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Why Myths Persist
lottameez recommends an article in the Washington Post about recent research into the persistence of myths. In short: once a myth has been put out there (e.g., "Saddam Hussein plotted the 9/11 attacks"), denying it can paradoxically reinforce its staying power. Ignoring it doesn't work either — a claim that is unchallenged gains the ring of truth. Over time, "negation tags" fall out of memory: "Saddam didn't plan 9/11" becomes "Saddam planned 9/11." From the article: "The conventional response to myths and urban legends is to counter bad information with accurate information. But the new psychological studies show that denials and clarifications, for all their intuitive appeal, can paradoxically contribute to the resiliency of popular myths... The research is painting a broad new understanding of how the mind works. Contrary to the conventional notion that people absorb information in a deliberate manner, the studies show that the brain uses subconscious 'rules of thumb' that can bias it into thinking that false information is true. Clever manipulators can take advantage of this tendency."
It took 5000 years to come to this conclusion?
Maybe this explains why religion persists in the face of logic, it was here before science.
Religion persists against all common sense.
Trolling is a art,
This is the most amazing thing I've seen since I founded Slashdot.
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
And now, finally we realize why Adam believed Eve all those millenia ago...
:)
And NO, its not because she was naked at the time...
I just KNOW I've seen this story posted before.
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
That certainly explains why monster's hdmi cables contenue to sell so well, despite ebing the same as a $5 one.
I always love how we get a story like this, right after a story about how x% of Americans can't find their on (country, state, city) on a map. The masses are ignorant, why is this surprising? Intelligence is what makes us human, but brute strength and quick feet are what allowed us to survive. We evolved to see these traits as more desirable - it's not really surprising that the same ones who have trouble with philosophy and higher physics are almost invariably the same ones who remember the "big football game" as their best memory of childhood.
bomb the us up set someone
Maybe the lesson is that we should not debate whether OOXML is "open" but rather focus on the fact that it is immature, and at the same time point out the massive irregularities at ISO and promote a more reasonable approach to standardization such as OpenISO.org?
3... 2... wait, I'm too late. Oh well.
Wonder how many "but religions is a myths!!!!111~" posts will get modded insightful.
or such is the Myth they are trying to manipulate.
I thought "clever manipulators" had their last day at the White House on August 31st and then went home to Texas. From what I understand, we're all safe from clever manipulation now.
Wait, you mean Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11? Then why did you guys invade Iraq?
Nyhetsankaret.com -- det bÃsta av Sveriges Nyhetssido
Why not extend the slant, which wasn't present in the article, to go both ways? I can't tell you how many people I know who believe Gore won Florida and base it on the idea that major media sources verified it. You can go show them the opposite and they don't care.
What it comes down to is this, people are more inclined to believe stories which correspond to what they already believe to be true, even if the evidence against such a belief is overwhelming. It is all about change and accepting mistakes. There are too many people resistant to change and resistant to admitting mistakes.
LBJ once directed an aide to spread word that his Senate election opponent enjoyed having sex with farm animals. When the aide protested that nobody would believe it, Johnson replied, "I know... but let's see the sucker deny it!"
The Myth persists because there still are a few people that just refuse to get rid of the DVD.
End of discussion.
Um, people are morons?
They are using a subliminal message to say that the 9-11 attacks where not a inside job, move along nothing to see here.
You categorize this under "Science"? What passes for science in your world these days?
And BTW, no on ever believed that Saddam plotted 9/11. We do know that he publicly announced $25,000 rewards to suicide bombers and terrorists, that he hosted terrorist training camps in country, that he worked to create an environment throughout the middle eadt that set the conditions for terrorist organizations to thrive, and that he embraced both Islam and violent government.
So when informing the public about false information, one should avoid using negations?
Instead of saying "Saddam Hussein was not involved in 9/11.", you should instead say something like "It was al-qaida, who didn't particularly like Saddam Hussein, that were responsible for 9/11."
- These characters were randomly selected.
Isn't the 'Saddam planned 9/11' myth a bad example. It would seem to me that even among the populace that this is increasingly known to be false. It may not be a large %, but that % is growing.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
"Conspiracy Theories"
What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
Where does this ill-concieved idea come from that myhs persist, we all know that this is wrong and should stop streading this rumour.
Negation (in natural language) is a tricky business, even if we forget about the psychological part for a minute. Just to give one example:
Presuppositions - I have seen her again. and I haven't seen her again again. both presuppose that I saw her (before) so large parts of what I say persist under negation.
In addition, results from psycho-linguistic research suggest that negation involves some sort of double processing, that is we transform a negative statement in an equivalent positive one before we further process it. That in all this the negated statement stay activated and is thus reinforced is more than plausible.
"Hannibal's plans never work right. They just work." Amy/A-Team
Funnily enough, we think we're very good at warfare and invention, whereas in fact we're pretty bad at both of them.
We haven't fought a victorious full-scale battle on our own since the Civil War. And I can't think of any occasion where we have won a battle against a half-way decent foe. We tend to run if they come at us hard. When was the last time you heard of a glorious last stand of US troops, outside a Hollywood film? We only fight when we think outnumber or out gun the enemy so much that the result is a certainty. And when we find we made a mistake, like Vietnam, we collapse.
But the most amazing story we tell ourselves is that we're good at inventing. In fact, we're good at developing other people's inventions - usually stolen ones. If you don't want us to steal your invention, you'd better come over here and develop it for the US market yourself - and then we can claim that the invention was American!
Probably the calssic story we tell ourselves is that the Wrights 'invented the airplane'. In fact, they wer the first (by a short head) to make a machine fly according to certain precisely defined criteria. Change those criteria, and others become the first. The Wright machine turned out to be a dead end in aviation technology - the wing-warping idea does not scale - but the legal fight over this meant that the US aircraft industry was held back so much we had to buy aircraft from the French for WW1!)
interests within our government and defense industry worked VERY HARD on inventing and perpetuating it. And our corporate media did their usual lapdog routine, and went along without questioning anything.
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
That you can get good study write-up on some weblog. I liked the "why girls like pink" one better.
That link is to the second page, for those that like to read from the start here is the first page
It seems that unless you have an account you can't click the links on the page to go back to the first page, but you can click next (from the first) and you can get to either page externally. Don't ask me why.
Well, there has to be some survival advantage afforded by intelligence or we wouldn't have evolved it...
As far as the ignorant masses go, though, it's a well-known fact that 68% of people will unquestioningly accept the authority of invented statistics.
On an almost completely unrelated note, here's a link to the first page of the article for anyone who missed it.
Given that we all have different mental capacities, this psychologist seems to offer an account of how ignorant minds work, and it's not particularly revelatory.
I am with Linus on this one. For the life of me I can't understand what this sucking up to RMS is about. Linus himself does not think GPLv3 is a good thing. So why do people keep adopting it.
Without Linus FOSS is tossed. Not following Linus is dangerous for the survival of FOSS.
There are many stupid people who will believe whatever they want to believe, regardless of proof. They will generally want to force you to believe what they believe even if you have proof that directly contradicts them. And, if you refuse to believe, they may try to silence.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
A better one would be "Bush was suckered by Al-Quaeda into attacking Iraq rather than them". It can be used by both sides in the debate. One to prove Bush is dumb, the other to make it look like it was accidental rather than deliberate geopolitics.
Deleted
Bush lied, LIED LIED LIED about Saddam planning 911.
You are still re-enforcing the Saddam <-> connection.
You need to leave Saddam out entirely.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
we were at war with Eurasia. We were always at war with Eurasia.
No you dim witted troll, he said that religion is a man made construction around faith. He also said that faith is a belief beyond proof that something more exists. He also claimed that science has had many leaps of faiths that have lead to logical foundation throughout its existence. He never said that God was a man-made construction, only that the rituals to worship and appease God might be man-made around the faith that a creator exists.
Some of you people are so intent on being snide that you don't even read the post you're responding to. (It makes you look like a real dumb ass.) I hope someone with some common sense mods you down, even if they agree with you're slashdot-populist message. Straw manning someone to ridicule them is unnecessary.
Why not send this myth to our friendly Mythbusters .
"I have never had sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky. I've never had an affair with her." He should have just said "I went to lunch with my wife.. we had a cigar".
"...don't worry dad, I'll get him."
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
your lack of faith...disturbing. /obligquote
"Little is much when little you need."
Perhaps conservatives denying bad science, such as Carbon-induced global warming theories, is what keeps reinforcing it among the believers. Perhaps if the religious claimed that God made cows fart to cause global warming, the scientific community would actually allow more viable alternative theories to be assessed.
- Yes, I am posting at a -1, and no I will not use a proxy to bypass my circumstances.
I guess this explains why the Anthropogenic Global Warming Myth continues to be popular.
At least it keeps "Spotted Owl" Gore employed.
In his book, The Black Swan, Nassim Taleb calls this the "narrative fallacy". Interesting stuff. Especially when you consider it specifically in realms of (seeming) randomness like finance. Who knows why the market fell yesterday? No one. But you can bet the front page of the Wall Street Journal will have a nice little blurb explaining the cause behind the effect. This little 'narrative' is not easily disprovable and our brains love it! It requires conscious thought and force of will to unlink these types of things and approach them with the level of respect that such unpredictability deserves.
