On Tue, 25 Mar 2008 23:04:09 -0500, nemesis wrote:

> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
>> On Tue, 25 Mar 2008 20:58:05 -0500, nemesis wrote:
>>
>> >  I aim high myself and don't look
>> > back to see how others are doing.
>>
>> I'm sure we probably don't need to rehash the "I'll pray for your soul"
>> moment from a few months ago, do we? ;-)
> 
> ok, so I was half-jokingly trying to get you pissed off.  

It didn't work. ;-)  Seriously, I'm comfortable enough in my own beliefs 
that I don't need them to be validated by others.  I will also admit to 
engaging in a little "let's see if we can wind this guy up" myself. ;-)

> My bad.  A
> completely sane, sterilized and logic discussion on people's beliefs is
> never entirely possible because of natural bias.  

I think it is possible (I've had several discussions that were completely 
sane.  What it takes is for the people involved in the discussion to be 
able to set aside their biases and just listen to the differing 
viewpoints rather than assume that such discussion includes a judgment of 
the other person's beliefs.

The irony to me (because I was raised Lutheran, as I have mentioned 
before) is that many who profess to be Christian are so ready to judge 
those who do not believe, yet Jesus himself said essentially that you 
should leave the judgment to God, and that it isn't man's role to do so.

> I apologize.

No need. :-)

Jim

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Stephen wrote:
> I fear for the society that you live in then.

It's pretty much the same as yours, as in "western".

> And why should being a
> famous scientist make you good?

Perhaps an unwise choice of words:  "accomplished" might be more well 
suited.  It might do good by making a finding that might lead to 
revolutions like agriculture or domestication of fire have.  Or simply 
better medicine, better tools etc.

> As for artists well history is full of
> them being castigated for their views

Castigated or not, such views sure were eye-openers.

> and I won't give my view on most
> of the religious leaders around.

Most = 90% and I think I've already made my point about the finding of 
true gems among rocks.

>> But then, supposedly heaven/nirvana is like that.  Only no sex, I guess...
> 
> Why no sex?

Hmm, supposedly because sex is a bodily function and when disembodied 
the soul should have no need for it?  OTOH, you don't even need to get 
as far as Hinduism or others far east religions to suggest sex in 
Heaven:  Judaism considers that in the final days the Garden of Eden 
will be restored right here and the dead will resurrect with their own 
bodies restored.  Perhaps that explains why they are careful with their 
possessions.

> Is that the same God that will condemn me to everlasting Hell because
> I don't believe He/She exists?

I don't think anyone was ever punished for not believing God exists. 
Now, worshiping other gods or idols is another story...

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Patrick Elliott <sel### [at] rraznet> wrote:
.....
> Then why are these the only tactics the other side uses every place.
> Yeah, I know, PZ is not exactly nice. Nor was I this time. But he isn't
> the only one talking about the dishonesty, the straw men, the diatribe,
> the misrepresentation and the constant repetition of so called "facts"
> that DI pushes, no matter how many times they have been proven invalid.
> And this movies entire premise, that we should give equal time to faith
> based biology, because atheism leads to holocausts.. What the $#@$#@ is
> that other than vulgar diatribe?
.....
1. Sorry for the late reply... a toothache took me out of action for a day and a
half.

2. I've never suggested that the pro-ID faction has generally taken the high
road.  I would certainly make similar recommendations with regard to conducting
civil discourse to them if I thought there was any real hope of being listed to.
 If, as you imply, their behavior is objectionable, why emulate it? ... to
"win"? ... win WHAT?  It's the pervasive sense of this or that group of people
being "The Other Side" which is one of the major root causes of reason being
superseded by emotional compulsion in the human decision making process.  If one
is going to promote reason, the first necessary step is to BE reasonable to the
best of one's ability.  Ignorance, fear, bigotry and hatred are the only real
"enemies".  One doesn't cure a disease by despising the sufferer.

Best Regards,
Mike C.

*********************************
Q: Does a cow have Buddha nature?
A: Moo.

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Stephen wrote:
> So I eat sheep and don't care :)

Poor creatures.  The believers eat them because are not of the same 
kind.  The atheists eat them even knowing we are all mammals. :P

Not that I'm vegan...

> I don't know about being a pessimist I just think you are talking out
> of a hole in your head. To translate - nonsense. If you think that 90%
> of everything is worthless try looking for the good. 

I always try to look at things under a positive spin.  From my 
experience, that's where the numbers 10/90 come from.  Look at TV, 
listen some radio, read a few magazines, date a few chicks.  Perhaps I 
just have too high expectations...

