There was a fear of bathing that persisted through the Dark Ages. Fillydelphia almost passed an ordinance forbidding wintertime bathing and a decade after that, Horseton did outlaw bathing, except by medical directive. Even if that law was not widely enforced, it does illustrate the Equestrian resistance to bathing as late as the mid eighteen hundreds. That's one example, and I feel like I haven't talked much about the results of good sanitation since there's so much to say about it. Here are some things to know about the early decline in infectious diseases. When it comes to stopping diseases around the world, we should not be giving praise to vaccines, but rather be thankful for sanitation workers and plumbing. Have you ever heard the expression, you're so poor that you don't have a pot to piss in, nor a window to throw it out of? Before plumbing was widely used, your typical home contained very simplistic things like a washbowl, a washstand, and pitcher. Ponies back in those days also relieved themselves by going to the bathroom in a commode or chamber pot. Pony waste was dumped into the street or anywhere that was convenient. This complete lack of sanitation in urban areas filled with rats and other vermin provided a very suitable environment to spread disease. The Black Plague was one of the worst and most devastating pandemics where millions upon millions died, and while the disease may not be entirely eradicated, pony infection has become a rarity. The last plague epidemic here was in the early nineteen hundreds." Twilight paused and looked at the crowd for a moment as if expecting them to appreciate what she said.

There was silence for a moment until a pony coughed in the crowd.

"Okay, let's move on to yet another example," Twilight said. "Let's take a look at Cholera. Remember when the majority of ponies used town pumps and communal wells to get their drinking water? Waste disposal was still far from adequate and most ponies dumped animal waste and raw sewage into open pits called cesspools, or directly into the Manes river. Unfortunately for these ponies, the great Manes river was the main source of drinking water for most in that area. In case you didn't know, cholera spreads very easily through contaminated water and food. It kills swiftly and often proves fatal within just mere hours of the first symptoms of diarrhea or vomiting. Tens of thousands of lives were lost because of poor sanitation, and one time, there were more than five hundred fatal cases of cholera in only ten days. Doctors in those times believed that bad vapors were to blame for the epidemic and there was one pony who defied the doctor's wisdom and investigated matters himself. He realized that biological waste in the drinking water was to blame for the epidemic and he was able to trace the cholera outbreak to the Broad Street pump. He then persuaded the town officials to remove the pump handle, and the cholera outbreak ended abruptly. Later on after some more investigating, the outbreak was eventually traced back to a mare cleaning a dirty diaper in the well. Once he was able to convince authorities, he was then regarded as the father of epidemiology. It is sad to me that we seem to have forgotten this stallion's name. Does anypony here know who I am talking about?" Twilight waited for an answer, but there was only silence. She sighed and said, "His name is Doctor Snow, and I'm pretty sure ponies first looked at him as if he were crazy when he suggested that the doctors were wrong much like how Doctor Holmes and Doctor Semmelweis were looked at as insane for trying to get doctors to wash their hooves in order to prevent the spread of diseases that contributed to millions of unnecessary deaths. I also feel that many of you are looking at me tonight as if I'm crazy for preaching that vaccines harmful."

Still, the crowds did not seem to be impressed.

Twilight spoke a little louder. "Do you realize that hundreds of millions of ponies still don't have a toilet? In some rural areas, open defecation is still more common than attempting to dispose of pony excrement in a more sanitary fashion, such as burying it. There have been some minimal efforts to improve sanitation, but they pale in comparison to the fanatical efforts to vaccinate. So many billions of bits has been spent in this vaccination public health campaign, and in some parts of of this world, fillies and colts have received as many as thirty doses of the oral polio vaccine before their fifth birthday. Organizations like the Equestrian Health Organization, and GAVI, the vaccine alliance have been passionately pushing vaccines on ponies who still do not have access to clean drinking water or the sanitary means to dispose of their waste. The current polio vaccine campaign is extremely controversial due to the high rate of vaccine injury and death. The numbers are really shocking when it comes to cases of NPAFP, a non-polio acute flaccid paralysis, among those vaccinated. NPAFP is a disease that is clinically indistinguishable from polio and twice as deadly that is caused by the live, weakened polio viruses in the vaccine. Incidences of the disease rose and fell with the number of doses of the vaccine administered and in one just year alone, there were at least fifty three thousand ponies who received this from the polio vaccine in only one poverty stricken area of this world. To call this disease anything other than polio is simply insanity and a total lie. Now here is the real catastrophe in all of this mess. It would actually be far less expensive in cost and way more effective to ameliorate these poor pony's water infrastructure, so we can improve their sanitation and hygiene which would save so many lives and drastically reduce the amount of diseases going on. I often times feel that the only reason why that doesn't happen is because these poor ponies are simply test subjects in the eyes of the pharmaceutical industry, and that population reduction is a long term goal." Twilight looked at her opponent as if he were going to respond with his own input.

Hoofty simply sat there looking unimpressed.

Of course to Twilight, that meant to push on. She was one of those ponies that would talk until she either passed out from exhaustion, or the ponies she was talking to understood what she was saying. "Remember the terrible outbreaks of dysentery in refugee camps in nineteen ninety four? Sanitation was atrocious; the refugees had their bowel movements openly in common areas. Pony feces built up in the same areas where the refugees drew water that was used for drinking and cooking. Heavy rain flooded the area and dysentery became a nightmare. It was killing two thousand ponies a day at its peak. I'm sure that most of you are well aware that refugee camps have always been a haven for diseases related to terrible sanitation, but once we brought in purified water and encouraged ponies to use outhouses and latrines for defecation, the incidences of dysentery fell dramatically." Twilight looked at the audience once more to see if anyone appeared to be even a little interested in what she was preaching. She was trying so hard to keep this discussion as simple as possible in order for everyone to understand.

Only a few seemed to appear as if they were deep in thought, the rest simply didn't seem to care or looked slightly agitated by her words.

"How about I mention the problems during the industrial revolution? The industrial revolution spurred rapid population growth and certain city's water infrastructure wasn’t designed to handle such a sharp rise in population. During that time, ponies were dealing with many different diseases, but it had particularly high rates of typhoid fever. The source of the speedy increase in disease was traced to the city’s water and sanitation. The majority of the city’s sewage was directed to the rivers, which flowed right back into the main lake which provided the city’s drinking water. This, of course, contaminated the pony's drinking water and created a vicious cycle of disease. It took numerous years to rectify the problem, but in the early nineteen hundreds, the cities modernized their water infrastructure. The ponies were able to reverse the flow of several streams and rivers, and as a result of this, cases of typhoid fever and all other infectious diseases plummeted which had nothing to do with any vaccines. Let's not forget that in this land, there has been no widespread vaccination for typhoid fever and even though a vaccine for scarlet fever was created, it was such a failure due to the high rate of serious adverse reactions that were often fatal on the nurses who were the test subjects that it never made it to the public and was discontinued. So technically, you can't use the decline of deaths as an excuse and say that scarlet fever is no longer a big time killer anymore because we had a vaccine for it. Many ponies died from both of those diseases in the past and we don't have vaccines for many other diseases including syphilis." Twilight paused for a moment and added, "Although, I'm sure there might be some ludicrous reason for vaccine manufactures to re-create a vaccine for scarlet fever in the future as well since there are hundreds of more vaccines being worked on." Twilight thought to herself for a short moment until she perked up when she remembered the most obvious disease to use for her example. "And what about scurvy? That used to be a big time killer, and death by scurvy was a slow, horrific death full of suffering. We have no vaccine for that and the reason we don't hear about scurvy today is because of vitamin C, which is a vitamin that is sadly looked upon almost as worthless by most doctors. The recommended daily value isn't just enough to keep scurvy away, it's literally just enough to keep us alive! Our immune systems can't function without it; our skin skin needs it; a bone fracture won't heal without it and doctors shrug it off and call ponies quacks who use it to treat and prevent diseases. See, we aren't afraid of those diseases and the death rates from diseases like polio, measles, whooping cough and diphtheria were practically gone in this land by the time the vaccines were introduced. We're talking about a decline in death rates from diseases like the measles by well over ninety-nine percent prior to the public introduction of the vaccine.

"Well, no duh, Twilight. Ever hear of another great medical invention called antibiotics?" Hoofty asked.