In the terms of the ceasefire that ended the war with Iraq in the early nineties, Hussein agreed to allow weapons inspectors into his country, and to give them full access to his labs to prove that all WMD (mostly chemical) had been destroyed. He did not follow through on this. Clinton attacked Iraq in 1998 for (supposedly) the same reason. See here:
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- From the Oval Office, President Clinton told the nation Wednesday evening why he ordered new military strikes against Iraq.
The president said Iraq's refusal to cooperate with U.N. weapons inspectors presented a threat to the entire world.
"Saddam (Hussein) must not be allowed to threaten his neighbors or the world with nuclear arms, poison gas or biological weapons," Clinton said.
Operation Desert Fox, a strong, sustained series of attacks, will be carried out over several days by U.S. and British forces, Clinton said.
Bush used the same justification. In his speeches leading up to the war, he never claimed that Iraq was behind 9/11; this is just a myth promoted by various factions that want to see the country fail.
I doubt that anyone would argue that we have fucked it up quite badly over there, but Iraq was never sold as retribution for 9/11.
Next you'll tell me that Harald V of Norway embraces Lutheranism.
It's bad enough that the Post repeats the tired old canard that the administration "linked" 9/11 to Iraq... that they bring in the Arab conspiracy nuts for balance is just absurd.
I am NOT gay, and I never have been!
This also explains why we have so many of those retarded truthers.
I keep hearing that somebody's out there claiming Saddam planned 9/11 - who is saying this? I've never heard it anywhere.
My blog
I can't help wonder why the US seems to be filled with these kinds of things. It would seem that the whole verb "complot theory" was practically invented by an American. The murder on Kennedy? Meet the conspiracy theories, right up untill now. The Roswell incident? Or what about Marilyn Monroe anyone? Or what about the landing on the moon, some of the things which are being said and relayed there as evidence can be quite convincing too in my opinion. Like a guy who got murdered, his organs were found all over the island, and the feds tell us it to be suicide.
;-)
And this whole ordeal basicly goes on. The Bush election (even though this has been proven), the 9/11 theories about the fabrication of the tower collapse (here too you have some very solid arguments being made IMO, like a stand alone tower collapsing out of the blue). And so on... Heck, the US even has their own Myth Busters, that tells us a lot
Seriously though; I don't claim that myths only happen in the States but I simply can't help wonder why the US has so damn much of them. And yes, it is a big country but that is hardly the point. One of the reasons which I can come up with is the hush hush culture which goes with it. Add up a few lies (or "mistakes") here and there and you're settled.
"OOXML sucks big time! It's just a repackaged DOC format!"
"Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden hated each other and would have killed each other if they could."
To subtly promote a certain political outlook.
So we are being asked to believe the persistent myth that, when faced with factual information, most are likely to grasp onto whatever myth has just been refuted? I loves me a paradox. Snopes, The Skeptical Enquirer, The Amazing Randy, Harold Van Brunvand and adherents to logic and fact should just throw in the towel? I'll get right on that.
For example, there are numerous people who have claimed that a lot more went on with the Oklahoma City bombings and more was involved. That there was means to do even more carnage hat the FBI botched the investigation in many areas. This was often dismissed as just mere paranoia and conspiracy theory.
However, recent events have showed that there is indeed some foundation to these claims. The revelation by Terri Nichols regarding additional supplies and resources. The FBI finally investigating Timothy McVeigh's house and discovering numerous additional supplies - including goverment detonation devices from a failed sting operation.
Just goes to show that conspiracy theorists aside - a lot more went on than we've been let on to, and a lot more went on than the government was even away of.
On the other hand...stupid conspiracies like "whoever heard of fire melting steel" are annoying. Especially since anyone in manufacturing of steel has heard of fire melting steel. As for fire not being able to melt and bring down a structure. The recent collapse of an interstate highway due to a gasoline fire which caused a concrete re-inforced steel structure designed not just to bear it's own weight but that of tons and tons of vehicles. Proved that fire can indeed melt steel and collapse structures.
This article, and the study it references, is more about how to make people believe lies than about why myths persist. Defining your terms is important, and this just cries out to be misconstrued (and based on what I see in this discussion, it already is being used to foster the tedious "science vs. religion" argument.
The phenomenon being studied is more about how to associate two unrelated pieces of information so that people will begin to think they are connected, or how to plant a lie so that people will eventually believe it to be true. This is nothing new: everyone from politicians to writers to artists to horny teenagers have been doing this forever. The current studies are showing more of the details of how it happens.
Dr. Thompson recognized and clearly defined this phenomenon: make your opponent deny that he rapes barnyard animals and you're home free. "I am not a pigfucker", no matter how true a statement, will not get you elected.
This is tiresome.
The universe shows incredible fine-tuning to allow for life. Origin of Life researchers realize that there is an intractible chicken-and-egg problem about how life got off of the ground in the first place. And what do many with an atheistic predisposition do? Run away from the evidence and towards an untestable multiverse hypothesis.
Furthermore, atheists tell us 1) we weren't designed for any reason 2) all the thoughts in our head are the result of physics and chemistry. If atheists were consistent with their own atheism, that would leave us with absolutely no confidence in our own rational faculties to ascertain truth.
Then we have materialists (a version of atheism) who don't believe in any immaterial things. But they happen to use abstractions and immaterial laws of logic. The law of non-contradiction isn't orbiting around Jupiter.
So exuse me. I'm a little bit underwhelmed at the amazing rationality of atheists and atheism, especially the ones who want to speak ill of religion.
You are living in a glass house.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
BRIAN: I'm not the Messiah! Will you please listen? I am not the Messiah, do you understand?! Honestly!
GIRL: Only the true Messiah denies His divinity.
BRIAN: What?! Well, what sort of chance does that give me? All right! I am the Messiah!
FOLLOWERS: He is! He is the Messiah!
Source: Life of Brian"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
There's no single reason for the Iraq invasion. We must separate the initial drive for war and the different selling points that got the idea accepted. The compromises between the different selling points also contributed to the large failures in the project.
First, whose idea was the invasion? The idea belonged to a small group of strategists, who believed in the benign military power of the U.S. They thought they could finally solve the Gordian knot of the Middle East that was (1) causing terror attacks against the U.S., (2) threatening U.S. access to vital oil resources, (3) threatening the very existence of Israel (these strategists were committed to Zionism) and (4) condemning vast masses of Arabs and Iranians to tyranny.
The strategists argued the root cause of all these problems was the big mistake committed by Britain and the U.S. after WWII when they founded arbitrary kingdoms in the area and installed their vassals as rulers. The surprising examples of Eastern Europe, South Korea, Taiwan and the Philippines showed that all nations yearn for democracy and, more importantly, that doesn't spell disaster for the U.S. strategist interests. In other words, democracy is a win-win for everybody. So these idealistic strategists were convinced that the Middle East required true democracy from Morocco to Iran.
The idea was to start a positive domino effect whereby a few good examples will get the ball rolling and the remaining Arab states will follow example without U.S. military involvement. The project was started with Iraq for various reasons. Mainly, it was easiest to sell to the U.S. public and secondly, it was led by a sworn enemy of Israel -- even if the project should fail, at least Israel would have one less enemy to worry about.
Now the strategists understood their project about an aggressive war to liberate an Arab nation wouldn't be well received by many people in the U.S. so they came up with a number of baits. They convinced some powerful politicians and industrialists with the promise of huge government contracts. They placated many conservative realists by assuring them that this was the only way to keep the oil. They assured the fiscal conservatives that looting the Iraqi oil will pay for the endeavor. And finally, they had an easy time selling the idea to the U.S. citizenry. At the time the Americans were in a militaristic fervor, and many, many conservatives had been feeling for a long time that the first Gulf War needed to be finished.
The Weapons of Mass Destruction pretext was just a formal gimmick. Nobody believed it, nobody cared except it was nice that the inevitable and much desired war seemed to have an objective justification.
The original idea really was to bring American-style happiness to the Iraqi people, and at first many Iraqis were hopeful. However, because of the necessary compromises that were needed to get the war sold, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have had to die. Since the war wasn't supposed to cost anything to the U.S., there weren't enough soldiers to secure the country and disproportionately many were dedicated to securing the oil facilities. Also, not enough money was granted for the infrastructure projects and what money there was was given to wasteful companies owned by U.S. cronies. The people were "liberated" but the free press was censored and reporters were assassinated.
The real myth is that significant numbers of people believe Sadam planned 911. While that belief has no doubt been expressed somewhere in the wild web, nonetheless I have never met anyone who believes it, nor have I heard it expressed in any media outlet. I have, however, heard many individual and talking heads claim that *others* believe it. This seems designed to ridicule those who think the invasion was a good idea for other reasons.
The justification used in the run-up to the war was quite similar to this:
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- From the Oval Office, President Clinton told the nation Wednesday evening why he ordered new military strikes against Iraq.
The president said Iraq's refusal to cooperate with U.N. weapons inspectors presented a threat to the entire world.
"Saddam (Hussein) must not be allowed to threaten his neighbors or the world with nuclear arms, poison gas or biological weapons," Clinton said.
Operation Desert Fox, a strong, sustained series of attacks, will be carried out over several days by U.S. and British forces, Clinton said.