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On Wed, 26 Mar 2008 12:26:07 -0300, nemesis
<nam### [at] nospamgmailcom> wrote:

>Stephen wrote:
>> I fear for the society that you live in then.
>
>It's pretty much the same as yours, as in "western".
>

I fear for mine too as it is drifting more to the west every year. And
what makes you think that all Western societies are the same? I've
just come back from the Netherlands and I would say that it is
different from the British one. People think and behave differently as
they do in the Latin countries in Europe. 

>> And why should being a
>> famous scientist make you good?
>
>Perhaps an unwise choice of words:  "accomplished" might be more well 
>suited.  It might do good by making a finding that might lead to 
>revolutions like agriculture or domestication of fire have.  Or simply 
>better medicine, better tools etc.
>

I wouldn't trust a scientist to chose my wallpaper never mind tell me
what to do :)

>> As for artists well history is full of
>> them being castigated for their views
>
>Castigated or not, such views sure were eye-openers.
>

So! I wouldn't trust an artist to chose my morning paper never mind
tell me what to do :)

>> and I won't give my view on most
>> of the religious leaders around.
>
>Most = 90% and I think I've already made my point about the finding of 
>true gems among rocks.
>
To yourself maybe not to me.


>Hmm, supposedly because sex is a bodily function and when disembodied 
>the soul should have no need for it?  OTOH, you don't even need to get 
>as far as Hinduism or others far east religions to suggest sex in 
>Heaven:  Judaism considers that in the final days the Garden of Eden 
>will be restored right here and the dead will resurrect with their own 
>bodies restored.  Perhaps that explains why they are careful with their 
>possessions.
>

You can't keep your foot out of your mouth, can you?

>> Is that the same God that will condemn me to everlasting Hell because
>> I don't believe He/She exists?
>
>I don't think anyone was ever punished for not believing God exists. 
>Now, worshiping other gods or idols is another story...

Sorry, this is planet Earth we are talking about, are we? 
It must be early in the morning for you so lets forget all about these
posts
-- 

Regards
     Stephen

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On Wed, 26 Mar 2008 12:35:54 -0300, nemesis
<nam### [at] nospamgmailcom> wrote:

>
>> I don't know about being a pessimist I just think you are talking out
>> of a hole in your head. To translate - nonsense. If you think that 90%
>> of everything is worthless try looking for the good. 
>
>I always try to look at things under a positive spin.  From my 
>experience, that's where the numbers 10/90 come from.  Look at TV, 
>listen some radio, read a few magazines, date a few chicks.  Perhaps I 
>just have too high expectations...

You've lost me. :)
-- 

Regards
     Stephen

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In article <47e8d2d6$1@news.povray.org>, 
gal### [at] libertyALLsurfSPAMfr says...

> > In article <web.47e7b90abd0847b45a8888d90@news.povray.org>, 
> > nomail@nomail says...
> >> Evidence is not made more compelling by shouting it louder, repeating 
it more
> >> often or intermixing it with vulgar diatribe.
> >>
> > Then why are these the only tactics the other side uses every place. 
> 
> I don't know, because the people on the other side are not so bright 
> after all, perhaps :-) ?
> 
> As others said there is no need to stoop to their level...
> 
> Or at least make it fun, if you really have to :-D
> 
Hmm. Well, one kind of wonders, if they have the mental capacity of a 4 
year old throwing water balloons, does standing there looking adult and 
grumpy, and telling him, "The statistical probability of you 
accomplishing anything useful with this tactic is quite low, especially 
when you can't even throw it far enough, or at the right target.", going 
to get you any place?

Sometimes ridicule is the only weapon you can use against the 
ridiculous, especially if the person in question so badly misunderstands 
the argument and the validity of their own position, that you 
practically have to spell it out like, "You are wrong." = You - 
referring to self, the one I am talking to. Are - what your present 
state is, etc., wrong- not right, incorrect, mistaken, and so on.

When they can funnel 900 idiocies in 30 minutes, and it would take you 2 
hours just to cover how dumb the first one is, by itself... Well, you 
have two choices. 1) call them hosers, or 2) quit your job and spend the 
next 40 years of your life *trying* to tell people at your own 
conventions how wrong they are, knowing that they have a 30+ year head 
start, more money, more people, and more time than you do to spread the 
gibberish.

Frankly, the only real consolation is that, once they are sitting in a 
puddle of mud, complaining they can't stay dry or warm, while an entire 
warehouse of parts you could build a heater from sits 5 feet away from 
them, they will have to come to you to build one. But its small 
consolation, given that you would be, at that point, sitting in the same 
mud puddle, wondering why you let the idiot convince everyone that 
houses where ungodly sins and needed to be torn down.

