Jim Henderson wrote:
> Shifting my frame of reference to the time when slavery was a common 
> thing in the US, I don't know that either of us *in that frame of 
> reference* (ie, with the knowledge that existed then) would necessarily 
> have been exposed to the idea that those minorities who were slaves 
> weren't somehow inferior.  (Ugh, it's distasteful to even express that 
> idea).  In a different time, who's to say how you or I would react?  It's 
> easy to look back and say "that was wrong" because we have the benefit of 
> our current knowledge and experience, but if we'd been alive at the time, 
> our life experiences would've been very different, and that would've 
> shaped our perceptions.  Remember that there *were* people who felt they 
> could *prove* that slaves were inferior.  Even very intelligent people - 
> like those who put together the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of 
> Rights, etc.  "All men are created equal" didn't apply to "all men" (and 
> certainly didn't apply to women).
> 
And.. A logical examination of the "evidence", even then, would have 
shown that the there wasn't any "factual" evidence to be had at all in 
the argument. Back then you could point out lack of education, lack of 
equal treatment, and a whole host of other things that made someone 
"appear" inferior, and show examples that derailed the argument. 
Today... Sigh.. Lets just say that you can't go around claiming that you 
are "equal" in all ways, then isolate yourself from the rest of the 
nation, hold onto ideas that undermine the assertion, deny your own 
mistakes, and blame them on others, then stare in blinkered amazement at 
all the people saying, "Grandpappy was right, them <insert minority> 
really are inferior!"

If you ignore the historical reason why some communities are they way 
they are.. there is more "evidence" today of the possible inequality of 
some people, than there ever was back when it was simply "assumed".

Feeling you can prove something is **not** the same as having solid fact 
to support it. I don't give a frack what someone "feels" they can prove. 
They invariably trot out a lot of things they "imagine" no one has 
responded to before, make a lot of assertions about evidence they can 
never actually provide, then eventually just admit, if honest, that they 
only "feel" that its right, and "imagine" that someone, someplace else, 
has better evidence of the view.

Its like the argument some theists make about how Dawkins et-al only 
attack simplistic versions of religion, but there is some "great" and 
"solid" one out there, which gets ignored all the time. Then you see an 
article interviewing the "greatest minds in theology", and... all the 
fracking "deep" arguments are the same ones that people get told they 
should be ignoring, in favor of the "deeper" arguments. The only thing 
"deep" in any of it is the depth of the hole they must be standing in, 
while imagining that the guy in the next hole has a "better" argument. 
Its.. positively absurd.

>> So, sure.. Understanding how to motivate someone is one thing. But..
>> Some things either work or don't, and if you can motivate someone out of
>> doing them right, there are 50 other people, far better equipped, to
>> motivate them to do it wrong, or not at all.
> 
> Sometimes life ain't fair.  I don't like that, but that's a fact proven 
> again and again.
> 
These are people that stuff 10 aces up their sleeve, then get cheered 
when they claim to win, while you are booed, for pointing out that *no* 
poker hand has 6 aces in it. Its not that life isn't fair, its that one 
side has no honor, morals, or compunction against cheating, but 
everyone, due to indoctrination from childhood, and being told that 
"some people" are above suspicion or skepticism, believed *them* when 
they say they are the ones with hight moral standards, and the guy 
calling them on it hasn't any. Fair and unfair imply "the possibility" 
of fairness. But, when you know you will lose in that circumstance, and 
you have no honor, you make sure that the dude you want to lose has no 
armor, a blunt stick, once hand tied behind their back, and that, when 
it comes time for the fight, its an 600 pound, hungry lion, not a 3 inch 
field mouse, they find themselves confronted by. Oh, and.. You glue 
mouse ears on, and shave, the lion, and take blurry photos, so you can 
still claim it was "seasoned warrior vs. field mouse" to the newspapers 
when the guy is bleeding on the ground at the end.

Fair? I would settle for just honestly "unfair".