Bush's and Clinton's speeches were virtually identical. The only instance of an administration official even relating Iraq and 9/11 happened well after the war had been approved and had begun, I believe it was Rumsfeld.
The truth is, Hussein had an obligation to prove that he had destroyed his WMDs. He did possess them before, and by the terms of the ceasefire for Desert Storm, he had to prove to weapons inspectors that they had been neutralized. He failed to do this. For more than a decade. That alone was proper justification for the invasion.
The idea that we attacked Iraq for complicity in 9/11 didn't show up until well after the war had begun, after US troops failed to discover any significant caches of NCB arms. Those that opposed the administration found it to be an effective strawman.
Of course, I'd love to be proven wrong on this. If anyone can dig up a pre-war speech that accused Hussein of plotting 9/11, I'd love to be corrected.
Same kind of concept: manipulate the mind of the people listening. The only effective response is a return attack on the speaker even more harsh and sensational thus distracting from the original attack. In the political arena Larry Craig is likely to be forever seen as that gay Senator from Idaho who was forced to resign. Bill Clinton as the guy who could not keep his hands off any woman handy. All the denials just reinforce the impression....of course in both cases they seem to have been protesting too much me thinks(see Shakespeare)!
If I was deep this is would be profound, if smart then wise, if a poet then verse. Here it is, you judge!
I found these in a book called "Understanding Fencing" by Zbigniew Czajkowski:
"It is easier to completely destroy a thousand cities than to abolish a myth" - Ignacy Paderewski
"What a strange century in which it is easier to split an atom than to abolish a myth" - Albert Einstein
"Theres a sucker born every minute".
That is your answer of why.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Politicians have known for a LONG time that psychologically, if you keep saying the same thing over and over again, no matter how far-fetched it may seem, eventually you'll believe it's true. This is how radio show pundits and 24-hour news channels get their agenda across (I'm talking on BOTH sides here.)
As Colbert would say, any statement has some level of truthiness to it. And truthiness can become the truth if you push it enough.
I'm suprised they need to study these things. It just renforces the idea of the mind's critical facility. That is a person has certian beliefs and anything that matches those beliefs will bypass that critical facility and go into what a person will believe. Other wise it is not fimiliar or does not match it will just be something someone will know but not believe. For example if you knew nothing about cars and someone told you that the johnson rod connected the steering wheel to the rest of the car, you'd be more inclined to believe that but if you knew about cars you'd know it was BS. It also goes in the case where someone believes that they are ugly, and even if reality they are not, people can tell them over and over again that they are beautiful but they just will not believe it. This is why to making lasting change you need to get at all of those errnous beliefs floating around inside your head before anything will permentaly take affect. You can either bypass that critical facility with hypnosis or balance the emotions of those beliefs with positive resources that occur else where. Face it human beings make all of the descisions based on emotions no matter how much they want to believe that they are rational and logical.
If you're going to talk about myths, at least use an example of a myth. No one in authority ever said Saddam was behind 911.
You wanna talk about myths? Talk about the poozers who believe that the WTC was destroyed by controlled demolition. Or how a missile flew into the Pentagon.
"we'll really have an uphill battle in convincing decision-makers"
On the other hand, it also means Microsoft will have a hard time convincing anyone that they're not a manipulative untrustworthy monopoly engaged in everything from corruption and bribery to intimidation and market distortion.
The reluctance of more serious members to be associated with such unethical behaviour may very well outweigh whatever perks Microsoft wants to offer their bought voters.
The reality is the people of Florida were denied their democratic process. Both parties asked for incomplete and biased remedies. The Florida Supreme Court, sorted that out and ruled for all the votes to be counted, according to the current law.
That meant each county was to establish it's standard, then perform the count.
We really don't know who won Florida, which is exactly why a lot of people call Bush "Selected, not Elected".
SCOTUS jumped in and made a bizzare ruling, essentially stopping the process. One reason, among many, was the idea that Bush might be harmed by completing the democratic process. FOX news had called the election, and SCOTUS considered that in their judicial process. (Yeah, he might be harmed! He might not have been the winner, but that's for the people, not SCOTUS to decide.) Other matters were about votes being treated equally, which is not a bad legal precedent to set, but also not a complete justification for ruling how they did. It was specifically noted that their decision was not to be considered for future decisions in kind of a "good for the country" kind of thing.
The whole affair is complicated enough to make myths easy!
Reality is our process failed. We don't know who won, only who was selected, the rest is history.
Blogging because I can...
Myth's don't really persist...thats just a rumor someone started.
I was under the impression that Bush wasn't that clever. Regardless, I'd expect politicians such as the Republican you refer to be slimy like that, but it does not change the fact that the justification for the war was not 9/11 and that then entire premise of this article is false.
You should not give kwilliam all your money. You DEFINITELY should not help him become rich. Don't give him money!
(hehehehe! bye-bye "negation tags"!)
He published several papers and articles on the use of propaganda.
It might leave a bad taste in your mouth, but you have to know your enemy.
Deleted
tap three times if you want me.
twice on the tank if the answer is no.
Microsoft even tried to buy the ISO and OOXML was so bad that they still didn't ratify it.
Deleted
Over time, "negation tags" fall out of memory: "Saddam didn't plan 9/11" becomes "Saddam planned 9/11."
Never put salt in your eye. Never put salt in your eye. Never put salt. Put salt. In your eye. Put salt in your eye. ALWAYS PUT SALT IN YOUR EYE!
Why the "Face of Mars" wasn't made by Aliens >>> http://www.ghostnasa.com/posts/005marsface.html
http://www.ghostnasa.com/ http://www.gaetanomarano.it/articles/articles.htm
Funny, the article has a huge myth.
The Anti-Bush crowd loves the idea that the "right" claims Saddam planned 9/11. It's a myth that anyone on the right claimed that. The real claim was that he provided aid and comfort to terrorists, by paying families of Palestinian martyrs ($25k), providing a grounded airliner for training, and other terrorist operations. But, nobody in the government claimed that he planned 9/11. Everyone just gets up in arms over it.
...given the fact that we only use ten percent of our brains. :)
Step into a huge movement. Don't Tread In Me.
If we abandon truth, we have nothing left to believe and no reason to bother. It is better to substitute a simple truth than a juicy lie.
OOXML sucks big time! It's just a repackaged DOC format!
It would be better to point out that OOXML is no better than DOC, or more directly that the purpose of DOC and OOXML is vendor lock in. Simplified: M$ is an abusive monopoly that wastes your time and money without care. Formats like DOC and OOXML are examples.
"Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden hated each other and would have killed each other if they could."
That might be actually be true but it's more direct to say, "George Bush is a liar." This last truth goes to the heart of why you don't want to be a liar.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Perhaps Kuhn's famous study of scientific discovery might help here? Kuhn is old stuff now, but there has been plenty to follow up on these questions in the philosophy of science. A great quote in the wikipedia article on the philosophy of science coming from no less a master of logic than Quine:
"Physical objects are conceptually imported into the situation as convenient intermediaries not by definition in terms of experience, but simply as irreducible posits comparable, epistemologically, to the gods of Homer . . . For my part I do, qua lay physicist, believe in physical objects and not in Homer's gods; and I consider it a scientific error to believe otherwise. But in point of epistemological footing, the physical objects and the gods differ only in degree and not in kind. Both sorts of entities enter our conceptions only as cultural posits"
"Tell a lie often enough, loud enough, and long enough, and people will believe you."
Umm. We're talking about myths here. The WTC and missle things are conspiracy theories. There's a BIG difference: Myths are widely believed. Conspiracy theories are held by the minority who wear tinfoil hats and mumble to themselves about aliens, staged moon landings, and rigged elections.
Oh. Right. I see your point. This is Slashdot afterall. Carry on.
p.s. Maybe someone will even come up with a crackpot theory about why there are so many periods in my post. (Hint: It's not a code that says CmdrTaco turned gay after he got rejected by Natalie Portman.)
"if only religion would kindly get out of our way with its attachment to backwards notions about where life begins and ends and how it's a sin to "play God"."
Ah yes, and here we have a perfect example of the myth that organized religion is the only force responsible throughout history for the suppression of humans. Plenty of atheists have wreaked havoc in their time. See Stalin and Hitler for just two relatively recent examples. Saddam also appeared to be more or less godless until his own mortality was imminent. This myth is usually just a smokescreen trotted out by people who don't want to accept that they aren't God. The same people also selectively forget that many of history's greatest scientists were Christians, and that America was founded by Christians who the media would surely label as religious lunatics by today's standards.
Not everyone who takes advantage of this is "clever." Many learn tricks from a either a lifetime of trial-and-error or are taught. They may be considered craftsmen but lack the skills of synthesis.
Belief in a power greater then ourselves is not about logic. It is about Superstition. Religion is a man made construction around Superstition in something greater and a poor one at that.
Science and Superstition can co-exist. I believe in The Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) and how that Superstition helps shape and guide my life. I also believe in Science, in it's ability to help describe the world around me from the smallest quark to the farthest sun. Science only reaffirms my Superstition in this way, each time "We" (mankind) say this is the barrier, this is the absolute; Science through discovery pushes past that barrier. In fact I propose that there are leaps of Superstition in Scientific discovery that only later logic will describe. For me those leaps are our moments of touching the FSM that is inside our head.
