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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?
or such is the Myth they are trying to manipulate.
Oh come off it. Slashdot dupes are an urban myth!
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
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!"
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.
SADDAM PLOTTED 911!!
???
Nah. he didn't, but we both just re-inforced it anyway dude.
Jeebus!
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
And BTW, no on ever believed that Saddam plotted 9/11
You say that, but polls have shown that over 50% of Americans think he was connected to Al Qaeda. I don't know what fraction think he was involved in 9/11, but I bet it's far higher than 0%.
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.
With the exception of the $25k, the same might be said for the USA aswell. Oh, I guess the "no one ever believed that the USA plotted 9/11" needs an exception too.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
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.
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
There, fixed that for you. Now it makes perfect sense!
America, Home of the Brave.
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."
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.
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 keep hearing that somebody's out there claiming Saddam planned 9/11 - who is saying this? I've never heard it anywhere.
My blog
"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."
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.
I've spent some time living in the US, but I'm originally from the UK. The American people, in general, are friendly, warm, and very trusting. The American government, on the other hand, is pretty venal and corrupt. I think these two factors contribute to the growth of conspiracy theories; the populace have lost trust in their government and have sought out alternate authorities to put their trust in.
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
He was connected, my doltish friends. Why do you think we've lost so many of Americas best, and so much of our national treasure?
There are a million analogies, find your own, but the rotten apple is as good as any. When you have an entire region filled with tyrants, and the worst tyrant among them sits in the most strategic crossroads in the middle of all the rest, he is directly connected to the violence that erupts from the oppressed peoples all around.
You, sitting in your comfy office, simply cannot hope for your kids to be safe while the Middle east is the raging cesspool of violence it has become all these years. Something has to be done, and Iraq is the strategic center of gravity.
Do rise above your personal hatred for GW and think a little in geostrategic terms.
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 ----
The problem is that theses myths are started for political purposes.
It is the democrates that keep spreading that Saddam was with 9/11, the majority of people who say this is so in surveys are not Republicans.
It is the major of Democrats that believe that Bush provided some help in the 9/11 sites and something that is spread by mainstream progressive web sites.
It is the progressive that keep spreading that Bush = Hitler.
It is not the majority of the population that believe them and keep spreading them it is all political party related, so in some way it is seeking but alternate authorities but only in the manner of them being of the liberal bent.
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.
Bush isn't quite foolish enough to try to make a direct relationship between the two, but he and his political allies have done everything they can to blur the line between the two. I saw a clip just the other week of a Republican politician tearfully justifying the continued occupation of Iraq by referring to the events of 9/11. Either he thought there was a relationship, or was hoping that no-one would notice what he was doing.
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.
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
Microsoft even tried to buy the ISO and OOXML was so bad that they still didn't ratify it.
Deleted
...given the fact that we only use ten percent of our brains. :)
Step into a huge movement. Don't Tread In Me.
Bah, there aren't any conspiracy theories... Freemasons don't rule the world...
...and Bush is not an idiot.
(wait, didn't I just read about negations being omitted from memory in spreading the prevalence of a myth? Excellent...)
This sig intentionally left justified.
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."
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.
I disagree with many of the claims global warming scientists and their alarmist journalist/celebrity buddies are making. My disagreement is based on their lack of evidence (scientific evidence) of their claims. I am not at all religious. I also happen to think that the theory of evolution is a reasonable and consistent explanation of the available scientific evidence. Sorry to bust out of your pigeon hole.
Why do you think we've lost so many of Americas best, and so much of our national treasure?
:)
We didn't "lose" anything. It's not like "whoops, where's America's best?" We killed them. You only get to say "lose" when something or someone becomes missing beyond your control. We knew we were sending kids to kill and die, and we did it anyway, on purpose. Some would claim that it was for a good reason, but please don't act like it was a tragic accident.
the worst tyrant among them sits in the most strategic crossroads in the middle of all the rest, he is directly connected to the violence that erupts from the oppressed peoples all around.
Whew! Good thing all the violence from "the oppressed peoples all around" is a thing of the past, now that we've gotten rid of that tyrant.
You, sitting in your comfy office, simply cannot hope for your kids to be safe
1) I don't have any kids, but I do hope for other people's kids to be safe. Including those living in the middle east.
2) Are you a soldier in Iraq? If not, please drop the "you, sitting in your comfy office" angle, as it's pathetically hypocritical.
Do rise above your personal hatred for GW and think a little in geostrategic terms.
Why would I bother with that when you've clearly got it worked out so perfectly already?