> I could see that.  It's a very similar reaction that those who feel the 
> foundation of their life is under attack from someone who doesn't 
> understand it.  That's the sort of thing I mean when I say "put yourself 
> in their shoes" - you've been there, done that, and reacted badly to it.  
> It shouldn't be so difficult to understand why others react that way when 
> they feel the basis of their life is under attack. :-)
> 
But, that's just it. If someone is attacking the foundation of your 
life, ask why, don't just get pissed about it. At the very least, *you* 
may be seriously wrong about what the foundation is. And, frankly.. 
anyone that thinks their "faith" is the foundation, not their family, 
life experiences, loved ones, and friends, are doing "massive" 
disservice to everything that actually "means" anything. Anyone claiming 
that their faith means "more" than that.. well, I haven't seen too many 
who think that way, when being honest about it, and the few that do, 
have no friends, rejected their families, and are usually seriously 
unhinged, if not dangerous.

>> Watched some clips today of various comics, and the strongly religious
>> one was precisely like that. His absolute 100% position was, "I believe,
>> I know I am right, so therefor 'everything' I say about non-believers or
>> sinner **has to be funny**. 
> 
> Consider:  Perhaps he was being satirical.

Ok.. I rewatched it and.. He isn't as blindingly boring as Ben Stein, 
and he "is" trying to be, vaguely, satirical. Mostly.. He starts off 
with "atheists believe in nothing, and need a lot of faith for that", 
and then starts wandering every damn logical fallacy, blind assertion 
and over repeated bit if BS ever invented, *including* a variation of 
the "tornado in a junk yard" nonsense. I am surprised he didn't go, "And 
then there is god's perfect food, the banana."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmrevhzVcD8&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.asylum.co.uk%2F2009%2F05%2F29%2Fatheists-or-believers-whos-funnier&feature=player_embedded

I mean... I don't even know where to start counting the flat out "wrong" 
things. Its like if someone gave the biggest right wing creationist 
websites on the internet a mouth piece, and assumed that if "he" smiled 
and laughed at his own jokes, it was "actually" funny. Mostly, its just 
an endless diatribe about what he "imagines" is wrong with atheists. 
See.. Comedy is supposed to point out things people "do" believe, and 
why its absurd, not make shit up about what you "imagine" they believe, 
then make long whiny speeches about how wrong it is.

If this guy was on a forum, instead of a stage, no one would be 
laughing. Why? Because the only "joke" he makes is in the first few 
moments, when he goes, "Oh, I never had one of them in my house 
before!". The rest.. Is just diatribe. There is no, "And then they 
brought up this argument, so I shot it down.", or, "He/she said X, and I 
had a come back." a 4 minute speech about all the BS you "imagine" is 
wrong with something is "not" a comedy routine, its a sermon.

> One of the things that alternate ideas do is force us to reexamine what 
> we believe in.  The debate about Intelligent Design vs. Evolution, for 
> example - what that has done is galvanized a large part of the scientific 
> community that deals with evolutionary science, and it seems that we are 
> discovering more things that demonstrate evolution in practical terms.  
> If we didn't have Creationists challenging the very idea of Evolution, 
> it's likely we wouldn't have had the advances.

Bullocks. We where making progress even without them. The only thing the 
recent ID movement has done is generate a "few" cases where people dug 
around in papers that where ***already*** published, 4-5 years before, 
but which the creationists didn't bother to look for, which already 
showed why they where wrong. Well, in one minor case they "may" have 
taken a slightly closer look at one thing they claimed to be 
"irreducible", but, the reality is, everything they have said was 
"already" refuted, multiple times, by things published years before ID, 
the Disco Institute, or Dover, where ever even on the radar.

This is how ID works:

1. See something that looks designed.
2. Google a few papers for key words that might "imply" design.
3. Ignore 500 other papers, and decades of research in "real" sources, 
like Pubmed (or claim you looked there, but didn't find anything...)
4. Assert that evolutionists haven't looked at it.
5. Stare incomprehensibly at the 500 papers, 3 books and 2,000 research 
programs "already in existence" which address the imaginary problem already.
6. Go back to 1.