Superstition is not about logic and why it will endure along with logic.
... just check who delivered steel for WTC and who delivers steel for the Freedom Tower.
Ha! Now that is a conspiracy theorists' proof.
Twitter, is that you? ;)
Could you please describe to my what exactly you mean by "God", his desires, motivations and prior actions? I find that people either can't very well specify what they mean by "God". Further, even if they come up with something somewhat detailed, it's not internally consistent. Like the Christian god which is infinitely powerful (and so has the power to prevent suffering), and infinitely kind/loving (and so should have the desire to prevent suffering), and yet allows suffering to exist.
Given my direct experience, the only "God" I can imagine is an evil tyrant.
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
Karl Marx made that analogy quite awhile ago, too.
Of course, the now great-grandparent poster wasn't saying that -- it looks like they were just illustrating that "making you feel good inside" isn't enough to make faith a good thing, unless you also wish to declare heroin a good thing.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Hurrah, perhaps this will finally kill off the Myth/Fact rhetorical technique. I've always hated those.
Myth:
Paying Taxes takes money out of your pocket.
Fact:
Paying taxes is your responsibility as a citizen. If you don't pay your taxes, you could face fines or jail time. Consider your tax payment as the price of remaining "free." That's worth something, isn't it?
Maybe the persistence of myths like "Saddam Hussein plotted the 9/11 attacks" has something to do with propaganda. Maybe.
Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, you can leave politics alone, but politics won't leave you alone.-rms
We all know it wasn't Saddam who masterminded 9/11, it was the Bush administration. Three words: Oil, Smoke, Mirrors - look it up.
BSD is dying, this is NOT a myth. Ignoring the comments that BSD is dying is not going to keep it alive.
I think this is more what the GPP was getting at... However, if not, it is still a good, apt quote in my opinion.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
Bullshit. The 1984 paper "Why people don't question invented statistics" by Moore and Dumas found that only 63.7% +/- 1.2% unquestionably accept the authority of invented statistics. The number rises to 78.4% +/- 1.8% if you also make up a source and an error margin. Conclusion: If you're going to make something up, it's better to go all out. And it doesn't hurt if you sound really confident about it. :P
There have been philosophical arguments for God's existence, and all of them are really horrible. Things like "Every event must have a cause, and there must have been a first cause." Obviously from someone who has no concept of eternity.
There are also plenty of sound philosophical arguments against God, as he's frequently defined. For example: God is omniscient, omnibenevolent, and omnipotent. Yet there is evil in the world. Therefore, God cannot be all three of these -- pick two.
There's another argument that says heaven cannot possibly exist, even if it was possible to have a God with these properties.
Now, that doesn't mean philosophy can't talk about God. It just means that you're not going to find a philosophical argument that will convince someone to be religious. The closest you could come is Pascal's wager, which doesn't account for multiple religions.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
It's easier to believe in an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent being -- a logical impossibility, by the way -- an all-powerful sky-deity that can have a mortal son, and then kill him and call it "mercy"...
Easier to believe that than to believe the Universe came into existence on its own? Or that it always existed? What's hard to believe about that?
Here's another one for you: If it's hard to believe something could come into existence on its own, how did God come into existence? Sounds like God is still a lot harder to believe in here.
Look, believe whatever you want, but if you try to justify it logically, you will lose, and you'll look quite foolish doing it. Every philosophical argument for the existence of a deity has basically ended up being wishful thinking -- that you want to believe, and then you go look for evidence to back it up.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Nah, just repeat as often as possible..
:-)
Microsoft's OOXML is not a flawed, closed format pretending it's open.
Microsoft's are not trying to rig ISO votes to force acceptance of OOXML.
Microsoft are not using dishonesty, bribery and corruption to maintain their monoploly.
Microsoft do not force-feed their captive audience buggy, insecure and bloated crapware.
Ok, it hurts to write that now but in a couple of weeks anyone who read it will have subconsciously dropped
the 'not's from those statements anyway and M$ can hardly sue you for saying their shit don't stink!
Win-Win.
So let's test that theory ....
Yes, I took those pills advertised in the spam, and, WOW, they really work!
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
We invaded to get the WMDs. We *know* he had those and that's no myth. We still have the receipts from when we sold them to him...
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
"Never put salt in your eye..."
Hitler was especially fond of using Jews to advance the cause of science through all sorts of bizarre medical experiments. Brilliant minds, when uninformed by ethical principals, are capable of the most diabolical of acts against their fellow man.
The grandparent post is also a perfect example of the myth that humans are capable of bringing about a utopian society on their own. As long as one person has the ability and the reason to raise his hand against another and strike a fatal blow, there will be no utopia. I hate to break it to you, but it just ain't gonna happen.
It's a concept called falsifiability. Link provided for those with faith in Wikipedia as a credible source of knowledge. The consensus among scholarly researchers is that good theories must possess the characteristic of falsifiability. If a fact or claim could be untrue, there must be a way to disprove it. Since there is no known way to disprove the existence of g*d, I wouldn't consider it sound reasoning that g*d must exist or the ze doesn't.
signature pending slashdot approval
Being human includes the capacity to believe ridiculous stories and perpetuate them.
It's much easier to blame something else (the media, military industrial complex, etc.) than it is for Americans to acknowledge they continually fail to participate in their own democracy.
All of the information needed for an American to independently evaluate what was being offered as reasons was, at minimum, available at a public library.
I hope more stories like this make it through moderation.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Gravity isn't a fact. It's a theory. It's "just" a theory, in the same sense that Evolution is, by the way.
Let me explain: Some things are mathematical facts. 2+2=4, and always will. However, gravity is just some equations, or a concept, that matches our observations. Here's a quote for you: "Hume teaches us that no matter how many times you drop a stone, you can never be sure what will happen the next time you drop it. It might fall to the floor, but it might just as easily float to the ceiling."
Not everything that's consistent with our observations is true. For example, for thousands of years, we believed the world was flat. This was consistent with our observations. Then, one day, someone made some observations that weren't consistent with a flat earth -- someone sailed around the world, and before that, someone probably noticed how ships at the edge of the horizon do actually seem to be swallowed up by it.
And, for awhile, Newtonian gravity was consistent with our observations -- except Mercury. Then Einstein published General Relativity.
But for all we know, there could be some exception that none of us know about, and the world might split in half, or people might start flying, or anything could happen.
Most scientists have a faith that the world makes sense, and that the worst that might happen is that our laws weren't specific enough (like gravity).
I also believe that, but only because such a belief continues to be useful. I'd much rather just walk around than have to put suction cups on my feet because I'm paranoid of falling into the sky or something equally bizarre.
So, is your faith in religion -- "freeing" as it may be -- is it actually useful to you in some way?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
No it isn't - he's off by 1000 years!
1/3 of jokes get modded OT. If you get the joke, mod 1 in 3 insightful/interesting/underrated to restore karma balance.
Many posts assumes myths are plain and simple lies (religion/politics/etc).
But there are another reason for myths: The wish to overcome our limited memories. Take the Diluve episode, exist in almost all the big (and not so big) cultures around the world, and in some traditions it is explicitely stated that the history/tale have to be told to transfer the knowledge that something so terrible that descendants will not believe it to be true had really happened.
So our memories are really limited, it's not strange that not literate cultures 'invented' myths as an efficient (time wise) transmission method.
What's in a sig?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Religion and science are in opposition like wales and mountains are in opposition. Neither has anything to do with the other. Science is about testable theories (unlike a mathematical theorum, you cannot prove a scientific theory correct. You can only prove it incorrect).
I've never been to Europe. That doesn't negate Europe's existance, because eyewitnesses have been there and verified its existance. There is documentation. Even if you've never been to Europe you likely believe in Europe as well, for the same reasons.
But for some strange reason, when someone talks of God, Christ, Muhammed, Bhudda, or any other religious precept, the documentation is automatically presumed false, and its witnesses and authors are presumed to be either insane or lying, no matter how many witnesses!
If God wants you to know of His existance, you will not be able to deny Him. I recounted being squished by God like a bug here. Now, whenever I tell this tale, I get all sorts or rational explanations for it. My brain (indeed, my whole body) had been brutally traumatized, or I am a schitzophrenic (despite having never been disgnosed with any mental disorder except Adjustment disorder with Depressed Mood (a temporary condition that did not exist at the time of the trauma), or I'm just a bald faced liar (even though I have a goatee).
I not only have no doubts, I can have no doubts. I can no more doubt God's existance than you can doubt the existance of the computer you are typing on. I can prove nothing; take my word for it, consider me insane, or whatever. But the fact is arguing with me about God is like a man blind from birth arguing about the existance of the color red.
-mcgrew
Where did Bush or an administration official say that Hussein was behind 9/11? Nowhere? That's what I thought.
Aside from No Child Left Behind, you cannot blame the ignorance of the American public on Bush.
Lies told often become truth
Seriously, the scientific method has no room for faith. It kind of goes against the grain of it. Backwards science just isn't real science.