You must live in a box, because you seem to think that everyone else does as well. The next time you're repositioning your refrigerator bungalow so the "this end up" points north, you might want to consider the possibility that not everyone who believes issue A also believes issue B. Boxing people into stereotypes limits your ability to argue effectively, as it makes it appear that you are unable to effectively argue issue A, so you bring up B to change the subject.
- Yes, I am posting at a -1, and no I will not use a proxy to bypass my circumstances.
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.
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
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!
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!
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
I guess I should have used more smilies.
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
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!
But seriously...where are all these people that supposedly believe these myths.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
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
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.
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...
Hiding out with the people that admit they voted for George Bush.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
"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."
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.)
...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...
You can't take the sky from me...
So basically, religion is the problem AND the solution? Because I'm pretty sure it's killed more people than most causes, yet gives us "ethical principles" you espouse, presumably based on religion, due to your contradiction of the GPP.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
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.
...more important still: Why do conservatives continue to fight against being made to behave like a proper Boy Scout? Leave the land the way you found it. Don't destroy what isn't yours. These are actually very (social) conservative ideas.
The science surrounding tree hugger rhetoric should really be quite irrelevant.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
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.
*bing* (lightbulb flash).
:)
Well trolled. You had me up until you countered a clear example with "petty partisan politics".
With all the trolls running around out there, I'm beginning to wonder if there's a single serious person actually supporting Bush anymore
Last post!
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.
well,
Actually it's not partisan politics. It's partisan politics if the democrats accuse bush of saying exactly that, which I haven't seen. The point the post you replied to was making and you completely chose to ignore calling it "all partisan politics", had nothing to do with partisan politics at all, but rather the basic point the OP made.
If I talk about bob and in the same breath mention 9/11, if that sentence comes from somebody in a position of knowledge or power, enough times, everything between bob and 9/11 blends, and misforms, and becomes bob caused 9/11
This is the beginning of Myths. nothing partisan about it. For a completely unpolitical thing. Bob saw Lisa at the bar last night (Bob saw her from across the room, but the phrasing is key and it's perfectly accurate), will eventually become Bob went out with Lisa, to Bob and Lisa are a couple, to Bob had sex with Lisa. Now all Bob did was see her from across the room, and now both their names are attached to this stigma.
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?
If I talk about bob and in the same breath mention 9/11, if that sentence comes from somebody in a position of knowledge or power, enough times, everything between bob and 9/11 blends, and misforms, and becomes bob caused 9/11
Only if the audience is composed solely of idiots. And here, the idiots don't vote.
You just don't hang out in that crowd. They're out there; they're active on other forums, and they even pop up here on Slashdot sometimes. They're not nearly as active as they were 3-4 years ago or so, because they've been so discredited, and GWB has lost so much support.
I had a coworker back then who regularly got into (sometimes loud) arguments at work about that stuff: the terrorists are all in Iraq (this was before we invaded), "it's better to fight them there than in our own streets", etc. He wasn't too smart, though: he was only a contractor, and when his contract ran out, our team (all permanent employees) got together and our manager asked if we wanted his contract renewed, and we said "NO!!". Moral of the story: don't piss off your coworkers with political arguments. Agreeing with them is fine, because then they want to keep you around (people like to be around people who agree with them); if you disagree, keep your mouth shut.
are you completely ignoring the fact that dispite the fact that nobody in the administration said that Saddam caused 9/11, that there is still a belief among many people that he was in fact the cause? Also it doesn't have to be composed solely of idiots, idiots can repeat what they thought they heard, and repeat it ad nauseum eventually non-idiots will hear that myth. or recieve it in the form of email and forward it to 50 of their friends, who send it to 50 of their friends, and soon we have people wondering where this whole thing came from.
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...
You cite a quote from Bush AFTER we invaded! How about posting under your login, coward?
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
The very first sale of the Iraq War was centered around a link to Al-Qaeda. From a link shamelessly ripped from an earlier post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A32862-20 03Sep5?language=printer
Iraq was first sold as fighting Al-Qaeda. Then it was sold as fighting bad people with WMDs. Finally, it was sold as a fight against bad people. If you would have paid attention to his speeches, you would have notied that.
And please don't be a sophist and argue that Iraq colluding with Al-Qaeda isn't the same as Iraq being behind 9-11. At that time, it was exactly the same thing. We were ready to pound anybody who just vaguely resembled Al-Qaeda.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
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...
What you have demonstrated is compartmentalization. You'll happily accept some things from science, but other things (for whatever reason; self-interest, political allegiances, pseudo-skepticism, whatever) you will reject.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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?