"Sorry, but like vaccines, antibiotics are not to be given praise for the great decline in deaths from diseases. I hear a lot of ponies claim that antibiotics are one of the greatest medical inventions of all time, but the first true antibiotic, penicillin, was discovered, not invented. Even conventional medicine today acknowledges that antibiotics do not necessarily decrease the severity of the disease, and when they are given, they are given in hopes to decrease the length of contagion and are believed to be effective in improving the course of the disease if started early. However, some studies are now showing that antibiotic treatment actually prolongs the illness. I think it's important to note that while these examples I have provided are so few out of all the other examples I could give that comes to my mind, they are so important to know and understand. Sanitation saves lives, not vaccines. None of this is new information, and even Moses taught sanitation. He made many rules for encampments, and the ancients created elaborate systems of aqueducts, baths, and drainage. When the mighty empire crumbled, sanitation became a lost art. Civilization paid the price when plague after plague struck areas of dense population. Smallpox continued to infect populations until plumbing infrastructure became commonplace. Although, sanitation ended this disease, the smallpox vaccine takes the credit. Because this discussion is supposed to be religious, I'll throw in a very important verse that would save millions of lives if ponies just simply read the Bible. In the book of Deuteronomy, it says that you shall have a place outside the camp, and you shall go out to it. And you shall have a trowel with your tools, and when you sit down outside, you shall dig a hole with it and turn back and cover up your excrement. It should come to us as no shock that we have horrible diseases that are claiming millions of lives when ponies are literally swimming and bathing in fecal matter as well as drinking it. The poor ponies are caught between horrible death rates from both diseases and vaccines and it's a damn shame that nopony seems to want to acknowledge the real problem. We can give them clean water without using chemicals like chlorine which is a crippler and killer or fluoride which is a poison. I'd also like to bet that if and when these poor ponies actually do get everything that they need in order to improve sanitation and rid their land of devastating diseases, the vaccines will once again steal the spotlight and mighty praise and adoration will be given to the pharmaceutical industry once again. It is so important that we understand the history of disease outbreaks and how they were truly stopped so we can prevent horrific outbreaks from happening again. We were able to improve the quality of life and lower disease outbreaks dramatically simply by having clean water, a sewage system, improving our water infrastructure, improvements in wound care, and improving our diets. It is sad that the medical establishment and vaccine fanatics have created this re-imagined history of how vaccines have saved us all from dying and have told that lie over and over until it became the truth to the masses. I'd encourage you all to please read more on this topic; there are plenty of books out there and I have many well written books in my library. Please pardon my language, but if we can't get these ponies to get their shit together literally and figuratively, then we aren't going to see any improvement."

"Twilight Sparkle! Watch your mouth, young lady!" Twilight's mother accidentally yelled out. Her reaction was almost like instinct.

Twilight looked sheepishly over to her mother in the front row. "Sorry, Mom. I was just making sure that you were still awake." She then laughed a bit.

Some ponies in the crowd laughed with her.

Twilight's face had a more serious look once more. "Let me make this crystal clear, Princess Celestia makes it her mission to feed the poor and provide them with better living conditions because she is called to love thy neighbor which would include places far away so this doesn't happen. Vaccines are never the answer and it's wrong to use them to experiment on and or sterilize populations. Ponies only cling to the idea that we need vaccines because they put their full trust in a corrupt system. Top doctors who advocate that we all get vaccinated are puppets of the pharmaceutical industry and it's all about the money since getting vaccinated often leads to a lifetime supply of more and more pharmaceuticals given all the way from the cradle to the grave. It also doesn't help when the media starts trying to strike fear into our hearts. There was a time when the measles was viewed as not being a very big deal until the marketing for the vaccine came out. It is so much easier to fool ponies than to convince them that they have been fooled and there are so many other examples of horrible preaching from doctors and politicians besides vaccines."

"Oh, really?" Hoofty asked. "How about you provide me with one."

"Sure," Twilight said. "For one example, remember the days when you were looked at as a total idiot if you dare suggested that cigarette smoking causes cancer since the leading doctors in the field of cancer research insisted that smoking doesn't cause cancer? Yeah, ponies believed that was safe back then and much of the public refuses to acknowledge any possible dangers with vaccination since the medical establishment is worshiped as a god and doctors are like our high priests who can't possibly be wrong. Bloodletting used to be a standard medical procedure. DDT was created to combat disease carrying parasprites and was said to be completely harmless to ponies and pets. It was actually advertised as so safe that you could eat it without any negative consequences. Mercury fillings were supposed to be completely safe, agent orange was claimed to not cause cancer at one point in time when it was used in an attempt to fight the overgrowth of the Everfree forest. Asbestos, BPA, thalidomine, glysophate, arsenic, lead, and diethylstibestrol were also said to be safe. The list goes on and on. By the way, you can thank our oppressive Christian ruler for banning such wonderful poisons like agent orange and DDT. Our world surely suffers greatly without them being used anymore," Twilight said sarcastically. "We only created super-weeds that are herbicide resistant and found many ponies to have horrible birth defects and deformities from the spraying. Speaking of the Everfree forest, think about all of the horrible genetically modified monsters we created in laboratories and let loose in the wild only to have our creations come back to bite us in the flank for tampering with nature. You know, I'm sure most of you are aware of mercury being used in medicine, but let me take the time to explain one of my most favorite examples which I mentioned before. Arsenic. Arsenic was not just considered safe to be exposed to, but it was also considered safe enough to be used as literal medicine. It was considered potent, effective, safe, and that it generally agrees very well with children. When the polio epidemics were increasing, so was the use of arsenic in household, medical, and agricultural products. For instance, Paris Green and Scheele's Green were dyes that were used over in the east and even here. Did you know that arsenic was used to treat lung problems? Doctors would prescribe arsenic added to tobacco to be smoked. It was also used to treat cholera on the basis that a greater poison would destroy a lesser poison, and this wasn't some kind of homeopathic remedy, this was the actual chemical arsenic. Dentists used arsenous acid to kill nerve endings in decayed teeth. Even the Equestrian Medical Association approved of arsenic poisons in medicine. In nineteen thirty nine, the EMA lent its seal of acceptance to a drug called tryparsamide, which was an arsenic medicine manufactured by Mereck under license from the Rockerfeller Institute for medical research. This drug was used to counter the effect of syphilis often with a hundred or more injections in a single patient. But you know, listen to the medical professionals because I'm the quack."

"But you have to admit, genetically engineered foods are helping the world. We may not be at that point where we can do it well with animals yet, but we're getting there. Did you know that farmers have been creating GMOs for thousands of years?"

"Correction, farmers have been practicing hybridization by using cross-pollination. With GMOs, the plant's DNA is mixed with the DNA of another plant, or an unrelated plant species, or the DNA of an animal or bacteria. That doesn't happen naturally and can only happen in the lab. Genetically engineered foods are not safe and this abomination has not significantly increased our crop yields according to the Equestira Department of Agriculture and controlled comparative studies. Remember terminator technology which refers to plants that have been genetically modified to render sterile seeds at harvest so you have to buy the seeds over and over? Tell me, why would something like that be created if it wasn't solely for greed? The motive of Monsanto is not to feed the world, but to take over the world's food supply. There is nothing wrong with saving your seeds, and some GMO crops even have lower yield than non-GMO. Over ninety percent of our genetically engineered foods are created to withstand being sprayed with Monsanto's glyphosate herbicide called Roundup. This is a powerful synthetic antibiotic that blocks mineral absorption. Glyphosate herbicides are also endocrine disruptors and mitochondrial toxins. They have been linked to birth defects and even the World Health Organization cautions us by labeling it as a probable cause of cancer. We have many studies that show that GMOs cause organ damage, accelerated signs of aging, immune system problems, hormone imbalance, reproductive damage, developmental problems, cancer, and premature death. There are thousands of healthcare practitioners who encourage their patients to stop consuming GMO foods. Many who ate these foods for a while and stopped had major improvements in their health when it came to problems associated with things like digestive disorders, obesity, diabetes, kidney disease, allergies, infertility, chronic pain, inflammation, and focus and behavioral problems. The biotech industry doesn't plan to stop and is preparing to create GMO versions of literally all commercial seeds as well as livestock, fish, grass, trees, flowers, and even pets. We have no idea just how horrible the long term damaging effects will be because of this. This is something that will be catastrophic for our health and the environment if left unchecked, and I trust that Princess Celestia will further look into this and put restrictions on GMO foods. It was practically a nightmare to get them labeled because Monsanto fought hard and claimed that it would somehow confuse consumers. We have the right to know what we put into our bodies, especially if it's food that is soaked in poison. GMOs require farmers to buy more pesticides, not less, and GMO foods are banned in many parts of this world because the majority demanded it. It's just a shame that we aren't there yet even though there are many hundreds of scientists who are against GMOs. We have enough organic food to feed the world many times over. It is just a shame that some go hungry because we are incredibly wasteful with our food and so much of it simply goes into the trash instead of using it to feed the homeless. What would help is a law that would force grocery stores to send its nearly expired food to shelters instead of dumpsters. I hope our princesses would eventually agree with that idea. Come to think of it, I'm reminded about my other two friends, Applejack and Pinkie Pie. Have you heard of their names, Mister Cuffs?"

"Applejack sounds familiar," Hoofty said. "She has something to do with Sweet Apple Acres, I think."

"That's right. She helps run Ponyville's greatest farm and it's not only organic, but is also the only one hundred percent pesticide free farm that I know of. She, like Pinkie Pie, are hard working earth ponies when it comes to feeding others and Sweet Apple Acres generously donates huge amounts of food every year to the needy. Her yields are as huge as her giving heart. The idea of tampering with nature to such extremes shouldn't be about could we do it, but should we do it. I think the should we be doing it should be analyzed a bit more carefully. God did not make mistakes with our food and I'd much rather eat the food naturally made for us than eating it from a mad scientist who creates it in a lab. We don't need these chemicals that makes us sick."

"Did you know that everypony who consumes the deadly chemical dihydrogen monoxide is one hundred percent guaranteed to die?" Hoofty asked. "This is the same chemical found in vaccines, common household cleaner products, and is sprayed on genetically engineered crops. How come you didn't mention it before?"