Also, I'm curious. You understand that religion is a man made construction. You seem to understand what the scientific method is. Why do you hold onto your faith, and what is it? If you start peeling away all of the man made garbage, how do you know when to stop? These are questions I was asking myself when I was a kid. It didn't take long to see that fear was making me hold onto something that I just couldn't accept as fact. Since then I've rejected that fear and I see how it's been abused for probably a few thousand years to control people. I've seen the effects faith seems to have on a lot of people, and I can't call it all bad. I think It's just wrong to have people manipulated by superstitious beliefs.
Boy do we have a LONG ways to go to overcome all that though...
"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" Douglas Adams
It is the fault of a public that has an attention span that lasts less than 30 seconds.
Cheney described Iraq as "the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault for many years, but most especially on 9/11."
We haven't fought a victorious full-scale battle on our own since the Civil War
We haven't fought anyone by ourselves since the Civil War. As to battles, even the losing side in a war usually wins SOME battles. Oops, I forgot about Grenada (I don't think I spelled that right). We won that one big time.
And I can't think of any occasion where we have won a battle against a half-way decent foe.
Think USSR! The Cold War between the US and the USSR lasted for half a century, and the USSR was not only defeated, it was utterly destroyed. There is no longer a USSR.
When was the last time you heard of a glorious last stand of US troops, outside a Hollywood film?
Only weak losers fight glorious last stands.
And when we find we made a mistake, like Vietnam, we collapse
Then why in the hell are we still in Iraq? And that was a particularly stupid assertion; when you find that you've put too much oil in your car should you add another quart, dumbass?
But the most amazing story we tell ourselves is that we're good at inventing
I see you've never heard of the CrystaLens. Or the Cell Phone. Or the electronic computer. Or the Airbag. Or a host of other things. And that assumes you're American, if you are referring to another country you may or may not be right, and if you are referring to humanity you're just insane.
Probably the calssic story we tell ourselves is that the Wrights 'invented the airplane'. In fact, they wer the first (by a short head) to make a machine fly according to certain precisely defined criteria
They did. The "precisely defined criteria" were "a heavier than air flying machine that is powered by an engine". The wright brothers were the first. It doesn't matter that others "invented" it shortly afterward; the airplane was a US invention.
-mcgrew (sm62704 when logged on)
TFA seems to indicate something that I'm pretty sure is already known. That the first thing mentioned is what is remembered. Whether it is a myth or not, I don't think it matters. I think I remember this from a writing class, but I don't remember much else (so I suppose it could be a myth that just never was busted.)
this is all ridiculous hand-waving and baseless accusation. Petty partisan politics, in other words.
This was a falsehood that was purposely implied by our government. How many times did our simpleton citizens hear "We have to Saddam to prevent another 9/11 from happening"? How many times were OBL and Saddam mentioned in the same breath by our President? By the time the war started, a full 72% of the the sheeple had already been hooked. There's still a good 1/3 or more of us who haven't figured it out YET!
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
...aren't really atheists, they're more likely to be garden variety anti-christians. They disprove god by choosing the most asinine examples from their youth and ridiculing them. The 100 proofs against god are all just negations of some idiot christians 100 proofs for god.
"If there was a god, I'd be happy, I'm happy therefore there is a god"
vs
"If there was a god, I'd be happy, I'm not happy therefore there is not a god"
Both statements are about as stupid as stupid can get and yet both sides of the debate choose to use this crap to gore their oxen. People actually choose to link to this drivel in their sigs. Why not just put "I'm a complete moron and proud of it" as your sig.
Feel like I should flag this one. From what I've read, Einstein didn't believe in gods. The quote about gods not playing dice was -- reportedly -- a metaphor.
A list of impressive people, though one could question whether their various strengths lend them credibility in theological matters. But regardless: doesn't asserting the right/imperative/ability of people to think and speak for themselves seem a bit contrary to claiming that the beliefs of others should be considered persuasive?
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
Instead of saying "Saddam Hussein was not involved in 9/11.", you should instead say something like "It was al-qaida, who didn't particularly like Saddam Hussein, that were responsible for 9/11." Please, the exact same people who said Saddam had WMDs were the ones who told you Al Quaeda was resposible for 9-11, and they provided the exact same amount of proof.
Some news agencies kept "alleged" in their reports for a few months, but then eventually dropped it for brevity's sake, and that became 'mental proof' that the "alleged" was never necessary.
Keep them as "prime suspect" in your mind if you want, but do not think "of course they did it", because the people you believed about that turned out to be using the same words as lies not long after, and you know this.
You can't take the sky from me...
When parents force it on their children.
crap.
You can't take the sky from me...
A list of impressive people, though one could question whether their various strengths lend them credibility in theological matters. But regardless: doesn't asserting the right/imperative/ability of people to think and speak for themselves seem a bit contrary to claiming that the beliefs of others should be considered persuasive?
Good point. However, I was not trying to make an appeal to authority. The GP was trying to make the assumption that faith and intelligence are mutually exclusive. My point was to show that there are really smart people who believe in a higher power as evidence that it is possible to be both smart and religious. Religion is not a symptom of a weak mind.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
No, he got it exactly right; if the problem as stated in the article is that negation operators are dropped in people's minds, then an affirmative statement is the way to go.
But, I wanted socialized health insurance!
The sponsor of terrorism, the killer of his own people, the clear and present threat to national security who met with Al Quaeda, he was never specifically said to have been the Bond-villain behind 9-11, but he was implied to be involved, systematically, for months.
Manipulating thought is a well researched field of study and has many useful applications, from marketing to nation building.
If they just put two and two next to each other and let you think "4" without saying it, then you can come post to slashdot and ask 'who in the administration said "four"?'... But you'll still have "4" in your head, even though no one can quote them saying it.
You can't take the sky from me...
I'd think about removing George Washington from that list. There is considerable evidence that he was at least a deist and probably leaning towards atheism. Unlike Thomas Jefferson who was probably atheist leaning towards deist.
The church was a much more powerful force in people's lives back then and rejecting the concept of God made little political sense back then as well.
My twitter
Feel like I should flag this one. From what I've read, Einstein didn't believe in gods. The quote about gods not playing dice was -- reportedly -- a metaphor.
Einstein said that he did not believe in a personal god, and was quite viciosly attacked for this comment in the US.
My other SIG is a Sauer.
A few months ago, my ex-girlfriend was training to become a hypnotherapist, and would come home and tell me little things about it. One of the things I remember, is that hypnotic suggestions should always be positive and they don't work very well if you try to put a negative into them. For example, "You want to be thin" is far better than "you don't want to be fat."
But another part of it, was that people don't take suggestions that they don't want anyway. If people believe Saddam was related to 9/11, it's probably because they wanted Saddam to get his ass kicked. Tell me what I want to hear.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Like the common misperception that we won the Alamo, or the famed battle cry, "Remember the Maine!"
Except that Gore would have won Florida had the panhandle closed the polls at the same time as the rest of Florida, and the votes thrown out by the bagful been counted, as well as police barricades not been used to keep blacks away from the polls.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
G.K. Chesterton once wrote:
"You've got to understand one of the tricks of the modern mind, a tendency that most people obey without noticing it. In the village or suburb outside there's an inn with the sign of St. George and the Dragon. Now suppose I went about telling everybody that this was only a corruption of King George and the Dragoon. Scores of people would believe it, without any inquiry, from a vague feeling that it's probable because it's prosaic. It turns something romantic and legendary into something recent and ordinary. And that somehow makes it sound rational, though it is unsupported by reason. Of course some people would have the sense to remember having seen St. George in old Italian pictures and French romances, but a good many wouldn't think about it at all. They would just swallow the skepticism because it was skepticism. Modern intelligence won't accept anything on authority. But it will accept anything without authority."
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
qualifies as saying that Iraq was behind September 11th. Try again.
The submitter implicitly perpetuated a myth himself: that somebody (presumably, somebody in government) has claimed that Saddam planned 9/11. File this right alongside "You can't say anything bad about the President anymore!"
Evil is the money of root.
Science as a foundation for a membership test doesn't work very well. As scientific theories become more widely accepted, the group membership based upon that particular mythology would increase, making that group less exclusive and eventually pointless. Make believe mythologies suit this purpose much better. Because the 'cost' of belief includes the need to overcome critical thinking, membership is less likely to grow unbounded and, as a result, is more valuable to its members.
It is noteworthy that some of the most bizarre mythologies in modern times are adopted by groups under the greatest stress economically and/or socially. Examples are fundamentalist Islam, due to political pressures and fundamentalist Christians, due to their lower socio-economic standing. Its just a leftover instinct from when hunter-gatherers had to cooperate within groups as well as compete with outsider groups for survival.
Have gnu, will travel.
Basically, scientists have discovered that people who believe something ignore contradictory evidence, mis-remember contradictions as confirmations, and solidify their beliefs over time. Wow. I mean, wow. And all this time, we believed that the older you get the easier it is to be open minded and learn new tricks. This just turns all of what we knew on its head!
Sarcasm aside, this isn't very surprising. Few people have strong reading comprehension... if you read a sentence and don't really think about it, it quickly gets absorbed into your mind... but your mind absorbs expected ideas better than it absorbs the unexpected, so a little fudging process nudges the meaning of sentences to fit what you expected them to say, not what they actually said.
