Jim Henderson wrote:
> Well, I wouldn't say all people who believe in a God (NB difference from 
> "supernatural explanations") refuse to see things that don't support that 
> position.  There are quite a few people in the scientific community who 
> believe in "god(s)" and who acknowledge that there is a bit of a strange 
> dichotomy there.  They generally rationalize this by saying that what 
> they believe in is that there is more to the universe than we know, and 
> that there may well be something (or indeed someone) there that (who) has 
> a bigger view.
> 
Its also a bit of a cop out. One that my niece held on to for a long 
time, until she finally decided, "You know, many of these people are 
just plain nuts." There is a difference between, "there may be 
something", which even the majority of atheists will acknowledge as at 
least "possible", if not plausible, and the result you often get from 
even theistic scientists, like Francis Collins (I think it was), who 
actually makes the argument that he realized that the "right" religion 
and "true" god was the made up trinity, from Christianity, based on 
seeing a frozen waterfall. A number of people, reasonably, asked, "What 
would have happened if it hadn't been three parts, but nine, or 
something? lol Its a fairly well documented fact that, in such people, 
the level of evidence to even "start" to form a theory about how 
something in science works, is several hundred decimal places "larger" 
than what theistic/borderline scientists, sadly, apply when guessing 
about the existence of some sort of god. Its a bit like talking to 
someone about chemistry, and kind of half following along, but knowing 
they are talking about "real things", only to have them suddenly babble 
out, "So, to prove it I created a temporal anomaly using tachyons, from 
a deflector dish, powered by Trilithium." Its fairly obvious to 
everyone, other than, apparently, the guy that said it, that they just 
took a left turn at reality road, and wandered instead into twilight 
zone alley, because most of it ends up gibberish, and the rest 
contradicts "every" standard of research in their field, and instead 
started applying technobabble to someone else's. lol No mind is so 
focused, or strictly logical, that it cannot simultaneously encompass 
things like Star Wars, and at the same time, star formation, but some 
people manage to build so secure a wall between the two realms that they 
"literally" suffer something not unlike multiple personality disorder, 
when shifting from one internal universe to the other. The apparent 
(even if only to themselves) logic of "one" doesn't even "touch" the 
other, *especially* when, if it did, it would invalidate everything 
science knows, if true, on one hand, or rip all arguments made in the 
other "alternate universe" in their heads to shreds. The more drastic 
the difference in views, the thicker the walls. Which is why you can get 
both "mildly" odd people, that think "god may be around", to the Collins 
of the world, who are "sure" he is, while oddly never applying them as 
an explanation for anything in science, to the real nuts, like the Disco 
Institute's Casey Luskin, who has never met a stupid argument for 
design, god or the "truth" of Christianity being the right religion, 
which he hasn't believed. Like the most recent one. Because *we* can 
look at natural membranes, like formed by soup bubbles, and make that 
into a potential new color TV technology, and due to certain types of 
squid can "bend" their own, to change color quickly, our "designing" 
TVs, means that both squid's ability to change color, and by extension, 
if the twit bothered to think at all, soup bubbles, must be "designed" 
too...

http://www.plognark.com/?q=node/1129

>> Doesn't matter what argument you might try to derail that, everything
>> you come up with will be "reinterpreted" to fit the original premise
>> anyway.
> 
> Now that I have seen, time and again.
> 
> Jim


-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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