Twilight rolled her eyes. "Yeah, water is really scary," Twilight said un-enthusiastically.

"Darn it! That usually tricks everypony I know who is terrified of chemicals."

"You're going to have to try much harder than that. What is your deal with me and not liking that I encourage others to be healthy and make their own educated decisions anyway?"

"I just find it absurd that your attitude seems to say that the un-vaccinated cannot get sick in anyway. Healthy ponies get sick too and you make it sound like the vaccinated are the only sick ponies when that's simply not true."

"Sure," Twilight said. "The non-vaccinated can get sick, but when they do, they recover so much faster than the vaccinated and they are far less likely to get sick in the first place. It would be wonderful if we actually had a fair, unbiased study that compared vaccinated individuals to the non-vaccinated so we can see how fast both groups recover from illness and also compare their overall health in general."

"But they do have those studies out already. Haven't you read them? I actually saw a study in the newspaper that said ponies are starting to spread out the timing of when they get their vaccines to be safer. That's kind of a smart thing to do."

"It's kind of funny that you seem to market vaccines as if no harm can be done, yet you now make it sound like there is an actual danger that's causing ponies who vaccinate to attempt to try spreading their vaccine shots out to see if they'll make it through their shots unscathed. I'm sorry, but I thought that the top pro-vaccinating doctors, like Doctor Paul Proffit, said that it was safe to give even a newborn foal ten thousand or one hundred thousand vaccines at any one time. I also thought that according to most vaccine supporters, spreading the shots out greatly puts the herd at risk. It's a shame that they don't understand that the concept of herd immunity was originally taken from cattle who acquired immunity from natural infection, not vaccines. Spreading the shots out to make them less dangerous is so negligible and many ponies out there die from simply taking one vaccine alone without having any negative medical history. This is one reason why they combined the MMR shot, and they are combining many more so that if an adverse reaction does occur, then they won't be able to pinpoint which vaccine was actually responsible for causing that adverse reaction. It's really amazing that no one seems to care when healthy ponies get sick or die from vaccines, but if God forbid someone who has horrible health to begin with dies from a disease like the measles in some poor land overseas, it's the end of the world for everypony. And then pro-health ponies avoiding vaccines are shamed and blamed as if somehow their beliefs and lifestyles are responsible for the death of somepony who has no access to the healthy things that we have access to. As for the so called studies out there comparing vaccinated individuals to non-vaccinated ones, the studies I have seen did not deserve my time to read."

"Why?" Hoofty asked. "Afraid that you might be proven wrong?"

"Because I always ask two questions before I read a study of any kind. Number one. Who is doing the study? And number two. Who is funding it? I can know from the start that some studies are not even worth the time to read based upon those two questions. In case I didn't mention this before with these vaccine studies, controls are done with one getting the vaccine, and the other getting a different vaccine. That's now how it's supposed to work; one should get the drug and the other should get the placebo. I just find it amazing when parents claim that their kids are fine and have suffered no adverse reactions to vaccines when their kids have things like eczema, asthma, chronic ear infections and seizures. They think their kids are fine and healthy, but what they see as acceptable when it comes to healthy based upon what they're told by the doctor and what is truly healthy is about as different as night and day. No one needs to suffer or die from such a useless and damaging medical procedure. What we actually need is a study that compares the vaccinated to the non-vaccinated and follow up on these ponies for at least fifty years. There seems to be no desire for a study like this to happen."

"Look," Hoofty Cuffs said. "The bottom line is that if anyone dies from vaccines, they have to die for the greater good. What is worse, a few hundred or thousand ponies dying from vaccines each year, or billions dying from diseases that could have been easily prevented by vaccination? We can't risk bringing any major epidemics back and for crying out loud, a can of tuna supposedly has about as much mercury as a vaccine does. There's also aluminum in our foods, and I heard that it's not only harmless, but it's actually essential for life."

"No," Twilight sternly said. "No one has to die from vaccines for an imaginary greater good. I already gave you the real reasons why so many died of diseases and yet you still do not acknowledge the simple fact that sanitation saves, not vaccines. You know, your thinking reminds me of the times back when ponies used to sacrifice their own to please their pagan gods or else they believed that disasters would happen in this world. We are very much repeating that same kind of dangerous thinking when it comes to vaccines because as I said before, the medical establishment is very much treated like a religion and whatever advice they give seems to be taken as infallible as if they are always speaking ex cathedra. Vaccine companies making these vaccines are literal murderers. How? Because they know through statistics that an average of ponies will die each year and yet they still give out the product anyway. If you give out a product that you know is going to kill even just one pony and yet you do it anyway, that is murder and the only reason they get away with it is because they provide warnings on vaccine manufacturer inserts which no one really seems to read anyway. They claim that if ponies weren't to vaccinate, then a catastrophe would eventually happen, and to them, the only truly catastrophic thing that would happen if ponies were not vaccinating anymore would be the amount of money that the pharmaceutical industry would lose and the realization from the public that ponies would be so much better off without vaccines and so many other medical treatments. There are very well documented cases of large communities suffering with diseases and when they stopped vaccinating despite them being warned that all hell would break loose if they refused to vaccinate, the communities got much healthier and diseases fell dramatically. Many truly believe that if we don't shoot up our bodies with harmful ingredients that makes our immune systems overreact and may cause death, then somehow, we'll bring back unspeakably horrible plagues that will wipe out over ninety nine percent of the population! If we simply just scraped this ridiculous idea that we need vaccines as well as so many other unnecessary medical practices and avoid them, I promise that we would be so much healthier, more intelligent, and we would see dramatic drops in all kinds of health related problems. If we took away the fear and propaganda that the media and medical community tries to pump us with and told the truth about matters like this, then what kind of pony would want to gamble with their foal's or their own health to such an extreme extent anyway? Many may laugh and mock those poor ponies who suffered greatly and had their lives destroyed by vaccines over supposedly small risks, but when it happens to you or a loved one, the risks don't matter at all."

Twilight paused for a moment. "And don't you dare bring up that silly argument about the mercury in a can of tuna, or those other similar examples that are not just petty, but completely irrelevant to the topic of vaccinating, like the naturally occurring formaldehyde in organic pears, or the aluminum in some foods. Please, I'd encourage you to go back to middle school and take a class in science again in case you didn't pay attention the first time. It's such basic knowledge to know the difference between injection and ingestion, one goes to the bloodstream, the other to the gastrointestinal tract. If you still can't figure out why injecting vaccine ingredients like mercury or aluminum into your body is far more of a concern than eating tuna from a can, then I'd like to invite you over to my library and give you a basic understanding of science from textbooks written so that a little filly could comprehend. Vaccine enthusiasts and pushers know that vaccine toxins are extremely dangerous, so they have to play around with wording so that what they say is technically true, but misleading in order to hoodwink someone who isn't as aware of the dangers of injecting something like aluminum into their bodies. Now, on that topic of aluminum, according to the CDC, aluminum is poorly absorbed following either oral or inhalation exposure and is essentially not absorbed dermally. Approximately one point five percent to two percent of inhaled aluminum is absorbed, and Ingested aluminum only absorbs at a rate of about zero point zero one percent to no more than five percent, but the average rate of absorption is about zero point zero three percent for most of us and it does not cross the blood-brain barrier; since vaccines bypass the digestive system entirely, they are not filtered out like they would be through digestion and thus absorb completely at one hundred percent. And if you know anything about aluminum, it builds up in the bones and brain and can be toxic to the body and its organs. The decision to put aluminum into vaccines was made back in the nineteen thirties. I don't believe that it's ever okay to inject any amount of aluminum into anypony, but let's actually play by the CDC and FDA's own rules and see what they have to say when it comes to their studies and interpretation of a safe amount of aluminum to eat or inject. According to the FDA, an eight pound foal can safely eat eighteen micro-grams of aluminum, and that same foal can only safely absorb zero point nine micro-grams. A one hundred fifty pound adult can safely consume three hundred forty one micro-grams of aluminum, but can only safely absorb seventeen micro-grams of aluminum. You do the math according to the CDC's vaccine schedule and see what an abomination it is that they can't follow their own safety limits since the amount of aluminum given through vaccinations goes so far above these limits; perhaps the EPA can help them out and simply fix the problem of the safety limit by raising the numbers of the limit when they realize there is a big problem, just like how they fix the problems when it comes to allowing more toxins in our food and water. Aluminum certainly can cause neurological harm and overdosing can be fatal, especially in patients with weak kidneys or kidney disorders, or in premature foals. The constant pushing of fluoride in products including drinking water actually increases the bioavailability of aluminum and allows it to cross the blood-brain barrier which is why Alzheimer's patients have record high levels of aluminum in their brains. What's even more disturbing is that teething in foals creates a histamine release which also opens the blood-brain barrier and allows vaccine preservatives to cross into the brain. Even though aluminium is environmentally abundant, it is not essential for life. It's recognized as a neuro-toxin that inhibits more than two hundred biologically important functions and causes various adverse effects in plants and animals. Despite what propagandists say, there currently is no known biological benefit for aluminum in the body. It's only used in vaccines to get a better immune response, and as much as you're not going to like hearing this, the more aluminum that's given to babies and the earlier it's given, the higher the risk for neurological damage. As we see other lands across Equestria begin to change their vaccine program to mimic ours, the number of their children with extreme neurological problems go up dramatically. Aluminum is attracted to the brain, it accumulates in arteries, it's very pro-inflammatory, it's pathological and toxic to genes. Even if you inject aluminum intravenously, it's still better than it being injected into the muscle. So if you go by this wonderful logic that just because you can consume something safely therefore it's okay to inject, then you've got a lot of learning to do, mister. I could give you so many good examples about why that thinking cannot work with everything, but let's take my favorite example. Snake venom can safely be consumed and used as medicine, but what happens when you inject it? You see, that faulty logic cannot be used for everything obviously. The argument that just because aluminum is already in our bodies means that it's safe to be injected can be countered by using the example of injecting bile in your body. It's already inside our bodies, but you wouldn't want to inject bile into your muscle or else major problems would occur. Learn about that and learn about original antigenic sin and ADE which are different aspects of a similar phenomenon. They both apply to vaccines as well as infections and can lead the immune system astray, crippling the innate ability to fight disease upon exposure and rendering the victim more susceptible. The truth is that the more scientists learn about the immune system, the more they realize their profound lack of understanding. We haven't even breached the tip of the iceberg in the study of immunology."