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    if version = "Vista" {
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      call DRM_everything();
    }
    call functional_code();
  }
  else
    call crash_windows();
}

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In article <47e99908@news.povray.org>, war### [at] tagpovrayorg says...
> Patrick Elliott <sel### [at] rraznet> wrote:
> > Kind of like Protestants.. Start with the premise that you don't need
 
> > the trappings of the church, just a personal relationship with god, the
n 
> > proceed to build lots of churches, rewrite bits of the Bible to sound
 
> > better, then become some of the most obnoxious people on the planet 
> > about being sheppards, by "telling people about Jesus", even when they
 
> > don't want to know. lol
> 
>   It's good to see that this thread about bashing ID proponents has not
> converted into an attack towards christian movements.
> 
Umm. I am not attacking the moment at all. If they stuck to the original 
premise, scientists, and even most atheists, including myself, wouldn't 
have a single problem with them. We might even acknowledge *some* of the 
ideas they have, where they to be reasonable ones (mind you, I don't 
find a lot of *reasonable* in Christianity that isn't better stated in a 
lot of other religions, and without the much of the hypocrisy and 
situational ethics). The problem here is hubris, the hypocrisy of 
claiming a principle, then ignoring it by trying to make everyone else 
*agree* with their interpretation of what "personal relationship" means, 
and just the general execution of the whole idea. I would judge just as 
harshly someone that came up with a grand idea of making sure everyone 
had medical care, then deciding later on that *medical care* meant 
forcing everyone to get plastic surgery to correct what *they* thought 
where "defects".

I am also sure there are some of them that adhere to their principles 
and don't push it. But, such people probably don't attend much church, 
since churches would be pushing them to spread the word, nor going 
around telling everyone in sight what their religion is. I.e., they 
wouldn't be noticeable until you asked. So, I am to judge the movement 
on the basis of a silent and unknown number, or the thousands of 
lunatics that show up every year in a mega prayer session some place, 
for the protestant Woodstock to pray for me to be, "Shown the light, or 
at least prevented from making the country worse by not being like 
them!"?

Since the first group is rather invisible, and doesn't seem all that 
inclined to do anything about the loud mouths, its damn hard to judge 
the movement based on the ones I **don't** see all the time. Just 
saying..

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void main () {

    if version = "Vista" {
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    }
    call functional_code();
  }
  else
    call crash_windows();
}

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In article <c46ku3phn0r3hmhv6janlb85hgr4mpctsl@4ax.com>, 
mcavoysAT@aolDOTcom says...
> >Show me a time in history that this wasn't the case. lol Seriously, 
> >*everyone* is clueless about some things, a small number though rise 
> >above the majority, to varied amounts, due to upbringing, or natural 
> >talent, and often have, in some areas, a far clearer understanding of 
> >the world than the vast majority. The majority though, tend to look for
 
> >those that confirm their opinion, not those that challenge it (which is
 
> >one of the main traits that distinguish that other minority). 
> 
> But the knack is not to think or treat them like that or you end up
> "knowing what is best" for them. Then becoming one of the oppressors. 
> 
Very hard to manage, especially if you are pretty sure you are right. 
The one article I linked in one of the posts, "Lunch with a Liberal 
Christian", speaks to this. The hardest thing you can ever do is 
recognize that only the person you are talking to can find the right 
path, and that while you can guide, you can't force, and sometimes, they 
will insist on walking off the cliff anyway. Invariably, oppressors are 
people that see long term consequences that may be real or imaginary, 
conclude that they "can't wait" to fix things, and then try to "force" 
the change. This is why I talk a lot, but don't try to force things, and 
get irritated, most of the time, with those that do. Sometimes, you have 
to be an oppressor though, if only on a small scale. For example, turns 
out that Oregon has some wacky law on the books that says, "If a parent 
does something that result in harm to a child, but it was religious, its 
not as bad as if it wasn't, and Christians are **especially** 
protected." I mean, what the hell is that sort of law doing on the books 
at all, never mind in a state in the US? I would have no problem being 
an "oppressor" in this case, nor would most Christians.

http://scienceblogs.com/denialism/2008/03/in_bizarre_religions_ritual_cu
.php

But, at the same time, while I would love to see indoctrination into 
some of the more insane BS that goes along with religion, there isn't 
really anything I can or should be able to do about it (beyond providing 
what, right now, is imho too limited, which is a way out for kids that 
realize they don't agree with some or all of it).

> >When churches have, on rare occation, 
> >gotten uppity and told people they didn't want to hear, the result where
 
> >usually not too good for the church. Though, its a toss up whether this
 
> >has been worse than the cases where they told their followers what they
 
> >wanted to hear, only to have those people later discover it was a lie 
> >(like a number of fun scandals the US has seen recently, of which the 
> >Catholics are but one in a broad membership).
> 
> Well you are on a hiding to nothing if you try to say that you are
> infallible. 
> 
Yeah. But this goes **way** past claiming infallibility. If recent 
evidence suggests anything, its precisely what I have strongly 
suspected. The louder the fool protesting other people's sins gets, the 
more likely they are projecting their own sins on people they can't 
imagine not having the same. And the people that keep getting caught 
with their pants down, figuratively or literally, are the most obnoxious 
and fervent complainers against the same sins they get caught at. That 
isn't fallibility, its a desperate cry for help from people that are 
convinced that the only help they have coming is from their imaginary 
friend, who will, in most cases, only *cure* them after they spend their 
lives trying to *cure* everyone else of the same immorality. Its a very 
disturbing mind set, and its *protected*, legally, traditionally and 
culturally, as unquestionable, outside the people that won't question it 
properly in most cases, and untouchable, unless it reaches a point where 
it starts effecting people *outside* its own doors.