This is one reason that teachers try to engage their students into debate about the subjects. If you're just reading something, you won't really absorb it accurately, if at all. But if you have to think about it, and discuss it, and you have to pay attention because you're trying to make a point... THEN it's a lot harder for your memory to just imagine that the peg was round so it fits in the round hold of your expectations. You're paying attention, and the square peg stays square when you file it away in your memory. Better, and more accurate retention.
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
I always use the opening, "Only a fucking retard would believe..." That way, they remember that everyone who thinks Saddam was in on 9/11 is a fucking retard.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
You seem to be using "Man is created in his image" as the basis for your definition of God. In which case, really, Adam, or any monkey, is a definition.
However, for quite awhile, there were the Chosen People of God, and to this day, many people believe they are the chosen ones. I can certainly see there being another sentient species, even a crablike one, and having that not affect that hypothesis at all -- Man was created in God's image, and Zoidberg was not.
For that matter, notice how so many Trek species are Humanoid? That would tend to support the idea, rather than detract from it. In fact, there is an episode of TNG which finally addresses this -- turns out there was one original species which planted their genes on all kinds of diverse planets in such a way that intelligent life would evolve, and would eventually look humanoid, but it would also look different for each one.
In any case, the "probability" of God existing varies drastically depending on which definition you use, generally between 0, 1, and 0.5 with an 0.5 margin of error. I may have gotten the terms wrong there, but what I mean to say is, unless you can easily prove that a particular definition is always true -- for example, if you define God as what created Jesus, that pretty much approaches 1, but you might have to then define God as Joseph, if it's ever possible to prove whether Mary was a virgin or not. If you define God as omniscient/omnibenevolent/omnipotent, and you accept that evil exists in the world, then you have to have a very strange definition of "good" for that to work -- that's assuming that omnipotence is possible, which in a sense, it's not, since no deity can make 2+2=5.
And in this case, how can both be right? It seems to me that existence and nonexistence are incompatible states. One of them has to be true, unless you use Obi-Wan's "in a way" kind of truth. "Well, God doesn't really exist, but I am your father, so I am God to you. Go to your room, young man."
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I don't associate them at all, and I tend to have various newsfeeds running in the background whenever I am doing work. I was in a position to be completely brainwashed by this supposed technique, and yet I wasn't. Could it be because this is all bullshit?
The only "evidence" there is of anything is that he didn't wear his religion on his shoulder like some of the founders did.
d _religion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington_an
He didn't seem to have a problem not even attending communion mass once the local priest said that people of high station should be setting an example. I think you put to much weight into the power of the Church, just like a lot of people around here do.
We're still "just trying to get by." We always will be too busy.
You never have time unless you take time.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Myths will exist forever because people keep believing in them. Simple as that.
Minti: What's that huge shuriken in your back?! Kin: It's the instrument of my victory.
Pray the following:
God, I don't believe you exist. But if you do, reveal yourself to me so completely that I cannot deny you.
If you refuse to pray it, you are afraid that God really does exist. Which means that "something" is enough to alter your actions so as to be inconsistent with your stated belief system. I would say that is proof that God exists, or at least you believe he does.
If you do pray it, well, that is the scientific test. Let us know how it works out for you. But if your life changes for the better and you start going to church and helping others less fortunate than yourself, well, I would say it's scientific enough for me.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
can't locate Iraq on a map? What percentage can't locate the USA? The answers are in the 60s and the 20s, respectively. What percentage believes in a deity? 95?
Strangely enough, no one I know has believed that Iraq was behind 9/11. This comes from a very diverse group: Republicans, Democrats, Independents. I've never met anyone in the real world that bought into this supposed illusion.
Posted 9/6/2003 8:10 AM"
Poll: 70% believe Saddam, 9-11 link
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Nearly seven in 10 Americans believe it is likely that ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the Sept. 11 attacks, says a poll out almost two years after the terrorists' strike against this country.
Sixty-nine percent in a Washington Post poll published Saturday said they believe it is likely the Iraqi leader was personally involved in the attacks carried out by al-Qaeda. A majority of Democrats, Republicans and independents believe it's likely Saddam was involved.
The belief in the connection persists even though there has been no proof of a link between the two.
You're in the 30% minority. Good for you, but don't go thinking it didn't work on others just because it didn't work on you.
You can't take the sky from me...
He's playing off the article by spreading more myths.
:-)
It's pretty clever, actually.
The idea that faith is a belief beyond proof is a relatively recent one (in historical terms), and a reaction to the encroachment of reason and science into realms that were previously those of the church. Redefining faith to be a righteous, unwavering belief in the face of rational arguments to the contrary was a defensive reaction on the part of the church, and a fairly effective one, it seems.
Faith, in its original meaning, is loyalty, confidence, trust. "In good faith" means something done with loyalty to a cause or agreement. One has faith in one's spouse, faith in one's king, and faith in one's god, meaning you stick with them through thick and thin. Loyalty to your god was exactly the meaning of the 1st commandment - "thou shalt have no other gods before me". Testing one's faith was the same as testing one's loyalty; losing faith meant throwing one's lot in with Baal, or Osiris, or another god who might offer you a better deal, and one could certainly do this without any loss of belief in gods or even in God. One could even forsake God or all gods, without loss of belief - the test of Job was not whether he would lose belief (it's hard to lose belief when suffering from the wrath of God), but whether he would lose loyalty.
In the primitive world, belief in some god was not necessarily irrational; there was an awful lot of stuff that begged for an explanation, and precious little hard knowledge that afforded an explanation. Believing in gods as the ultimate cosmic actors was an entirely different matter than offering one's loyalty to one or another of them.
But in the modern world, the pernicious idea that faith is a belief beyond reason (and that this is somehow a good thing), is dangerously irrational and entirely without merit. Belief must be consistent with reason, or else it is insanity. It is possible to rationally believe in gods (one simply has to define god appropriately), but incredibly most of the "faithful" prefer the insanity option.
I don't see how. If you accept the rational basis of science, I really can't see how you can put a limit on applying it to religious belief. I can understand that people who have "faith" can believe they accept science, but they are (without meaning to be unpleasant) deluding themselves. Science and rationalism is about questioning everything; faith is about NOT questioning something. If they are not diametrically opposite, they are certainly close to it.
"Witches did it" is far easier to understand than "a volcano on the other side of world last year released a cloud that hampered the development of a plant in another country on which birds feed in their migration so that' why there's less of them here now".
Myths are easier to believe because they are simpler to understand. That does not make them true.
You can't take the sky from me...
http://www.newamericancentury.org/
December 12, 2002
MEMORANDUM TO: OPINION LEADERS
FROM: WILLIAM KRISTOL
Subject: Iraq - al Qaeda Connection
This morning's front page article in The Washington Post, "Report Cites Al Qaeda Deal For Iraqi Gas," should not come as a surprise. Over the past months, we have had several detailed reports of links between Iraq and al Qaeda. For example, in "The Great Terror (March 3, 2002)," Jeffrey Goldberg of the New Yorker described the relationship between Saddam Hussein's intelligence services and al-Ansar, a bin Laden-affiliated terrorist group in Northern Iraq, which a government official in today's Post says was involved in smuggling the nerve agent out of Iraq. In the current issue of Vanity Fair, David Rose reports on additional links between Baghdad and the al Qaeda network. And in October, CIA director George Tenet flatly declared in a letter to the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee that based on credible reports "Iraq has provided training to al Qaeda members in areas of poisons and gases and making conventional bombs."
What all of this means is that the president has been right in saying that the coming war to remove Saddam is part of the overall war on terrorism. Regime change in Iraq and the destruction of al Qaeda are two related fronts in one war, and both fronts should be prosecuted aggressively and simultaneously.
FTFA: The experiments do not show that denials are completely useless; if that were true, everyone would believe the myths. But the mind's bias does affect many people, especially those who want to believe the myth for their own reasons, or those who are only peripherally interested and are less likely to invest the time and effort needed to firmly grasp the facts. And since TFA wasn't enough for you, here's more of the same, from long ago: historian Thomas Bailey observed that "because the masses are notoriously short-sighted and generally cannot see danger until it is at their throats, our statesmen are forced to deceive them into an awareness of their own long-run interests. Deception of the people may in fact become increasingly necessary, unless we are willing to give our leaders in Washington a freer hand." Commenting on the same problem as a renewed crusade was being launched in 1981, Samuel Huntington made the point that "you may have to sell [intervention or other military action] in such a way as to create the misimpression that it is the Soviet Union that you are fighting. That is what the United States has done ever since the Truman Doctrine"
You can't take the sky from me...
The myth? That the Bush administration put out a story that Saddam was behind 9/11.
As far as I can tell, it never happened, except in the minds of Bush haters.
Myths persist because most people lack critical thinking skills.
That the link to TFA goes to the second page instead of the first!! It's a big conspiracy I tell ya!!
The only possible interpretation of any research whatever in the 'social sciences' is: some do, some don't
It's funny. Republican-Americans were so proud of invading Iraq back in 2003. And now they're confused... They're afraid of defending all the claims that were made back then leading up to the war, but at the same time they're also afraid of admitting maybe they fucked up.
If Dick Cheney didn't mean to imply Hussein was behind 9/11, why did he keep repeating a claim that Iraqi intelligence had met with Muhammed Atta in Prague?
Or do you think we're all ignorant in this age of the internet, and can't go back and look things up?