Hoofty stared at the floor without any interest as he listened to her.

Twilight continued. "It is insanity when you realize that if some random pony were to inject a few poisons from a vaccine into your foal's body without your permission, then they would be immediately tossed into jail for foal abuse. However, if somepony in a white lab coat has the same shot with some live viruses, foreign proteins, and a few more horrific ingredients added, calls it an immunization shot and lies to you about the effectiveness of the product as he or she pressures you to get your foal injected with it, then behold, the pony injecting the poison is hailed as a hero in town, even at the expense of the foal's life. Just imagine how much worse things would be if nopony has any say in matters anymore. Involuntary medical treatments have no place in a free society. At least when I was a filly growing up, I used to see my friends playing the circle, circle, dot, dot, now I got my cooties shot game. It's sad to say that when it comes to protection, that's about as effective as the protection that some vaccines provide and at least the cooties shot does no harm. There is absolutely nothing in a vaccine that makes us healthier and some vaccines do not enter the body in the same way as a natural infection does. For instance, measles is inhaled, but the vaccine is injected. That means that it has an exposure to the nervous system much more rapidly through injection than it would through the normal inhalation and processing of the lymphatic system. You're also getting a concoction of various chemicals that wreak havoc on the body through vaccinating than when you catch the wild measles virus that grants you permanent immunity unlike the vaccine." Twilight sighed. "You have got to love the modern marvels of medical science these days. And don't get me wrong, I love science just like how I love religion, because to me, they are very synergistic, but when we see bad science being practiced, we should call it out rather than embracing it no matter how much funding and support it gets. We should also have the same attitude towards bad religion being practiced as well. The scientific method used to look like this; step one, observe natural phenomena. Step two, formulate hypothesis. Step three, test hypothesis by means of rigorous experimentation. Step four, establish theory based upon repeated validation of results. Step five, modify hypothesis and test again if needed. Science these days now involves carefully crafting and rigging the experiments in order to get the desired results, writing algorithms to automatically adjust data in order to meet corporate expectations, publishing papers and pretending that you used that scientific method, hiding data and refusing to honor the freedom of information act requests, and lastly, pillory real scientists and arrogantly claim that the science is now settled. Science should never be settled; we must always be willing to re-examine assumptions and models, but the status quo can only be over turned by greater and more detailed evidence. I have quoted quite a few sources from the CDC and the FDA tonight and I'd just like to know that if you won't always accept what they say when it comes to science, then what exactly is it that you accept as a pro-vaccine pony like yourself? You see, I do have a problem with ponies trying to force unnecessary, harmful medical treatments for profit and lying about statistics as well as hiding facts from the public just as I have a problem with religions that cause harm to others."

Hoofty looked rather unimpressed. He was beginning to get sick of how long Twilight could talk about this topic even if he was baiting her into continuing to talk more about it. "It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that all religions cause harm to others." Hoofty then began mumbling something that could not be understood.

Twilight looked over to Hoofty Cuffs. "Mister Cuffs?" she asked.

"Yes, Twilight."

"May I ask you a question, sir?"

"You won't like the answer," Hoofty replied.

"That's not the point," Twilight said with a little giggle. "Do you know when the first attempt at preventing smallpox with a practice known as variolation happened over here in the western world?"

"Variolation? It's called vaccination or inoculation, and our great father of vaccination, Edward Jenner invented it by using cow pox, or something."

"Well, Mister Jenner does come later on, but the first attempt at preventing smallpox in the west began with Lady Mary Wortley Montagu in seventeen seventeen. She returned from the east with this practice of taking a small amount of material from a pony smallpox lesion and scratching it into the skin of another pony. This is a practice that can not only kill you, but can also spread disease easily. Now, Edward Jenner knew that using pox material directly from cows was initially disagreeable to ponies, so he created the pony cowpox vaccine, but the method still first utilized disease material from an animal. Think about how insane this stallion was to take little fillies and colts and inoculating them with raw pus. I hope you're aware that the procedure followed by rubbing pox pustular lymph from the pock of an inoculated pony to a cut in the front leg of the next pony recipient and was termed, front leg to front leg vaccination. Jaundice and syphilis were very well known to happen due to this procedure. Another method of inoculation was placing numerous pony pox scabs into a container, fill it with water, and shake. The resultant pus was used as vaccine material for one entire town. Doctors would look at the front leg of a pony and considered them immune simply by observing the scar of vaccination after developing a blister at the site of inoculation. You can't help but laugh that their logic. Their belief was that multiple sites with scars was some kind of way to try to justify that they had the best protection possible; about five scars showed a typically good front leg. This practice of wounding up the front leg with more than one site continued in various parts of Equestria until nineteen seventy five. Isn't it obvious that many other diseases from the vaccinated were spread by this way? Sadly, this method was used for about one hundred years until it was outlawed in eighteen ninety eight. There are reports that Mister Jenner's son became very ill with neurological brain damage after being vaccinated several times. His son died at the age of twenty one from tuberculosis which kills a large percentage of those who are immune compromised. In the late seventeen hundreds, many serious infections and deaths occurred after the inception of smallpox vaccines. There was no such thing as cold-chain refrigeration. Needles were reused from pony to pony, and there was almost no consciousness of sterility. When it was so obvious that that the smallpox vaccine failed to prevent disease, the medical profession attempted to justify vaccination by claiming that if one was to acquire smallpox after vaccination, then it would be a milder disease than those who didn't vaccinate. Prior to this, they claimed that you had perfect protection from smallpox for life if you vaccinated. History repeats itself when horrible vaccines that were also claimed to provide immunity for life are now looked at as a joke among many vaccine supporters like pertussis and influenza. The argument that one who vaccinates will suffer less if they acquire the disease that they've been vaccinated for is complete nonsense. Folks, one of my biggest points in this discussion is that you don't even have to know any science when it comes to understanding that vaccines are not only a scam, but a disaster to our health. And while it's still important to know the science, history alone will tell you that vaccinations are one of the greatest delusions of all time."

"Twilight, Why not go play around rusted metal, cut yourself and get tetanus if you're so confident you can live without vaccines?"

The audience delightfully applauded his remark.

Twilight waited for the applause to die down and replied, "Why not allow me to inject you with all the diseases into your body that you already have supposed immunity from? I have been cut on rusted metal several times in the past and have never had tetanus because I know how to take care of cuts and wounds and I understand about tetanus. Now that you brought it up, let's talk a little bit about wound care. The first thing we're trained to do when there is a wound is to stop the bleeding, but unless you have severed an artery, you shouldn't stop the bleeding. You are supposed to let the wound bleed for about one minute because you want it to flush from the inside out. So what should be done is that you first let the wound bleed, then you clean the wound from dirt, splinters, dead tissue, or any foreign matter. If you have a deep splinter, you have to cut into the skin and remove it. Many times, ponies leave the tip of the splinter in, so you really have to open the wound up to make sure that it's all gone as unpleasant as that sounds. After that, I would recommend gently flushing the wound with water or salt water; Colloidal silver is also excellent for wound treatment and can be taken internally for immune support. Another problem I see is the use of hydrogen peroxide for wound care. It's great for sterilizing wounds and has other good uses, but if it's a tetanus prone injury, then it can kill cells. And guess what tetanus loves to live in? You guessed it. Dead cells. Hydrogen peroxide is great for a graze on the skin, but it is not be used for deep wounds because you can continue killing cells. Of course, monitor the wound and if it gets worse, then get help, or if for some reason you can't clean or get to the wound, get help. I also use steri-strips for large wounds because stitches totally seal the wound up and anything trapped underneath that wound can be dangerous. Steri-strips are nice since they don't leave a nasty looking scar like how stitches do and it's more convenient. Anyway, my parents never vaccinated me because they did their homework and wanted the best for me, and I have also had the measles as a filly. I didn't die, nor did I go blind, nor did I go deaf, nor did I develop pneumonia, nor did I have any serious swelling of the brain that gave me permanent brain damage. My parents took good care of me and gave me the proper nutrition and rest that my body needed. The whole experience was not bad at all and I even remember walking home from school when I was sick with the measles, along with my other friends who also had it. We had panic over the measles when I was growing up because we had the vaccine for it, but it is especially crazy now a days. If somepony came to school with a common childhood illness, then the whole school would probably be shut down and there would be panic, blaming, misinformation, and hate; the four main ingredients used to create a zealous pro-vaccine parent. I had most, if not all of the common childhood diseases from the past, and I'm fine. I was allowed to play in dirt, I was not bathed every day, and I had lots of sunshine as a little filly; I was a totally normal, happy, healthy kid growing up. I caught these diseases naturally because I played with my sick friends. I gave them friendship; they gave me chickenpox. It was a win-win situation, and because of that, I now truly help protect the herd far better than you could ever protect anyone with your vaccines. You see, the entire difference between us is that you will demand that ponies vaccinate simply because the majority does it and you will follow any advice as long as it's coming from a pony in a white lab coat that supports vaccines, and I, on the other hoof, will not make demands, but instead, will encourage everyone to educate themselves about vaccinations and will humbly and peacefully allow ponies to make their own informed decisions without having to cause a dramatic scene over the slightest disagreement."