That's because there is no evidence. But it shouldn't stop you from using common sense. I mean, we chug out a lot of stuff in the atmosphere that may or may not cause global warming and cancer in babies. We do not precicely know what will happen, but we can use common sense and come to the conclusion that huge amounts of stuff in the atmosphere will do something. It may be cooling down the planet for all I care, but still I'm against polluting, since we cannot be sure what exactly will happen.
I mean, I could mix up some nasty stuff that has never been injected into a human, and inject it into you. It not dangerous, right? It has never harmed a human before... It could give you superpowers or kill you, we do not know. But there are no evidence to either side, so let's do it!
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.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
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!
Stalin was an Atheist, but he didn't do evil deeds because he was an Atheist. He did so because his ideology was basically like a religion:
Basically, Atheism was incidental to him. It was not why he did evil things. Just like him drinking water wasn't what made him to evil things.
Clever signature text goes here.
s/questions/questioned
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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.
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...
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
Its good to hear that you are concerned for the kids in the middle east. Now, ask some honest questions, and you will come to see why the President of the United States (Wm. Jefferson Clinton) and the Congress of the United States made it the policy of the United States that the Government of Iraq (Sadaam Hussein) must be removed.
Ask a few more honest questions, and you will see why the Congress of the United States, Hillary Clinton included, voted to go to war, though they were too cowardly to declare war. It was not and could never be about nuclear weapons or biohazards. If those were an excuse to go to war, we'd have attacked India, Pakistan, N. Korea, Iran, and Israel.
We did not go into the Civil War over "Union", we did not go into Gulf War I about the price of oil, and we did not go into Panama to protect a canal.
All of these are about these few words: All men are created equal, they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, among these are life liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
We can't achieve that for everyone, at any time. But if we are not chasing that, we are not what we claim. That is why we go to war, it is the only reason for which we ever go to war.
And, it is working in Iraq better than expected.
I see, because I disagree with you, I must not have thought it all through, or am somehow denying evidence that is, at least to you, quite clear and conclusive.
Two honest people can look at the same evidence and come to different, and quite genuine, conclusions. Your clear desire for my opinions to be disingenuous does not make them so.
I did not express my opinions in any great detail, and I fear you are guilty of attributing to me positions I do not hold.
Big surprise. Modded down (-1, Logical, Threatening to liberal mythology)
You can't take the sky from me...
It has nothing to do with honesty. It has everything to do with unevenly applying a set of methodological principles. I don't doubt your honesty in this regard (though there are a few deniers who I do think are shameless liars and shills).
It is the standard line of argument of the pseudo-scientist and the pseudo-skeptic to try to make an equivalency between their claims (or skepticism) and that of science. This starts off with apologetics like "two honest people can look at the same data and come to two different, equal conclusions".
Surely it must bother you that you essentially are using the same basic line of attack used by those opposing evolutionary biology.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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.)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
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.
"Surely it must bother you that you essentially are using the same basic line of attack used by those opposing evolutionary biology."
I could care less. I have pointed out to you, as an observation of fact, that two people can look at the same data and arrive at different conclusions. It is perfectly possible that those two people believe they have fairly weighed all of the evidence and come to an unbiased and fair conclusion. This is a possibility that you should allow for when encountering those who disagree with you.
You have continued to impugn my motivation and intellectual honesty. And yes, claiming that I am evaluating one claim with one set of standards, and another claim with an entirely different set of standards *is* tantamount to challenging my intellectual honesty. You appear to suffer from the delusion that those who disagree with you are misdirected and deluded. I wish I possessed such confidence in my conclusions, but I am a bit more humble.
To address your claims on my faulty methodology. I am equally skeptical of all scientific claims - probably more skeptical than most. I see evolution as nothing more than a collection of hypothesis that best explain the fossil and more recent genetic evidence. The observations are incomplete, and some of the hypothesis involve guesswork, but I see no more plausible competing explanations. I am not convinced that evolution is "true", or a "fact", but that it is merely the most successful model of observed reality in this particular realm of observation.
The global warming hypothesis makes many fewer verifiable claims. I would say that the claim "Rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations have caused an increase in global average temperature" is not supported by the evidence. I am not even sure that "global average" temperature is a meaningful concept. Even if it is, and the measurements of it are proper and correct, and the various adjustments and weighting used to arrive at a single "temperature" for planet earth are correct, there is no scientifically valid proof that CO2 is causing the rise. There are many other plausible explanations for the temperature rise. There are many plausible arguments against the validity of the measurement of a global average temperature. These alternative explanations are MUCH more plausible than "God made dinosaur fossils to fool us". They are much more plausible than the argument "Things that are too complicated could not possibly have arisen through natural processes".