> The lack of a challenge 
> often leads to complacency and lazy thinking.  But having to structure a 
> debate, even against something that you and I think is patently 
> ridiculous, helps science.
> 
No, it just wastes time and money. The only thing that ID has done is 
emphasize, at least to scientists, that science education in the US 
isn't "bad", so much as, "terrifyingly bad", and there are people 
actually trying to either replace it with something worse, or get rid of 
it entirely, and most of the politicians are too fracking ignorant to 
get why this is not a good thing. So.. Yeah, I am sure that figuring out 
that the Titanic is sinking "after" your ankles are already wet is 
"useful" in some vague sense. Otherwise.. they haven't done jack, since 
100% of their arguments have been "entirely" on "old" definitions, "bad" 
statistical math, "incorrect" assumptions about the state, direction and 
progress of the science, and a "completely" wrong assertion that 
quibbles over "details" about how much, and when certain "kinds" of 
evolution happen, is a sign that science can't decide on "how" it 
happens in general. I.e., not knowing how much of the water on your lawn 
is wet from the sprinklers or recent rain means you are wrong about both 
how rain *and* sprinklers work, and you need to invent "intelligent 
wetting" to replace them. How does that help "shake up" the scientific 
community?

>> Ah, but.. There is a rising tide of people in the US that not only fall
>> for everything said, starting at the "blogged about it" stage, and
>> presents "everyone" prior to that, including news agencies that don't
>> present "both sides", or actively promote the "big
>> science/pharma/government/whatever" side of things, as being "part of a
>> vast conspiracy to hide the truth.
> 
> So what's the alternative?  And to add a constraint, an alternative that 
> doesn't limit the rights of those who push a particular point of view?
> 
All you can do is point out why the conspiracy theorists are wrong, and 
sometimes that "means" saying things that some of their supporters, like 
it or not, are going to see as "attacks". Its impossible to avoid those 
heavily invested in fallacies making such claims. Just because they do, 
and are deeply offended by such imagined "attacks", we should just stop 
doing anything that bugs them? Again, you can't do that. Its seen by 
such people, and those that generally support them, as backing down for 
lack of conviction, or facts, not as, "refusing to engage the wacko."

>> or.. if you are lucky, someone wondering, "Could I
>> be wrong." Another "trend" in recent years seems to be the insane, and
>> often ***specifically worded*** this way, idea that, "One should have a
>> right to not be offended." Bullshit! 
> 
> I agree with this.  However that also means that you and I don't have a 
> right to be offended by religion.  That's a two-way street.
> 
Uh.. No, thought I was clear. We have no right to "not be offended", and 
by extension, we can be offended by anything we want too. Its like free 
speech. Just because I have to let someone talk doesn't mean I have to 
"like" them talking, or do nothing at all to try to stop people 
listening too it. If I did, then I wouldn't be exercising "my" rights. 
Sure its a "two way street". That is why respect has to be earned, not 
handed to every half wit that shows up with some sort of opinion. They 
can hold it all they want. They want me to respect it... well, accepting 
that they hold it isn't the "same" as respecting it. Yet, truth be told, 
most of the people we have been talking about a) assume respect must 
come automatically to "their" ideas, especially if religious, and this 
is practically written in the same law that ironically is "supposed" to 
limit its influence of the people that are not *supposed* to be giving 
it undue respect, and b) no one else's deserves the same treatment.

Well.. Sorry, but (b) pretty much automatically denies (a), in my mind, 
even if it wasn't based, almost exclusively, on the ignorance of the 
other sides actual positions, failure to understand the evidence, and/or 
random assertions that where pulled out of their imaginations, instead 
of based on anything in the real world.

>> That said. Not stopping long enough to find out what I *am* arguing
>> against, but just concluding that it is a personal attack, is, imho, at
>> least as good a reason for calling someone an irrational fool as
>> "actually" belonging to, or supporting, what ever it is I *am* arguing
>> about.
> 
> It's about presentation, Patrick.  If your goal is to persuade someone 
> that they're being what you consider an "irrational fool", using 
> inflammatory language to get the point across will cause them to raise 
> their shields (that's human nature) and to fight back.