"You got extremely lucky and you're fortunate to be alive. It's just too bad that they don't have a vaccine made for stupidity yet. I'm sure many of the ponies in the audience would like to give you a double dose of that vaccine if it existed."

Many ponies cheered for that statement. For no matter how much evidence and truth Twilight provided, the crowds had already came in with overly biased minds that refused to think any other way.

Twilight smirked. "And I bet if they did come out with a vaccine to protect against stupidity, I'm sure that one of the main side effects would be brain damage just like how it is with so many other vaccines. Perhaps we should have a vaccine against coincidence, because every time a parent says that their foal developed a reaction after vaccinating, the parent is told it's a coincidence even when the reaction the foal had is listed in the physician's desk reference. The physician knows this and still says that it's simply a coincidence. It gets really ridiculous when we look at statistics and see that we are the wealthiest land in Equestria and have the best medical technologies yet our infant mortality rate is disturbingly high. Even other lands that do not fare nearly as well as we do have a much greater success with healthy birthing and lower rates of SIDS than us. Of course it's a coincidence to most. The more that doctors help, the more that they hurt."

"And your point?" Hoofty asked.

"My point is that it's no wonder why some ponies are starting to not want to go to the hospital to give birth these days, especially when it comes to unnecessary cesarean sections being performed, not to mention the ridiculous price it costs to simply give birth in a hospital."

"Goodness, yet another thing to scare ponies away from. Go on, we might as well hear it," Hoofty said.

"Well, birthing is a natural thing after all, not a disease and there are so many things that doctors do wrong when it comes to helping ponies give birth like injecting the mother with Oxytocin which is a hormone from a cow's brain that increases the risk of neurological damages in colts by at least thirty percent, so you know it epigenetically changes something in the baby. Or how about other standard medical practices like the premature separation between baby and placenta called cord clamping. A natural birth without medical intervention would include delivering the placenta attached to the baby and allowing it to transfer all its nutrients and blood into the baby before it separates from baby. Up to forty percent of that infant's blood is left behind; the foal can become seriously damaged by this practice alone, and one of the main reasons it's done is because it's simply convenient for the doctor. A hospital is no place for a healthy or sick pony; even if you give a healthy, natural birth in a hospital, your child is more likely to suffer with allergies because of colonization by hospital flora such as Clostridium difficile, so where you choose to give birth matters much more than you think. It's really amazing when we look at just how much we have destroyed our health, even when it comes to dental health."

"Are dentists bad, Twilight?" Hoofty asked with a smirk.

"It depends on what they practice," Twilight said. "Fluoride treatments and root canals should be an obvious no due to the negative impacts they have on our health. Ponies from poor places who do not have access to dental care or even brush their teeth are often found to have far superior dental health than us simply because of their diets. Did you know that teeth can even remineralize if given the proper diet? You can thank the Rockerfeller foundation for bribing the medical schools and destroying all that was once taught in favor of the horrific perversions we now see being practiced all over the entire world when it comes to orthodox medicine. On the topic of dentistry, I'd recommend to read about the long forgotten work of Doctor Weston A. Price."

"So, I would like to know if you consider yourself to be one of those lunatics who would vehemently support home births with midwives rather than go to the hospital. You do realize that you miss out on the vitamin K shot which would put the foal at an even greater risk. However, knowing you, I bet that you'd make ridiculous reasons why we should also avoid something so simple and healthy like the vitamin K shot."

"You are aware that you can buy vitamin K in liquid form and give it to infants, right? There actually is a problem with the synthetic vitamin K shot that the doctors give which is loaded with toxic preservatives and the shot can also include aluminum. So, here's the reason why it's given and I'll provide a little food for thought about the procedure. The primary concern is for permanent neurological damage if an infant has intracranial bleeding, which is quite rare in general. Although, Infants exposed to drugs or alcohol through any means are especially at risk, and babies born from mothers on anti-epileptic medications are at a very high risk. The intracranial bleeding is caused by liver disease that usually goes un-diagnosed until bleeding occurs. In addition to intracranial bleeding, and a generalized lack of healthy clotting, jaundice is usually present. What's nice about delayed removal of the cord is that it allows stem cells to go in and clear up any problems from within the brain or else where. Unfortunately, the vitamin K shot that hospitals give has been found to increase the risk of developing childhood leukemia. Studies disagree on the exact risk percentage, but even ten or twenty percent is too many avoidable sick and or dead children. Vitamin K shots can also cause other unwanted side effects in infants, particularly those that are premature and formulas are supplemented with unnaturally high levels of vitamin K. Injections are provided to all infants, including those intended for formula feeding, but most formulas includes twice the allowance of vitamin K for infants. There isn't enough scientific information to determine a recommended dietary allowance for vitamin K, so daily adequate intake recommendations have been formed instead. You can purchase vitamin K drops to administer at home and mothers can supplement themselves with vitamin K because it does transfer through breast milk. Most parents who do their reading on vitamin K don't do the shot or the drops at all. It's kind of silly to note that most warn against mega dosing vitamins in adults, yet no one even bothers to ask questions about mega dosing a synthetic vitamin to an infant who is just a few hours old. When researches determined that giving the shot at birth worked to virtually eliminate hemorrhaging, that pretty much ended the thought process. It always seems that when new technology is created or a new medical procedure happens, it tends to eliminate one problem while creating many more. I think we need to do a bit more investigating and understand why infants are more or less universally born with low levels of vitamin K. Can we really categorize it as a true deficiency state if we are almost all born with supposedly low levels? Perhaps there's a fundamental biological reason why that is and we just don't know yet. I can give you some explanations as to why this might be, but how much do you really want me to talk about this topic? I'm certainly not going to panic over parents opting out of the vitamin K shot and I'm certainly against it when physicians vilify breastfeeding which is the best thing you can do for your child. The milk for the foal is a continuation of maternal immunity in the uterus. It's vitally important for exclusive breastfeeding for six months and up to two years, and the reason for this is to keep the baby in an anti-inflammatory state. Everything from conception to at least one year of age is trying to keep that baby's immune system anti-inflammatory. The placenta, stem cells, the amniotic fluid, all those things are programmed to keep that baby free from inflammation. Mother's milk is deadly to pneumococcal bacteria, cancer cells, and it does this all without causing any inflammation. It's amazing that this happens and scientists are still trying to learn more. Scientists are also trying to take advantage of a certain chemical in breast milk to kill cancer cells. I'd also like to mention that formulas will make the microbes in that baby's intestines totally different. Only one bottle will change their intestines for at least two weeks."

"Okay, Miss Sparkle. Let's hear where autism comes from? Let me guess, vaccines, right?"

"Well, autism is usually more than just vaccination because you have to look at the immune system of a child in its entirety. I do feel that other things like antibiotics, pesticides, and acetaminophen can all be roads that lead to autism as well. Life is so fascinating to me when we talk about topics like this because what we know is amazing yet we only know so little. Did you know that the immune system begins to grow just days after conception? Even the mother's immune system contributes to autism risk in a foal. For instance, what we call maternal immune activation has a contribution to things like schizophrenia, depression, and autism in foals and adults. It matters not if the mother's immune system was stimulated by a virus, or bacteria, or something like a war, or of course, a vaccine. It's maternal immune activation, and it's completely irrelevant what caused it, so obviously, a lot of inflammation in the mother changes how that baby's brain develops. The process of how a brain grows normally doesn't happen in those with autism. We find larger brains with tons of inflammation in the brain; their immune systems do not function properly, and their bowels are abnormal. It really makes you wonder just how bad it is for both the mother and her baby when they are now recommending vaccines during pregnancy."

Hoofty Cuffs looked over at her with serious concern and asked, "Twilight, do you honestly believe that vaccinating is foal abuse?"

Twilight let out a rather weak laugh. "You know, when I sometimes compare the different kinds of abuse out there, I can't help but compare a vaccine pusher to a sexual predator. Both usually involve penetrating the body of young pony, both use piss poor reasoning and made up science in claiming that it's healthy for the victim, both leave a pony damaged, many times the damage cannot be undone in either situation, both think that what they're doing is fine as long as they have consent from the individual. The only difference is that one is simply for money and control, while the other is purely for sexual gratification. Vaccines are no doubt a form of abuse, and a form of violence and control. It's like medical rape without consent of the individual, and scaring ponies into saying yes is still wrong."