The article says that the negatives are less likely to stick in memory than the subjects. So for many people "... Saddam Hussein ... 11 September ..." is what they will ultimately remember. Coincidence or clever speech writing?
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)
Hundreds of millions of years ago the atmosphere had a lot more carbon in it than it does now. The world was also a lot hotter than it is now, largely because of it. Over time this carbon was taken out of the atmosphere, primarily by plants. We've basically put most of it back in within a 100 years or so. What the fuck do you think is going to happen?
Of course the science of climate change (despite the popular misnomer "global warming") neither requires, nor suggests that Earth's atmosphere will change evenly or the entire world will even warm. In fact, it's suggested (convincingly so, to anyone even remotely knowledgeable about the topic) that some parts of the world would cool and even experience a new ice age.
How about you do all of us a favor and try out this little experiment at home. Steal your mom's car keys, go out to her garage, close all the doors and turn on the car to experience first-hand the effects of releasing excessive amounts of carbon into a closed system that is incapable of processing it in a timely fashion.
I will most certainly impugn both your intelligence and your intellectual honesty. You clearly possess neither in any significant quantity. If you do in fact not believe in "god" that only proves that being an atheist does not preclude one from being a delusional idiot, it's just a good start.
The Farewell Tour II
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
"Hundreds of millions of years ago the atmosphere had a lot more carbon in it than it does now. The world was also a lot hotter than it is now, largely because of it."
The data clearly indicates that atmospheric CO2 concentrations are strongly correlated with global temperature. Many plausible explanations have been put forth as to why temperature increases would cause increases in CO2. There are also plausible explanations as to how CO2 would cause the temperature increase on its own. I don't know that either side has proven its case. The fact that temperature increases actually precede CO2 increases makes me think that things are a bit more complicated than Mr. Gore would have us believe.
"Of course the science of climate change (despite the popular misnomer "global warming") neither requires, nor suggests that Earth's atmosphere will change evenly or the entire world will even warm. In fact, it's suggested (convincingly so, to anyone even remotely knowledgeable about the topic) that some parts of the world would cool and even experience a new ice age."
Yes yes, speculation about the disruption of the thermohaline circulation causing an new ice age in Europe. Pardon me, I should call it "Global catastrophe" instead. I also seem to recall a severe hurricane season being predicted in 2006.
"Steal your mom's car keys, go out to her garage, close all the doors and turn on the car to experience first-hand the effects of releasing excessive amounts of carbon into a closed system that is incapable of processing it in a timely fashion."
I fail to see what Carbon Monoxide poisoning has to do with CO2 and the greenhouse effect.
"I will most certainly impugn both your intelligence and your intellectual honesty. You clearly possess neither in any significant quantity. If you do in fact not believe in "god" that only proves that being an atheist does not preclude one from being a delusional idiot, it's just a good start."
I see you have to resort to name calling - a stunning gambit for the moral high ground. Surely other readers will be convinced that you have proven your point. "I am right, he is stupid! Nya!" Really, even the proponents of Intelligent Design can do better than that.
You're an invincibly ignorant moron. That's basically the end of the argument right there. Just because you can't be convinced when you're wrong doesn't make you right. It makes you an idiot. I'll leave the "moral" high ground to you religious types, it isn't worth anything in the real world.
The Farewell Tour II
To continue with standing the silly societal cliches on their head, I have a close relative who happens to be both a devout conservative Mormon and a climate scientist with decades of satellite studies under his belt. You bet anthropogenic global warming is real to him, even if it isn't to many in his social and religious circles. At this point his studies include studying some of the radical changes going on in the atmosphere that are suggestive of global cooling in the upper atmosphere. Hint: the heat's being trapped lower down.
With perspectives like this, skepticism on global warming is only for idealogues and businessmen whose pet projects are at odds with doing something about it, in my view. At this point, with things I've read phrases like "lack of scientific evidence" like a sick, sad joke.
There's no 'scientifically valid proof' for anything. We have explanations for how things work and we stick with them because they prove to be useful to us. If we figure out something isn't helpful anymore in some situation, it means our understanding isn't totally correct and so we come up with a new explanation that accommodates these facts.