Its sometimes enough to make one weep for the supposed ethical capacity 
of humanity, or physically sick at the acts committed.

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In article <web.47ea6b2bbd0847b45a8888d90@news.povray.org>, 
nomail@nomail says...
>  If, as you imply, their behavior is objectionable, why emulate it? ... t
o
> "win"? ... win WHAT?  It's the pervasive sense of this or that group of p
eople
> being "The Other Side" which is one of the major root causes of reason be
ing
> superseded by emotional compulsion in the human decision making process. 
 If one
> is going to promote reason, the first necessary step is to BE reasonable 
to the
> best of one's ability.  Ignorance, fear, bigotry and hatred are the only 
real
> "enemies".  One doesn't cure a disease by despising the sufferer.
> 
Its not about winning. The kinds of people likely to read most of the 
stuff are "not" going to show up at the site, nor understand most of the 
stuff there, nor learn anything from it. So, its not like we are going 
to look bad to anyone that doesn't already think we look bad, for the 
most part. Some might, if embarrassed enough, start to wonder why the 
world is laughing at them. And that "can" be helpful. But, just to be 
clear, one should compare the level of supposed diatribe being used. 
Half the stuff people say is diatribe from us is just describing what 
**they** are actually doing. As for vulgar... Description of what the 
other side "actually" says and does is not vulgar, nor is using their 
own words against them. And if you want to argue name calling. Ok, some 
of that happens, but its more often from those like myself that don't 
have as many facts, details or sources to be clear about what we say, 
and *we* are still usually far more moderate in our comments than they 
ever are.

Basically, we call them Ignorant - they claim we meant stupid. We say 
they don't understand something, and shouldn't try to claim to, unless 
they learn about it first - they insist we just said that they should 
shut up and that we plan to make them. And so on. Even when we 
occasionally use words that *are* less than civil, they come back 
calling us Nazis, claims that we plan to send them to concentration 
camps, claims that *we* don't know anything, or said the exact opposite 
of what we actually did, etc. We state, one time, that its about time 
for scientists to stand up and start actively apposing them, and use 
some flowery language, and they start babbling about eugenics, stalin, 
pol pot, mao, etc.

But, as PZ himself has said. People that want to change things need both 
the mild and the aggressive. The mild to show people how things "could 
be", and the aggressive, to get people to question *why* there is a 
problem. Without Malcom X types, you don't get change, you get what 
science has dealt with the last 200 years, a constant threat by people 
who wanted to insert religion into things. We have been fighting the 
issue of evolution since the fracking Scopes trial, nearly 150 years 
ago, and the only progress we have made is *in* the scientific 
community. By pressing on, instead of both aggressively pointing out 
errors in the opponents views, but also making them look like the fools 
they are, we have instead allowed them to a) convince most people that 
they are not fools, b) undermine science education, quietly and not, in 
most places, easily noticed, by pushing for poorer standards *and* 
unqualified teachers, and c) actively working to blur the lines. And 
scientists, while this has been happening have been? Talking about 
overlapping magesteria, claiming that faith may be compatible with 
science, trying to find "allies" among people that would, barely more 
than 150 years ago, burned them at the stake, and basically bent over 
backwards to avoid actively calling shit shit, or the people that 
produce it so often liars, ignorant, or, often, even just "wrong".

So, PZ is the Malcom X of the scene. Dawkins.. Good lord, have you seen 
the guy speak? He's like Steven Seagal, just before he snaps your neck. 
"Now.. I am sure you really don't want me to do this...", spoken in a 
calm nice voice that is *just* loud enough to be heard. Anyone that can 
claim he is at all like the ID people claim, have never seen or heard 
him, and anyone claiming his books are as negative or bad as they 
supposedly are, have never read the damn things. And these people don't. 
They just buy the book, then skim the pages for things they can make 
"look" bad, "with ... a lot of ... elipses ..., which conceal ...", 
entire chapters in between them. BTW, the original quote of the above 
contained the first 3 chapters of Moby Dick. ;) lol Its hardly a 
diatribe, strawman, or anything else, to call them liars when they do 
that sort of thing. I am sure you can think of plenty of other entirely 
appropriate things to call them as well.

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