Patrick Elliott wrote:

>> How is it possible to stand up in public and emit outright provable 
>> *lies* like this? Seriously... is there actually no law against 
>> deliberately trying to mislead people?
> 
> If there was, they would have to close like.. 90% of the churches in the 
> country. lol

Well, not really.

"I believe that God created the world." That's factual. There's 
(presumably) no lie in that.

"God did create the world." This may or may not be true, so you can't 
really prohibit somebody saying it.

"This equation from this paper *proves* that God created the world." 
This is immediately and trivially falsifiable. This is a lie - an 
untruth created for the expressed purpose of misleading people.

> But, seriously, its the whole "freedom of speech" thing, 
> combined with the *entirely* unequal protection that religion gets when 
> its adherents "claim" to be talking about "Truth". DI people function in 
> a state of flux. If the attack on them is about "factual" information, 
> they claim its "religious", therefor exempt from attack, if its the 
> validity of a religious assertion, they claim that their view is 
> actually "scientific", and therefor cannot be challenged theologically, 
> and since the vast majority of people either don't care, or have grown 
> up with a failed science education, which leaves them unable to address 
> the flaws in "either" perspective, they can do this with impunity, with 
> almost no chance of being challenged.

Pretty crazy stuff.

OTOH... for what a man would wish to be true, that he more readily 
believes. I guess that explains why anybody would fall for this nonesense.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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