That last sentence she spoke caused Hoofty to become filled with anger. "That is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. You're so pure that it makes me sick to my stomach," Hoofty said in an aggravated tone of voice. "You are a scam and a danger to society! You should be locked up and not allowed to speak in public like this again. You are simply a buffoon!"

"Judging from the tone of your voice, you make the word pure sound as if it were a bad thing," Twilight replied. "It's rather nice to know that this discussion has now been degraded to petty insults. It kind of speaks volumes on your lack of maturity when it comes to having a grown up discussion about serious matters like this, doesn't it?"

Hoofty blinked his eyes a few times when he realized that his anger was getting the better of him and he probably shouldn't have reacted like that in front of such a large crowd. "I guess we'll simply disagree and move on now. Enough of this medical mish-mash. You wasted enough time talking about vaccines anyway. So let me ask you this, why is it that you would rather have faith in a religion rather than being a logical Atheist?"

"Excuse you, sir!" Twilight said feeling that his remark was somewhat appalling. "You were the one who wanted me to keep talking about that topic and I just simply answered your questions and responded to your comments. As for your question, I will say that while it takes faith to be a Christian, it takes more faith to be an Atheist, and I just don't have enough faith to be one."

"Right," Hoofty said. "Why don't you give me an explanation from my opening statement about God ignoring our suffering and allowing so much death and havoc in this world? It seems like you conveniently dodged that statement and don't want to reply to it because you don't have a good enough answer."

"I have no problems replying to anything that you stated before and I'll happily provide you with an answer," Twilight said. "Since God is infinite in knowledge and power, God can use our present pain and suffering to achieve greater goods. Goods like the existence of free will, the development of virtues like courage and compassion you can't have without negative things and a universe with regular laws where free creatures can flourish. God can also redeem our suffering and compensate His children with eternal life. Under your world view, those who suffer and die are forever lost. Under theism, a perfectly good God can vanquish evil, reunite families and redeem all of our sufferings at the end of time. God knows all and sees the beginning all the way to the end. We can't. I mean, let's face it, all of us are going to die at some point in time and God has the right to take lives. It's also good to note that we often observe lots of good happening that wouldn't normally happen after tragedies or disasters strike. Ponies begin to act much more lovingly towards others and they are more likely to give in order to relieve the suffering and grief. Let me ask you a question since I seem to be doing all the talking here. Do you believe in free will?"

"Well, of course not."

Twilight cocked an eyebrow.

Hoofty Cuffs continued. "And that's simply because I was never given the choice to decide whether I wanted free will or not."

Some laughter could be heard in the crowd.

"Do you at least believe Jesus was real and existed here on earth?" Twilight asked.

"No."

"You do realize that the overwhelming majority of historians acknowledge that Jesus is real and there are currently no more than five historians who deny His existence."

"Yes, but there are well written books out there that have indisputable evidence that He never existed. These books were written by ponies far more intelligent than either of us."

"Really?" Twilight curiously asked. "I happen to love books. How about you provide me with some of the names of these books so I can look into them?"

Hoofty felt nervous because he said something that he didn't have much knowledge about. He awkwardly looked away from her and ran his hoof through his mane for a moment before turning back to her. "Well, I, uh, don't exactly remember the names of the books off hoof, but they're very well written and I do know they exist."

"I see," Twilight said. "Why don't we talk about how bizarre it is when big time Atheist preachers insist that they refuse to believe anything without verifiable evidence, yet they are more than willing to put their faith in anything without verifiable evidence as long as that thing can be used to attack or mock the gospel, like when they claim absurdities that Jesus is nothing but plagiarized hogwash that was stolen from the God, Horus, or some other mythological God. Or how we talk about how each year I hear Atheists talking about the the wife of Jesus. It seems that every year that document gets brought up that says that Jesus had a wife named Mary."

"But that old document is real and proves that the Bible is a fallacy since it claims different things than what the Bible says."

"No, that document was a forgery written a very long time ago after Jesus was born by non-Christians who had political and theological motivation for challenging the historic teachings of the Christian faith. Jesus is married to His bride, the church. So what you're advocating here is that if there is conflicting information about two different documents that say different things about someone, I should buy into the propaganda rather than believing in the document that was written by the ponies who actually knew Jesus. In other words, you're telling me that the discovery of that document which was written several hundred years later by ponies who simply wanted to undermine the truth for personal gain is more viable than what the Bible says about Jesus."

"Well," Hoofty said as he brushed off his shoulder. "To each their own."

"These are the kinds of things that get under my fur. Most Atheist ponies I have talked to try to prove the non-existence of God by systemically ruling out every piece of evidence for the existence of God, simply because that evidence could be used to prove His existence. That's not a very good use of the scientific method. This is something I see all the time, but I guess it shouldn't be of any surprise to me when ponies reject the proof of Christ's resurrection in favor of following lies that let them remain in unbelief. Jesus did say that if they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead. I wish ponies would stop mocking Christians for following a blind faith when there are ponies who seriously buy into baseless stuff like this, so long as it contradicts the word of God, like the Gospel of Thomas or one of the many other Gnostic gospels. Basically, these writings boil down to one thing. Bad fan fiction. How about you talk about the resurrection of Christ?"

Hoofty felt pressured and gulped. The truth was that he was very inexperienced in debating and didn't have much knowledge about the Bible. He was only chosen to be here because of his high charisma among his Atheist followers. He was more involved in political discussions rather than religion.

"Go on," Twilight insisted. "I really do appreciate it that you have been kind enough to let me do all this talking for so long, but I think it should be your turn to do a little talking here."

"Well, the resurrection is nonsense because..." Hoofty paused for a moment.

"Because why?" Twilight asked. "Was it because everyone was hallucinating the exact same vision when Christ rose from the dead and came back to show Himself so that the thousands of ponies in the public could see that He is God? Most hallucinations vary dramatically from pony to pony, yet everyone was in agreement with what happened on that day."

"No, you see, it was, um..." Hoofty thought to himself for a moment. "They made it up. Yeah, they all lied about His resurrection, so they could keep their fairy tale alive and benefit from it."

"Benefit from it!?" Twilight asked. "You mean they benefited from dying horrible deaths from the cruel torture at the hooves of their persecutors? Were the thousands upon thousands of other Christians who were thrown to the savage beasts to be eaten alive or tortured to death for everyone's viewing pleasures lying about their faith too? Was being a Christian during those times supposed to be beneficial when anyone who claimed or was suspected to be a Christian was brutally murdered?"

"I, uh, just have to disagree with that," Hoofty said.

"Well, go on and explain yourself because I certainly want to hear your answer."

"It's just that..." Hoofty paused for a moment as he looked at the crowd and then back to Twilight. "It's just that it's because..."

The moderator cut him off when he realized how much time went by. He was distracted by the scones and wasn't cognizant of how much time was left until now. He quickly grabbed the mic next to him with a bit of panic and fumbled it around before getting a steady grip on it. "I really hate to break this to you, but we are nearly out of time and used up all of our questions and answers time from the audience so, um, how about our concluding thoughts? I honestly think we only have time for one short concluding statement."

Hoofty Cuffs wiped the sweat off his forehead and took a deep breath. He found himself starting to say things he didn't truly have much knowledge about and was saved by the bell.

Some ponies in the crowd were disappointed.