Bush was appointed by manipulation of a corrupt system and there ARE actual crimes that were committed which went unchallenged by the media just like they sat on every big story that made Bush look bad until 2005; except for that Dan Rather crucifixion. Sure, dismiss my opinion as some blind bias even though the messenger has no logical impact on the truth of the message (something also being promoted by Rove/GOP. Ever notice how the "Right" brings up conspiracy and never gets flack for it?)
"People believe what they want to believe and disregard the rest"
Paul Simon had it figured out decades ago...
The subconscious doesn't remember negatives (generally,) tell me something new. We've known for a long time that fake news is remembered in the long term as real news before the academics agreed (have they concluded on this one yet?)
Memories can be altered after the fact and can be altered before you sleep and save them into long term memory (although that theory is still in debate, its being used in the field already and it works.) Tell me something new.
New study? big deal; I'm just glad they get people aware of some of the basics.
Ironically, people use their huge brains not to think logically (unlike the animals) but they use it to rationalize their impulsive animal nature so they can feel smug about their "decisions." FYI: one way to counter it is to instruct somebody to THINK which actually works for a little while.
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What an impressive list - big deal.
http://www.coderoshi.com/
fight liar with liar and start counter myths...
oh, whoops, HOW to myths get started in the first place?
my proposed "myth": anyone who thinks a secular despot and absolute dictator would welcome a bunch of fundamentalists in his country is a drooling idiot.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
Well, you can call it that if it makes you feel better, but the rest of us just call that "wishful thinking".
*condescension*
1. The act of condescending; voluntary descent from one's rank or dignity in intercourse with an inferior; courtesy toward inferiors.
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/condescension
I have little doubt your faith makes you feel good inside, but then again, so does a hit to a heroin addict.
Of course, assuming TFA is valid, my denying the entire notion of your "faith" will probably re-enforce it. So you're welcome. Enjoy it in good health.
Faith also applies at times when you can't conclusively prove certain beliefs. For example, you might "take it on faith" that someone loved you enough to feed you and buy you expensive toys which you can use to connect to the web and demean people who don't think the same way you do.
The beauty of that system is that by convincing everyone to be an Atheist, you actually make it true :-).
- "History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men" -- Blue Oyster Cult, 'Godzilla'
I was under the impression that there were other ideas around, like that a universe may have existed before, experienced a "big crunch" and then another big bang?
Or that, in any case, one could certainly argue that something caused the Big Bang, and that thing may have its own cause, and so on.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
According to Wikipedia, Newton's Law is listed under Laws, and is an equation, which would tend to make it a theory. I really don't see the distinction you're drawing here.
I'm going to have to go with Stephen Hawking, and not you:
Why does this not apply to a "law"? Why would it bother you if it does?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
No matter how sincere, any discussion to bust a myth always degenerates into talking about Kari Byron's butt.
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
Creationists always assume the universe was created. Whose to say that time began at any point. The universe makes much more sense if we take the element of time out. Also, just because something is easier for you to swallow doesn't make it so. That's a matter of personal choice at that point and isn't really based on logic or science. If there are multiple theories that are possible we take the one that has the most evidence to support it, not the one that makes us feel warm and fuzzy inside. Also, the difference between faith and belief exists. One can have faith in god, but one does not have faith in science. Faith is contrary to the notion of science. Science is supported by repeatable experiments. That isn't faith. It's belief.
Read my short stories - You won't regret it.
http://www.scl.cc/home.php
Science is an ontological process. Neoplatonic philosophy had a different ontological process. Quakerism has yet another ontological process. None of these process can work without a guiding philosophy beyond the process itself. In short, since theory is never functionally dependant on data (even when factoring in process), two people can always look at the same data and see different reasons why.
Hence science *never* tells us why something works. We can only create theories which are falsifiable.
And ancient philosophies have a way of coming back to haunt us. "Fire is the prima materia" (paraphrased from Heraclitus) is simply a cruder version of "E = mc^2" (or at least so says Heisenberg in "Physics and Philosophy").
The people who suggest (like Hitler but unlike Heisenberg, Einstein, and others) that science will outmode religion have yet to come up with a convincing explenation why so many scientists are deeply religious. More likely religion is a fundamental part of the human condition, not a mere construct of faith but a way of describing and explaining certain experiences beyond what normal language is able to convey. I do not believe that there is "one" true religion as the Christians believe, or even one perfect religion as the Muslims do. Instead, I believe that every religion is a combination of that spark of human experience (perhaps the peak experiences A. Maslow wrote about are a subset), fleshed out by culture and tradition until it forms a language (and political structure, and the like). As I am more interested in the language.
My religion is that of the scholar in search of the distant unifying principle behind the earliest Indian religious writing, and related traditions from Europe (Celtic, Greek, Norse, Old English). My practices are Norse pagan for the most part.
When we devote ourselves to logic, we ignore the fact that our brains are not wired to be strictly logical. Instead our brains are generally image-oriented and one cannot conceive of a negative without imagining its opposite, so one must understand that words like "no" or "not" tie us to the images that we seek to distance ourselves from. True mastery over ourselves requires mastery over logic, but also an ability to move beyond it to build a more powerful image of the universe within our minds.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Then again the majority of people in the USA who call themselves Christians would make Jesus puke. So these irrational war mongering jerks are opposed on slashdot, but that's not anti-Christian, that's anti-irrationals.
You can't take the sky from me...
Might be a nice catch.
Still, selecting was not the right thing to do.
If, the law was clear, it should have been the first decision. Minor issue really. Either one court hosed up, or both of them did.
Either way, we still don't know who won, only who was selected, not elected.
Blogging because I can...
For example, a large number of non-Republicans were informed of wrong and hurtful things, mostly rumors about a fixed election. that's why the country was together on 9/12, and couldn't be further apart, now.
:)
:>
In particular:
"It's an illegal war"; no, actually- the first half of the war ended in ceasefire, called in by the UN secretary general, and Bush Senior relented. During the cessation of operations, the largest amount of it, the Clinton Administration, Clinton ignored the 492 times SAM sites attempted to shoot down our planes. Schwartzkopf laments that it was his own idea to allow helicopters to be flown in Iraq, because Saddam wanted them to strafe and kill the civilians he didn't like. Upon the _first_ launch of a missile, it was legal to re-open the war. But Clinton had a 'don't rock the boat' term.
"9/11 was an inside job"/"Fire doesn't melt steel!" This concept suggested that an entire crew of properly-trained individuals snuck in, under the cover of darkness when *no one* was in the building (of as many as 50,000 people), used concrete saws, mounted the explosives and waited for the show. Ever watch one of these on The Discovery Channel? It takes _weeks_ to set up. Ignoring for the removal of useful things, tearing down the concrete-n-whatever to get to the right places to set the charges, this isn't something done by distraction. This is no simple job- ever see the ACRE PER FLOOR involved in EACH tower? It's just a stretch, but not completely impossible. And yea, Rosie O'Donnell actually claimed it must be true because "fire doesn't melt steel". This, folks is blind hatred.
"George Bush sat still for 22 minutes as the second plane hit" is another one; he was at a 'dog-n-pony' with a bunch of school kids...a scheduled thing a president does when he's not at war. The agents whisper into his ear, but he sits still. Why? History. No one today seems to remember that in 1947-48, a B-25 flying through fog smacked RIGHT INTO the Empire State Building. One can be an accident...there's no reason to scare the kids. And exactly what would he do, anyway? Strip to the waist, put on an ammo belt and play Rambo? It just doesn't work like that. With a similar whisper he can have a city nuked, respond to a terrorist event, or just get a piece of obscure information found for him...he has an entire section of the government dedicated to learning what happened, and offering responses.
The key with all of these ideas is hate. Enough people thought the election was rigged, because their news provider was certain Bush would lose. And since most people get 2-3 minutes of news each day, and it's usually one headline, this caused some anger. This, unlike the decline of Western Values, the melting of glaciers, Global Warming, and really bad music, is not George's fault.
But these ideas 'sold' so well because of these people; uninformed people. People who can't find America on a map, but can recall certain episodes of Desperate Housewives from memory. Unions used to drive the rank-and-file the same way. In a union dispute, in the hall with all the members there, they'd plant four people in the corners of the crowd. And at a certain point, they would, one by one, cheer "Yeah, let's strike" or "Those dirty bastards!" or whatever the script called for. Encircled by proponents, the crowd assumed this is the right thing, and that action was voted in. It's just human behaviour. (And they say P.T. Barnham left nothing behind.)
There's been a wildfire of propaganda this go-around. Know how to spot it? Ask someone what specific crime [Ashcroft|Donald Rumsfeld|Carl Rove|Tom Delay] was accused of: "What did he actually do?" They'll respond with disgust, with lines all the broadcast media dinosaurs have programmed them with, but can't recall. They'll also use the term "Neo-Conservative" even though no such people exist...I know, I've been a Conservative for 30 years. The Republicans are less Conservative than they used to be, but the
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
Nice post, but your words contradict themselves here: "Personally, I stick to category 1 and am a devout atheist."
:) That's consistent with having only faith in assumptions in the "1" category.
You can't possibly prove or observe the non-existence of all possible deities. That's a category 3 assumption! Unless you can show we are all there is, which can't physically be done, as we could always be part of a bigger deity's plan in some form, or even co-existing with entities that fit the definition of deities.