Yeah, yeah. Framing. As in, framing the argument to the point where you 
find yourself painted in to a corner, because you where unwilling to be 
a bit less than "nice. But, seriously, its beside the point. I am not so 
stupid I don't know to adjust my approach when I am dealing with someone 
that "is" able to change opinion, and not addressing the "audience" 
through ridicule of the object my comments are directed at. The argument 
amount to, "Well, someone might be listening, who would change their 
mind if you where nicer." But, the truth is, most of them won't change 
their minds because they have "never" found themselves in a situation 
where someone wouldn't back down from their supposed spiritual leader, 
or continued to challenge them. People don't give up, or question, 
religion, or even its assertions, because other people "play nice" and 
try to avoid offending. They do so because other people "do" have 
drastically different opinions, which they will defend as aggressively, 
and "some of them" wonder how anyone could be so "sure", and go looking, 
then find out that, in the case of creationism, they have been lied to 
since the first day someone sat them in a pew.

Look, I guess my point is that the same tactic that works on one person 
doesn't work on another, and being directly, and unapologetically, 
challenged, instead of someone dancing around the issues, "will" show 
some people that there are those strongly willing to defend something, 
not just a lot of people trying really hard to mix two incompatible 
things together. Some of them are going to ask, "Ok, how can they be so 
sure." You need both tigers "and" kittens in your tool box, because the 
other side isn't going to just go, "Oh, well, since they are using 
kittens, we should stick with those too."

>> Hmm. Ok, then how is this, "Its not the one its directed at that is at
>> issue, since they are unlikely to change, its those watching, who see
>> that the only response they can give is incoherent, or non-existent."
> 
> Those watching are likely to see someone "on the attack", and that gives 
> the "recipient" of the ridicule the ability to draw sympathy from those 
> on the sidelines.  If you want to affect those watching from the 
> sidelines, you have to not make the target of your discussion into a 
> victim.  What's more, if the "attack" is seen to be unprovoked, you're 
> more than likely going to drive those on the sidelines (and on the fence) 
> to *help* the "victim".
> 
They claim "victim" regardless of how nice you are. They claim fracking 
victim even when 90% of the listeners are "convinced" they won the 
argument. Are we even talking about the same thing? I am not talking 
about just showing up an calling someone names. I am talking about 
showing why they "deserve" some of the names. If people can't see the 
reasons, they are not going to change their opinion just because I, or 
anyone else, said it in a "nice way". On the contrary, in most of the 
situations I have ever seen, "they" are the ones name calling, claiming 
other people think certain things, misquoting them, and committing both 
slander and libel, *then* getting offended when someone fights back. If 
I was talking about just walking into a room with one and blurting out, 
"you're an idiot", you would have a point. I am not.

These people could make it look like the fracking talking maple syrup 
bottle, Ms. Butterworth, was trying to leap at them with a knife, and 
the press would fall for it, even *with* the discussion on fracking 
tape. Just look at what they do with Dawkins. The guy is nice, polite, 
non-aggressive, he will state, "I think religion is made up", in a tone 
that would make you imagine that he was discussing the time on his 
watch. Look at what "just saying that" gets you. The wackos practically 
insist he showed up dressed as a ninja and tried to rip their throats 
out with his teeth. This isn't someone taking "horrible" offense at the 
suggestion that someone might not believe in god, the way they do, this 
is someone "intentionally" making it sound like they where attacked by a 
commando raid and held at gun point.

If you can't even be mild and "nice" and avoid being called a monster...