Hoofty Cuffs brushed off his shoulders once more and stood to his legs. "Since my opponent seems so unprepared and has no writings or notes with her, I would like to go first." The stallion walked away from the pillow that he was resting on and brought his notes up to the podium. He placed the microphone in the holder and put on his reading glasses. "Fillies and gentlecolts. I'd like to point out that Twilight has given no good reasons why God exists other than boring old reasoning that leads to circular arguments. She has given no good reasons why religion is good for our society, especially Christianity. In fact, her reasoning made Christianity seem far worse than I expected. I hardly had to do any talking because her own words proved more damaging and humiliating for her than my own brilliant logic and irrefutable arguments. Let us take the time to quickly reanalyze this entire discussion and recapitulate what Twilight has revealed about herself to us. First and foremost, she is anti-science in the fact that she disregards vaccines which are proven to always build up our immunity, and she would rather have little ponies die of horrible diseases like polio once again simply because her Christian faith won't allow for scientific progress like vaccinations. She said that her God can't be outdone with the food we have even though we're working hard on making it superior by adding more vitamins to our GMO foods. Who knows, we may one day be able to add vaccines in GMO foods to save others, or be able to build up the herd's immunity with fly-by aerosol vaccine spraying, unless too many other ponies who use this tree-hugging hippie ideology like her stop our scientific progress. Miss Twilight Sparkle believes that mares who are raped and may very well die from giving birth are worthless and have no rights. She believes ponies have to suffer and live through unspeakable pains in life when they can be gently and painlessly put down through a simple injection, and she believes that it's better to keep a religious tyrant like Princess Celestia who refuses equality among gay ponies who want to marry rather than having a more intelligent secular princess or king ruling over Equestria. She is delusional in the sense that she thinks she can cure cancer with diet and by smoking weed which is actually worse for your lungs than smoking a cigarette. She said that the vitamin K shot is somehow evil and that she'd rather have infants suffer without it and die which is absurd because I thought she was supposed to be pro-life; it's a freaking vitamin, not a vaccine for crying out loud. She believes that giving birth in a dirty home is superior than giving birth in a clean, sterile hospital with a doctor there to make sure that everything goes right. What if the foal has its umbilical cord wrapped around its neck or some other emergency procedure has to take place? Would she simply allow it to die and say, oh look! God must have not wanted this foal to live. Does she even realize how many poor ponies in other lands travel miles and miles to give birth in a hospital? We have doctors who have spent thousands of dollars and years of their life studying only to have such an arrogant and ignorant pony who thinks she knows it all tell us that doctors are simply medical monsters who want to reduce the population. I can't think of anything more disrespectful than calling doctors baby killers when in fact they have saved countless lives; way more than her imaginary friend Jesus will ever do." Hoofy shook his head from side to side in disbelief as he thought about matters. "Holy mother of God. I understand that Christians are not the brightest bunch, but even all of you Christians in the audience have to admit that Miss Sparkle needs psychiatric help and needs to be institutionalized because her ideology is terrifying and extremely dangerous. I understand that freedom is very important to her, but in no way do I think that it's okay to be free to spread diseases to others. She needs to be drugged up until she is compliant with the rest of us and I suspect that she suffers greatly from delusions and ODD, which stands for oppositional defiant disorder. I'm not the one who needs prayer because I'm lost; pray for her because she has a severe mentally disability and she is truly the one who is lost!" Hoofty shouted as he pointed his hoof at her.

Twilight Sparkle rolled her eyes and was rather annoyed at how horribly she was being represented.

"I'd like to ask all of you, why do you follow a God who is obsessed with your private life? Why is it so important to God when it comes to who you have sex with and in what position? Why does this God care so much about your genitals and better yet, why do you need God to be good? Atheists can live perfectly good, moral lives without God and God is simply just a crutch for the weak minded to lean on. If you are so simple minded and morally lost that you need God to tell you that maybe it's wrong to kill or rape, then by all means, believe in God. I do know that religion has caused so much war and strife in this world and most religious ponies say that it's good to die for your faith. Well then, I'd like to propose that some of you may start with yourselves so we can get on with society and move forward. Either do that, or join us and be logical for a single day in your life. I would find it offensive to be called a sheep, so let's all start thinking for ourselves without religious books. I can think for myself and my opponent's mind has been subjugated and sabotaged by such an evil book like the Bible." The stallion looked down at his notes for a moment and then focused back on the audience. "I'd like to add that prayer has been proven to be a fallacy. Did you know that studies have been done where there were two groups of sick ponies and one group received prayer and the other did not. It's funny because the group being prayed for did worse and maybe that is because they were stressed because they expected to get better since they knew that they were being prayed for. Think about how delusional religion makes us when you pick up the newspaper and read about some crazed mare finding an image of Jesus or His mother, Mary on their toast. Let's now give praise the Father, Son, and holy toast! Atheism and science helps send us into deeper unknowns and let's us understand things; religion sends us strapped with bombs into buildings. Let's be rational and think for ourselves for once and let's especially avoid the insanity of Christianity." Hoofty looked over at the lavender mare for a moment and then turned back to the crowd. "I would like to finish with a short poem that I just thought of for Twilight, and it goes a little something like this. God isn't real, Twilight's a quack. Go get your vaccines, before polio comes back." The stallion waved to the ponies. "That is all, thank you."

The crowd cheered loudly.

The moderator grabbed the microphone and turned to Twilight. "Um, you have literally three seconds on the clock to conclude your final statements, Miss Sparkle."

Twilight Sparkle picked up her microphone and said, "Love God; love others."

A few ponies in the crowd, including her parents, stomped their hooves in approval.

"Allllllllrighty, fillies and gentlecolts. I have not a clue in the world how you're going to judge who did better in this debate since it really wasn't a very formal debate, but there are cards and a pen provided on the back of the seats. Simply make a check mark in the box under the pony's name who you thought brought up better points." The stallion grabbed another scone from a silver platter near him. "Goodness, these scones are scrumptious!" he said into the microphone with a mouthful. "We should all say thank you to Princess Celestia for providing such a treat tonight."

Some murmuring could be heard in the crowds as the ponies got out their cards and voted.

"Thank you, Princess," the moderator said after he realized that nopony was going to say thank you for her generous efforts. He then greedily stuffed another scone into his mouth. "So delicious," he said while chewing. The pony swallowed greatly and said, "We have ponies coming down to collect the cards. Please pass them down and if there's a tie, there's a bocce ball court in the next room where we can have them square off against each other and the winner of that wins the debate."

Some ponies in the crowd laughed at the thought of that.

Twilight sat there watching the ponies come down the aisles, collecting the cards which was reminiscent of tithing at church to Twilight. She felt a little bit easier looking at the crowds now that they weren't watching her every move. She hugged her Bible that she was still holding onto against her chest and took a deep breath as she watched the ponies up front take the collected cards and began to tally up the score. Twilight looked around a bit and noticed her parents beaming with bright smiles and waving at her. She smiled back awkwardly and raised her hoof slightly off the floor to acknowledge them.

A pony came up to the moderator and whispered into his ear.

The moderator dropped the scone he was eating and brushed the crumbs off himself. He picked up the microphone and said, "Fillies and Gentlecolts! We have a winner! It was a close battle, but congratulations to Hoofty Cuffs representing our Atheist side! He won by a total of only four votes! Let's please give our debaters a round of applause!"

The audience immediately began applauding.

Twilight Sparkle stood to her hooves with her one front leg still clutching her Bible tightly against her chest. She closed her eyes and bowed her head. Her opponent mimicked her and bowed in front of the crowd as well. He lost his balance for a moment and stumbled around a bit, but he quickly recovered. For he wasn't the most graceful or agile stallion in town.

Many ponies in the audience began cheering.

Her opponent walked over and shook hooves with her before retreating back to his podium to gather his notes.

"I'd like to thank everypony for coming out tonight. It was a great turnout and I hope we all learned some new things tonight. Have a great night!" The moderator turned the mic off and went on over to the platter that had more scones.

Ponies in the audience stood up and began to converse with each other.

Twilight's parents applauded with great enthusiasm once more for their daughter; their eyes were still locked on her. They had taken off from work to make sure that they could make this event because it was so important to them. To them, she was still their baby girl, their pride and joy, and here she was doing something so important like this. Twilight's mother took out a tissue and wiped her eyes. "It's a shame that Shining Armor couldn't be here today. He'd be so proud!"

Twilight Sparkle noticed Spike jumping up and down in an attempt to try to see her while wearing that silly foam hand with the number one finger sticking out. She waved at him briefly before she turned around and walked away with her ears lowered, for she was afraid that Princess Celestia would be very disappointed in her for losing. The moment she began walking away, the light shining down from above her instantly disappeared. Many ponies in the crowd did not notice this since they were already on their way out, but Hoofty Cuffs blinked several times and wasn't sure if his eyes were seeing things correctly or not.

Princess Celestia sat watching the spot where Twilight disappeared behind the curtains. A royal guard appeared from behind her and whispered in her ear. "My Princess, there has been threats and possible attacks planned for you tonight. We don't have that much security to cover for you tonight and I think it would be wise if we leave soon."

Princess Celestia bowed her head and closed her eyes. "Let me speak to Twilight for a moment."

Twilight heard the sounds of the crowds die down and she listened as ponies were shuffling their hooves against the floor as they began making their way out the door. Twilight put her head down and began walking around in circles. A million thoughts seemed to rush into her mind about how she could have said certain things better or brought up more interesting points during the discussion. She felt tormented about the points or facts that she missed bringing up during the discussion because some of the ones she was thinking of now were so important and obvious, yet none of them occurred to her until now. "What a terrible event," Twilight muttered to herself. "Now I know why Rainbow Dash hates losing. Perhaps my points weren't good enough or maybe I just seemed to lack the charisma that my opponent had. Maybe I just didn't explain things well enough or maybe I just repeated some of the same things about vaccines so many times because my opponent couldn't seem to understand anything that I was saying no matter how I tried to say it. Perhaps I should have..." A sudden flash of light shined on the floor in front of her and her horn bumped into something. Twilight looked up to see the Princess looking down upon her. She instantly bowed out of respect. "Please forgive me! I was so ill prepared! All of my work got burned up and I was so nervous and sounded like a stuttering idiot at first. I've never done anything like this before and I..."

Princess Celestia called her name softly. "Twilight."

Twilight became silent for a moment and then picked her head up. "Yes, Princess?"

Princess Celestia saw the tears forming in her eyes. "Thank you for trying. It's all I ever wanted you to do and it means so much to me that you did something that was out of your comfort zone."

"Why? Why me?" Twilight asked. "Moses probably stuttered less than me when I first got onto that stage."

