On 4/13/2011 3:18 PM, andrel wrote:
> - 'global warming' is perhaps the only thing mentioned that comes close
> to being a controversy in the scientific field.
Of course, it tends to be damn suspicious that all the "experts" denying 
the last one on that list work for places that are either created by, 
funded by, or headed by, people with ties to precisely those industries 
that would be most effected by any of it being true. Probably 'pure' 
coincidence though...

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On Wed, 13 Apr 2011 15:15:45 -0700, Patrick Elliott wrote:

> 1. Replacing one citizen = one vote with, most money = all the votes.

Especially with the Citizens United ruling.  Thanks, SCOTUS, for screwing 
the voting system with corporate (and even foreign corporate) funds.

You also forgot 'trying to grow an empire'.  We really don't need troops 
in Korea, Vietnam, Germany, etc - those wars are all long since over.

Never mind Iraq and Afghanistan.  I'd add Libya to that list as well, 
except it *seems* for the moment we're out of there in any major sort of 
way.

Jim

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On Thu, 14 Apr 2011 00:18:41 +0200, andrel wrote:

> - nobody (at least no scientist) knows 'the chemical origins of life'

Now I didn't actually take high school biology, but I thought there had 
been some progress made in this area - autotrophs create organic 
compounds from inorganic compounds through photosynthesis - and I thought 
I had read a couple of things recently about some advances that had been 
made in understanding photosynthesis and even (maybe) in creating 
something that is capable of photosynthesis.

>  - 'global warming' is perhaps the only thing mentioned that comes
> close to being a controversy in the scientific field.

And even then it's not that controversial.  It's a relatively small 
percentage of scientists who study climate change who think climate 
change isn't happening.

Jim

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On 4/13/2011 15:31, Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Thu, 14 Apr 2011 00:18:41 +0200, andrel wrote:
>
>> - nobody (at least no scientist) knows 'the chemical origins of life'
>
> Now I didn't actually take high school biology, but I thought there had
> been some progress made in this area

Progress, but nothing definitive like *actually* making life.

>>   - 'global warming' is perhaps the only thing mentioned that comes
>> close to being a controversy in the scientific field.
>
> And even then it's not that controversial.  It's a relatively small
> percentage of scientists who study climate change who think climate
> change isn't happening.

I think it's more controversial what to do about it.  And at least there's 
something that remotely *sounds* controversial about it, if you actually 
read the original source stuff.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Coding without comments is like
    driving without turn signals."

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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> writes:

> On 12/04/2011 10:06 PM, Warp wrote:
>>    Following this from abroad, I don't know if this should be amusing or
>> frightening...
>
> And apparently the results are conclusive:
>
> http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/pdf/2005-11.pdf
>
> America is the most religious first-world country, and it also has the
> highest rates of crime, poor health, etc.

Highest rates of crime? Doubt it. The paper just speaks of homicide. IF
you look at violent crime where no one dies, other industrialized
countries are worse off, based on the statistics. I suspect some
fiddling around with the definition of "violent" is at play, but
still...

Homicides have more to do with a certain amendment than with religious
beliefs.

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Patrick Elliott <sel### [at] npgcablecom> wrote:
> Standard trope for them is that there are only a small number of 
> "Kinds", of which humans are the unique one, without any kin, and that 
> all the diversity came about shortly after the flood, when god simply 
> "poofed" all the variations into existence. They need this to be true, 
> otherwise the Ark and Noah's flood are not possible.

  The "kind" thing seems to be some kind of dogma invented by a few
creationists, an idea that for some reason has got very popular among
ID proponent. I don't really even understand why they are so fixated
about that "kind hypothesis" anyways, as if it was somehow crucial.
It's based on the interpretation of exactly one vague sentence in the
scriptures.

  Well, as said, it's just a generalization of aversion: They strongly
dislike *one* consequence of evolutionary theory (iow. the concept that
humans evolved from previous species, rather than being created), and thus
they extend their distaste to *all* of the theory, including the very
concept of speciation. (Personally I don't see anything in the Bible that
would make the concept of speciation such a horrendous abomination as ID
proponents seem to think.)

  Also, a significant portion of Christians don't believe in the literal
interpretation of the Noah's Ark story because of all the problems it would
present (such as how and why would all members of sibling species travel
from the Ark's landing point to the other side of the world, crossing vast
oceans, and without leaving any representatives of their species along the
way, either by living descendants or fossils).

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Neeum Zawan <fee### [at] festercom> wrote:
> Homicides have more to do with a certain amendment than with religious
> beliefs. 

  The US is not the only western country where gun ownership is legal and
popular. It is not the explanation.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
> Now either those creationists are uneducated as to the multiple 
> definitions of the word 'theory' and which one actually applies when one 
> talks about the 'theory of evolution' (hint, it's not the 'hypothesis of 
> evolution' definition, which is what they push), or they are deliberately 
> misusing the word so as to push their dogmatic approach to trying to make 
> creationism seem like science.

  One big problem is that most creationists (and in fact most laymen,
regardless of orientation) don't even understand what the theory of
evolution is about. They attribute all kinds of misconceptions to it
(and also deny many undeniable natural phenomena as being evolution).

  Moreover, many ID proponents muddle the waters even more by mixing all
kinds of natural sciences as being part of "evolution". You'll see them
claiming that different fields of astronomy, astrophysics, chemistry,
quantum mechanics, geology, paleontology and other fields of natural
sciences are part of "theory of evolution", even though those have nothing
to do with the theory, nor even with biology.

  Ironically, they not only vastly expand what their mythical concept of
"evolution" covers, to include fields of science that have nothing to do
with it, they on the other end deny natural phenomena which are part of
evolutionary theory as being "evolution".

  I suppose this is a very typical case of building a straw man.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> >>   - 'global warming' is perhaps the only thing mentioned that comes
> >> close to being a controversy in the scientific field.
> >
> > And even then it's not that controversial.  It's a relatively small
> > percentage of scientists who study climate change who think climate
> > change isn't happening.

> I think it's more controversial what to do about it.  And at least there's 
> something that remotely *sounds* controversial about it, if you actually 
> read the original source stuff.

  I would even go so far as to say that the controversial thing is not
what to do about it, but that many people actually oppose the rational
thing to do. "We should stop polluting our environment and depleting
natural resources." I don't even understand what rational reason there
is to oppose that idea. Is reducing pollution somehow a bad thing? Even
if there was no climate change and everything was just and absolutely
fine, we should *still* reduce pollution.

  Pollution causes harm to humans. That's a fact. The only controversial
thing in this whole thing is the people who want to continue polluting
the environment.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On 13/04/2011 9:56 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> Yeah, faith and belief are close in meaning, but not exactly synonyms.
> Belief is closer to knowledge than faith, I think that would be fair to
> say - for example, one can believe that (for example) the theory of
> evolution is the way life developed on Earth, but that belief could be
> based on knowledge that the people who have studied it and reached that
> conclusion followed good scientific principles.
>
> It's a fairly fine distinction, I think.
>

Not that fine IMO

>> >  BTW Mid June is the date ATM.
> Good to know, keep me posted.:-)

Will do.

-- 
Regards
     Stephen

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