>> Part of the point of
>> making them look even more foolish is to show fence sitters that the
>> issue isn't your "unwillingness" to face them, but that you can't stop
>> laughing while doing so. ;)
> 
> At some point, it's not a question of "unwillingness", but a question of 
> "is it even worth my time?".  If you or I spent all of our time trying to 
> convince people all the things we think are ridiculous are ridiculous, 
> we'd have scarce time to ourselves.
> 
Sigh.. Again, we tried that for "decades". If its worth "their" time to 
make multi-billion dollar organizations "dedicated" to telling people 
how unwilling "we" are to address their imaginary points.. Somehow I 
tend to suspect you better **find** time to deal with it. Just because 
something is ridiculous doesn't mean it won't become the "norm", if no 
one does anything to point out how ridiculous it actually is, 
**especially** the people whose jobs are directly effected by whether or 
not some twit gets themselves elected to office some place, then votes 
the next week to ban vaccines in the state, along with some other 
supporters who, "don't know the facts, but heard about that poor woman", 
or some BS, based on such "ridiculous" crap.

You can't ignore or lose every "public" battle, other than the ones in 
court, and expect to win the fracking war on the idea. All it takes is 
enough fools to make the truth "illegal". Just look at the insane 
bullshit that goes on in the so called "war on drugs". Which is more 
about propaganda than actually "stopping it", which would require.. most 
of the money wasted going to preventions, recovery and research on how 
and why they work, and not on busting 5,000 pounds of relatively 
harmless weed, even while a ton of something worse enters some place 
else, and 50 new crack houses open up.

>> Some of them though.. Like the Catholic League, thankfully just "lie"
>> about how many they have. Someone worked out that, based on their public
>> records, and the dues needed to "be a member", either each one "claimed"
>> only actually put in about 30 cents, or the numbers where "exaggerated",
>> by like.. 10,000 times the actual number, and there where less than a
>> few hundred "actual" people in the entire organization.
> 
> I think part of the problem is that the tax law is too convoluted; it 
> allows people to work around disclosing what their actual assets are.  
> The LDS Church (again as a convenient example) is a huge business with 
> large business holdings.  Beneficial Life, for example - a major 
> insurance company in the US - is (or was, this could have changed, I 
> suppose) owned by the church.  What do you suppose the tax advantages are 
> for having an insurance company that's owned by a religious organization?
> 

No kidding..

>> Right.. Because no one can come along and just declare, by fiat that
>> Stem cells are useless, or, like in India, we should be using Vedic math
>> and science, including alchemy, instead of "western" ideas...
> 
> There are short periods of idiocy in policy, again, that's one of the 
> things that happens in a free society.
> 

Would be a nice argument if not for the "minor" flaw that "some" such 
idiocies lead to increasingly "less" free societies.

>> This principle is only true if science is "allowed" to seek the correct
>> answers. 
> 
> Taking a "devil's advocate" position, at what cost do those answers 
> come?  Do we decide a class of people we can reasonably agree on as 
> people (ie, let's leave the debate about embryonic stem cells out here) 
> need to die in order to continue the research?  Let's say all people with 
> red hair are determined to have the right genetic makeup to advanced stem 
> cell research, but the research can only be achieved by extracting 
> something that they need in order to live, thus causing their death.
> 
If we where talking about anything to extreme, you would have a point. 
We are talking about people claiming a threat to a way of life that 
***isn't even*** the one they claim they based it on in the first place, 
with entirely imaginary consequences, if they fail to defend it, at the 
expense of halting, reversing, or at least, in the US, slowing to a 
crawl, most of science (and no, evolution is, by their own admission, 
just what they "thought" was the weakest link in the chain). A better 
argument would be, "Would it have been a good idea to jail the nut that 
caused the thugi people to self exterminate, by abandoning all their 
food, walking into the wastes, and starving to death, *before* it 
happened, or is there some 'right' gained by it being religious, that 
said that Britain should have just sat back and watched, even if they 
had even, at the time, been aware of it happening, or their 
representatives willing to do anything?"

I am sure that, should enough creationists ever get into power and start 
banning things in science they don't like, it won't be the end of the 
world, but.. what country is going to accept the millions of refugees 
that leave in disgust over it, or in the years that follow, as they 
institute more and more religious laws, take away more freedoms, and 
make the country more an more like.. well, Afghanistan or Iran? lol

-- 
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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