"And look at the things that God did through him. I chose you because I feel that you need to get ready for greater things in you life. You are growing and like how a mother bird pushes her young out of the nest to get them to fly and move on, so I feel it's time that you start venturing out and doing things that make you uncomfortable but will only help you grow. I'd like to challenge you to try to do more things like this and I may ask more from you in the future. Life is sometimes about taking risks and you miss one hundred percent of the shots that you don't take."

"Thank you, Princess. Although, I'd prefer to miss one hundred percent of the shots if they're vaccines we're talking about."

The princess smirked for a moment and then a serious look returned to her face. "I want to tell you how proud I am of you, but I can't stay here for long because there are rumors of a possible assassination attempt on me tonight."

Twilight looked as if she wanted to say something, but she couldn't get the words out of her mouth.

Princess Celestia crouched down to her level and put her hoof to her chin. "I'm not going to be here forever and the death threats I receive daily from written letters from certain groups makes me think that an assassination attempt is a very real possibility. They hate me, Twilight, and they want me to do things that would be morally unacceptable. Their love and tolerance is non-existent for me anymore. I remember the days when I saved them all and I was hailed as a hero. Now, I can't leave my palace or show my face around Ponyville without being called a nasty name."

"You know you're a great leader when they want to kill you for doing the right thing," Twilight said as she bowed her head. "Just like how they killed Jesus and chose to let Barabas go instead."

"And soon you will take my place," Celestia said.

Twilight picked her head up, looking panicked. "What!?"

"I sense the struggle, Twilight. As I said before, I'm not going to be here forever and I am fairly certain that I will be killed sooner than later."

Twilight's emotions started to overwhelm her. "No!" Twilight lunged at the Princess and wrapped her front legs around her body. "I don't ever want to see you go! Especially since you have done so much good in this world and have helped me in so many ways. What are you going to do? Aren't you afraid?"

Princess Celestia extended her wing around Twilight's body. "I truly am afraid for my life everyday, but I remind myself daily that God commands us to not be afraid. I will not do anything differently than I have been doing all along. We all have to say goodbye sooner or later, but only for a brief moment. Everyday is a gift, Twilight, and for everyday that I'm here, I will always try to do my best to love you and make more memories with you. I'm sorry that I haven't been able to spend much time with you or write back. Royal duties can be a pain sometimes even when my sister and I try to make the most fun of it and I have been attending so many meetings to the point where it drains all of my energy. No matter how busy I am, I always take the time to read the letters that you and your friends send me no matter what. You are my favorite student for now and forever and one day, the student will become the teacher. You will sparkle and shine and you will show others the light. For your name already reflects who you are and the word light in Twilight will stand out."

Twilight Sparkle picked her head up and looked into the Princess's eyes. "Thank you for everything that you do. The day that you go will be a great and tragic loss for Ponyville and all of Equestria."

"And will you be ready to take my place when the time comes, Twilight? Would you do it knowing that it would please me greatly?"

Deep down inside, Twilight never wanted to become a princess, but when she heard how important it was to her mentor, she changed her mind instantly. "Yes! Of course I would do it for you, Princess!"

"Thank you, Twilight. At least I can rest assured that a pony such as yourself is willing to take my place."

Twilight couldn't help but smile knowing that the princess was pleased with her.

"Ponyville is starting to erode very quickly. The secular community wants full control over the public sphere and they want to make porn public and the Bible private. Everyday it seems that ponies keep coming to me with cleverly worded bills in an attempt to mislead or hoodwink me into thinking that it's something else that would be for the greater good for Equestria. However, after re-reading the entire proposal several times, I find the real motive of the bill and some of the things I have seen horrify me. It's very disturbing how common it is when I see ponies who want me to pass a law that gives pedophiles the right to have sexual relationships with little ones as long as they have their consent. They become enraged with me and make death threats when I don't give into their perverse ideologies. I give them a choice with things like certain medical treatments even though I see it as no good, but in no way will I ever do something crazy and begin force medicating everypony even when the masses beg for it. There have been wars fought against pony rulers who forced medications on their population. We used to view that as a terribly wicked and despicable thing and I'm not going to become a ruler like that. I remember when I was away and left my sister in charge of making decisions for a while; she allowed for temporary vaccine mandates and sterilization laws for ponies who were viewed as imbeciles. I'll never forget the Supreme Court's ruling while under her influence with Buck versus Bell, and how tragic that case was. I'm sure you remember when they said that the principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the fallopian tubes. That quote haunts me to this day and I had to undo those laws and fix that mess. You spoke much about the problems with the organizations that were created to help protect my ponies, but the corruption and misinformation is becoming so great everywhere that I don't know what to do. I certainly don't like the fact that so many medical treatments are so unnecessary and damaging, but Princess Cadence and Princess Luna feel differently about this topic and they feel it's necessary to protect companies from lawsuits. They signed that document due to public pressure and I feel suspicious and believe that Princess Cadence and my sister might be getting kickbacks from some of these companies. I feel like I should overturn this rule no matter how much backlash I may get, but there are so many other problems that need to be addressed besides this." Princess Celestia put her hoof to her head in distress for a moment. "There's just so much wrong right now and I can only look into so many things. It seems that we need to keep reminding ponies about the Hippocratic Oath and Nuremberg Code."

Twilight put her heard down and seemed to be deep in thought.

Celestia put her hoof on her shoulder. "There's so much more I want to tell you, but I need to go. My guards are telling me through their magic that I'm in great danger. I must depart, but I hope to catch up with you sometime later." Celestia leaned in closer and spoke softly to her student. "You are a courageous mare whose heart is destined to help the hurting and you are beyond precious to me."

A flash of bright light lit up the room and Twilight was alone again. Twilight put her head down and closed her eyes. "Please protect her, Jesus." She sat there meditating on the good things of the Lord until she was interrupted.

"Miss Sparkle?"

Twilight opened her eyes and turned to see Hoofty Cuffs behind her. "Um, hi?"

"I came by to say thank you for coming out and I am truly sorry you fainted like that on stage. I would also like to apologize if my words on stage may have come across as a bit too harsh at certain times. I sometimes say things that might be a little bit too strong because I can get a little feisty when discussing topics that I am very passionate about. I am a gentlecolt at heart and never intentionally mean to come off as rude. You also brought up a few very good points during our discussion. May I take such a nice mare out like yourself to dinner? It shall be my treat."

Twilight cocked an eyebrow. "Ummmmm, you now give me a compliment and want to take me out to dinner. I don't know what you're up to, but if you think that flattery is going to get you this flank, then you best better try flattering another mare."

Hoofty stomped his hoof on the stage. "Excuse me, but I am a stallion who is already married to a lovely mare! I do not stoop down to that low level of thinking and that's not how a true gentlecolt thinks anyway! All I wanted to do was to have a small celebration for our first debate together. Aren't you hungry?"

Twilight thought to herself and realized that she was starving at this point. She didn't understand where all this chivalry was coming from but she accepted the offer. "Sure, that's very nice of you, and I'm sorry for making that terrible assumption. I just never know who is trying to be kind from the heart and who is simply trying to hoodwink me into going to bed with them these days. It's sad to say that chivalry seems to be so foreign now and deception is often hidden behind acts of good deeds."

The stallion opened up the curtain with his front leg and bowed. "Thank you, and I am sorry if there are stallions who are pigs out there that have tried to get naughty with you. Apology accepted. Ladies first."

Twilight took a few steps forward and then paused for a moment. "Wait a second."

Hoofty picked his head up and raised his eyebrows in surprise. "Yes?"

"You told me in front of an entire audience that the non-vaccinated should be locked up in their homes permanently so that they can't spread diseases. In case you forgot, I already stated that I am completely non-vaccinated, meaning that I have never had a single shot in my life. Are you sure that you're going to want take me out to dinner and somehow risk getting terrible diseases from me or are you planning on wearing a bio-hazard suit so you're protected from all of the diseases that I don't carry?"

"Well, maybe you are okay in my book because you seem to have some knowledge about diseases so you are one of the lucky ones that perhaps doesn't have any diseases currently. Ponies not vaccinating is something I abhor, but I'll take whatever risks there might be involved just this one time tonight. Now please, I insist that you join me for dinner tonight!" Hoofty Cuffs stomped his hoof and now had a slightly agitated look on his face.

Twilight felt a bit awkward but walked through the curtains. She did a lot of talking, and she could have went on for much longer. She would keep talking so long as someone kept pushing her inner nerd button to keep her going because she had such a passion and care for everyone and she wanted others to learn and enjoy life. She was like Pinkie Pie in the sense that she could talk until she passed out, but just not nearly at the same speeds that her pink friend is capable of. Indeed, It was a long, stressful day filled with all kinds of emotions that left her drained and exhausted. Refueling her body with nutritious food was the best thing that she could do right now, of course, right after she first takes care of something a bit more urgent that was bothering her for the longest time after downing so much coffee. "Um, Hoofty?" Twilight asked.

"Yes?"

"I just have to quickly use the ladies room."

Hoofty took out a golden clock from his pocket that was attached to a chain and looked at it. "It's already past dinner time; please make it extra quick."

Twilight Sparkle quickly left to use the bathroom, but tripped over her legs and fell on her face against the stage-floor. She got up feeling a bit embarrassed and said, "Don't worry about me; I'm fine."

Hoofty slowly put his hoof to his forehead. "I sure hope your God gives you better balance in the afterlife."