This is atheism's great logical problem. You say its up to believers to prove each of their individual deities. Since they can't, you go off and claim none exists. Uh... But absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. The positive assumption that "no gods exist" is itself exactly as unprovable as the assumption that any one or any set of deities does.
You could be a wishy-washy agnostic
Until then, you have to at least assume one thing - that it matters what you believe! Or, put another way, you have to assume that there is truth or meaning in anything, or how could you have even made your post?
That's the real reason why faith in G-d won't die, and its the reason why birth rates in majority atheist countries typically fall through the floor. Atheism's core assumption is just as much of an assumption as anything in Scientology, to be blunt. And atheism, unlike most other ways of looking at the world, offers no compelling reason to exist at all!
-Ben
Big surprise. Modded down (-1, Logical, Threatening to liberal mythology)
You can't take the sky from me...
I have little doubt your faith makes you feel good inside, but then again, so does a hit to a heroin addict. This comment is hardly insightful.
The author either deliberately, (or perhaps just foolishly), is avoiding the whole point of the original article being linked to.
I am an atheist myself, so I can empathise with the distasteful nature of coming across a post by a religious believer trying to argue for his faith, but that doesn't mean that in some cases there might be a valid argument presented.
The poster was merely pointing out (quite rightly), that "belief" is not a logical process (almost the same point the article makes), so to come back with "that's just wishful thinking" is both rude and stupid IMO. The entire point of what we are discussing here is that what people believe emerges from a mixture of logical analysis and emotionally/subjectively based beliefs and patterns of thought. It can be argued that the evidence so far actually supports the notion that logic in fact has the smaller role to play in determining what we see, what we believe, and what we know as human animals.
I too, was a bit turned off by the "religiousy" nature of some of the remarks, but how about we leave our hatred of religion at home and try to discern the actual argument being made? Ironically, responding to that argument is the logical thing to do, not having an emotional reaction to the religious guy.
I trained some PsyOp who were close to 'retirement'. Guess where they go for a great job (in addition to their nice retirement plans they get) BEFORE they turn 40 years old? You guessed it, they get high paying jobs as consultants for ROVE and his team! Guess what they thought of democrats? Yup, the dems are lucky to hire any of them; that is, if they are even trying (yet.)
These mind games are known well enough to have been in use and being perfected many years ahead of published academic studies, because they simply try and see what works and if it works a little they use it and refine it. They are not interested in why or even how it works, its a duct tape mentality of applied psychology.
Those guys thought of humans like programmable machines and were totally desensitized about their assignments; ironically, they also were trained to be arrogant enough to think they were immune from being impacted by any of it (which anybody in psychology can tell you is impossible.)
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It is the fault of a person who is vulnerable to bullets.
I normally don't ever bother to read a story that requires you to register, but this one sounded interesting. What a waste of time. So basically, most people are stupid, biased and have narrow world views and distorted POVs? Wow. Thanks. I never knew that until today.
Religion is not the sole purveyor of philosophy. But theistic religions wed behavioral philosophy with the existence of a supreme being who will control your afterlife according to how you act on earth. And how much you believe in the existence of a "god". So, contrary to what religions would like you to believe, a person can still be a "good" or enlightened person and not believe in a Supreme being.
Republican leadership = Idiocracy
or 'we only believe what we see". There is an interesting idea of "God" "Allah" supreme being, Force, etc, existing in a different time space continuum. As if two dimensional creatures encountered a ball passing through their world. they would see only a dot, then an expanding then receding circle, then nothing.
Republican leadership = Idiocracy
"People will believe a lie because they want to believe it's true, or because they are afraid it might be true."
Religion was the first political party in any human civilization. ... communism/capitalism, plutocracy/oligarchy ... ... all are modern religions/politics with droll
... which causes a person to create a personalized belief/faith .... This
Politics today
christianity/islam
institutional architecture for exploiting the public interest and
consolidating wealth for the approved few hellishly evil minions.
I agree, persistent myth is due to plausible lies from believable
criminals seeking to disadvantage reasonable debate/discussion with
a personally advantageous dogma [AKA: Political Platform (PP)].
Religion/Mythology, PP, lies, crime is like the M$ platform, the
blue-screen of death (or genocide) is never their fault or problem.
Many (maybe majority) people will always believe their naturally
hallucinatory mind, rather than use basic reasoning skills to make
sensible decisions about the welfare of the public or themselves.
There are far to many people with adelophobia (fear of the unknown
or nothing) not paranoia, xenophobia, or another tag-phobia, but
extreme irrational fear of things beyond their knowledge, understanding,
control
system in a cosmic mythological parental figure for protection and
guidance in the great and dangerous (proverbial) valley of unknowns
in foreigners/places, science, technology, medicine, space
is the difference for many people between functional and dysfunctional.
It is the main reason, I think, that there must be species evolution in
progress. Some folks are fascinated and curious about the unknown and
seek new knowledge and experience with reasonable caution (not crippling
fear). My label is Homo-Sapient-Prescient (HSP), because they look to
discover and build a better future for humanity.
The Homo-Sapien-Sapient (HSS) holds humanities past as proof of the
validity and value of their righteous dogma for others to follow.
I suspect, no proof, that people of mixed inter-racial genetics
are more likely to be HSP. Also, that inter-breeding will eventually
drive the HSS to extinction by interspecies absorption.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
Before the downmods begin, I am not pitching flamebait. Just looking at death in the name of god/religion. By far, with numbers that border on mind boggling, I find it AMAZING that far, far more millions of people have been killed in the name of Christ (scratch the surface with Crusades, Conquistadors, Salem Witches) than have been killed in the name of Satan. Weird that a few serial killers claim to kill in the name of Satan, yet the Catholic Church has murdered many, many in the name of Jesus. How is it that killing someone, condemning them to death in the name of "our lord Jesus" ever happened in church history? How does that jibe?? And then throw in the number of people killed lately in the name of Allah and Muhammad. People sure are strange...
Sig Registration Form 34c_766(a) submitted to Ministry of Signature Management. Approval pending.
...to promote an incompatible belief.
This is also how to train animals - instead of punishing the "wrong" behaviour, you reward the "right" behaviour. If there is no "right" behaviour, just pick one that is incompatible with the "wrong" behaviour, and reward that. The similarity between human and animal behaviour is not surprising, since this is an animal aspect of our intelligence.
Interesting. But I would like to know why "bad" language persists. LOL I mean, why is it that certain words are passed down for generations as being foul language? If everyone stopped caring and teaching that certain words are "bad," then it would be one less thing to smack kids about, right?? (hehe)
A lie will circle the earth twice, while the truth is still putting its shoes on.
Myth = a lie more or less especially if it is spun for an agenda.
Boobs and those with and agenda or an axe to grind are happy to perpetuate their "myths"
Its not the years, its the mileage
Did not specifically target religions because they were atheist. They targeted anyone who could possibly have been a rival.
Deleted
"Like the common misperception that we won the Alamo"
That's not common, why lie?
"Except that Gore would have won Florida had the panhandle closed the polls at the same time as the rest of Florida"
You're really that stupid? Go look into WHY that happened, and you'll realize not only was it ok, it was REQUIRED. God you people and your moronic talking points.
"as well as police barricades not been used to keep blacks away from the polls."
That never happened you fucking liar.
I hate you disgusting political trolls so much, you poison political discourse by furthering myths just like the article says because you're too fucking stupid to look up what actually happened.
Nothing you said was true, how fucking sad are you that you have to lie about shit like this to convince yourself you're right?
Whoops. Should have hit preview.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I find it highly amusing that now that word has leaked that General Petraeus is going to report the military surge is working and will report it that way, the Democrats are scrambling and now calling the report "The Bush Report", as if it came from Bush himself.
They're using the tactics they've long used, which is "if you say it enough, it becomes true".
Well, not this time. Their fervent hope that the military would fail in Iraq isn't happening. They've begun to realize unless they get those troops pulled out of Iraq, they're screwed in the next election because they're all on record they opposed the war.
Pretty damn sick, that they'd rather pull out of Iraq like the did in Vietnam. Typical, but sick.
The realms of Scientific Inquiry and Belief in the Supernatural (AKA Religion) are orthogonal ... Religion is junk for explanations of HOW the physical world works, and Science is crap at explaining WHY we are all here on Earth. Horses for courses, gentlemen ... there IS no Grand Unified Theory of Everything, in either system.
Hmmm. Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
lottameez recommends an article in the Washington Post about recent research into the persistence of myths. In short: once a myth has been put out there (e.g., "Global Warming is natural; it is caused by man"), denying it can paradoxically reinforce its staying power. Ignoring it doesn't work either -- a claim that is unchallenged gains the ring of truth. Over time, "negation tags" fall out of memory: "Global Warming is not natural; it not is caused by man"
..|..
Interesting, so to combat the "Global Warming is all our fault crowd, I should say "The Earth has no average or ideal temperature, the climate is in flux, the world has been warming and freezing and freezing and warming long before man, if you look at charts of CO2 levels and charts the average temp. around the global there is no correlation."
If the world is getting hotter, it is a natural change from a natural result and we all know "Nature is oh so grand!" or was that "Nature is not so grand!".
Respect the Constitution