A correlation is not necessarily evidence- but a correlation, combined with a good explanation that can be falsified, but hasn't been, is a good theory, and it's the closest we'll ever get to proof. You can never _prove_ the flying spaghetti monster isn't really causing global warming. So saying 'you can't prove that' is always a bogus argument and, sorry but that is the evolution deniers argument when it comes down to it.
When you look at everything that _might_ be causing global warming, it's easy to pick off the stuff that is much less likely to be contributing much because it the stuff that isn't correlated at all. Once you start to see what's left standing, you see the greenhouse gas theory very much still there. After all:
A. We're measuring historically high levels of greenhouse gasses at a time when we're seeing historically high tempuratures, and it seems like the more that's in the atmosphere, the hotter it gets.
B. We know experimentally, on a smaller scale of course, that greenhouse gasses trap heat and raise temperatures.
What about that says we SHOULDN'T be concerned about CO2 in regards to global warming? What is the alternative theory? Don't just say it's possible that there is another explanation. It's ALWAYS possible. Why is the bit about 'many plausible arguments' always one vague sentence tucked away somewhere? People have been investigating alternative explanations for decades. People have been investigating various ways to measure temperatures all over the world for decades.
What falsifiable claims are you in need of here? The theory says that if we add more CO2 to the atmosphere, it's likely to be hotter. We have been for decades, and it has been getting hotter. The theory says that if we dramatically reduce our emissions of greenhouse gasses, then global temperatures would stabilize, all else being equal. Sounds like a fine experiment.
If you want people to listen to you about global warming, the way it works is that it's up to you to say WHY the CO2 argument isn't sufficient. Saying there is a lack of evidence is lazy and also not true, as is saying the theory doesn't make verifiable claims when any 6th grader could tell you what the claim is. Furthermore HARD to verify != IMPOSSIBLE to verify (not even close). The earth is a very complex system, this is true, and you can't do any kind of global controlled experiment, but wouldn't that be the case REGARDLESS of what your theory was on global warming???
Your contractor was right. Though Saddam's connection to Al Qaeda was limited, there are currently Al Qaeda in Iraq elements that have openly threatened the U.S. In effect, if we don't defeat them in Iraq they become potential attackers here. If you continue to run off those who disagree with you world view, simply because you can't handle differing opinions, how are you ever going to realize when you're wrong? Surrounding yourself with "yes men" is potentially hazardous to your intelligence. Do you really believe that Al Qaeda is not currently operating in Iraq?
- Yes, I am posting at a -1, and no I will not use a proxy to bypass my circumstances.
Did not specifically target religions because they were atheist. They targeted anyone who could possibly have been a rival.
Deleted
Whoops. Should have hit preview.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
There are hawks who insist that Saddam Hussein had a relationship with Al Qaeda.
Stephen Hayes argued passionately about it during the Aug 24th episode of Real Time with Bill Maher.
Maybe they're thinking of the Bush administration's claims about a link (Condi Rice said that Iraq was connected to what happened on 9/11), even Bill O'Reilly tried to spin the 9/11 Commission's report and say there was a link.
"CURRRENTLY" in Iraq. Saddam Hussein did not want them in Iraq, they posed a threat to his secular dictatorship.
Al Qaeda is a very small minority in Iraq. >80% of the insurgency is Sunni Arabs, and the Shiites like the Sadr movement make up most of the rest. Something like 7% of the insurgents are allegedly "in league" with Al Qaeda, lke Zarqawi's miniscule group, and I doubt they have Bin Laden's phone number. If the US left, the Sunni Arabs would wipe out the Al Qaeda element, who they despise. The Shiites also hate Al Qaeda even more.
First, the other responder already shot down your blatantly wrong assertions. Who said anything about Al Qaeda's current status in Iraq? That's irrelevant. There was no Al Qaeda in Iraq before we invaded. In effect, WE are responsible for the terrorism there, as Saddam was quite effective in keeping it out before.
Secondly, this all happened at a workplace. We were there to get work done, he was there to rant on and on about how correct Bush was about everything, and how wonderful Christianity is (in a team filled with agnostics and Hindus). We didn't have political discussions before he came in and interjected them. Productivity went up after they showed him the door.
Interesting how you call people who disagree with you "yes men". It appears that you're the true "yes man". In fact, in your blatant dodging of the discussion at hand, and bringing up true, but irrelevant assertions, you seem like the lawyerly (dishonest) type, attempting to distract people and prove points with false logic.
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.
Erm....
Despite what the Goddites might be telling you, science isn't a religion. It's perfectly reasonable, and actually more or less required for the health of the discipline, to look at the proof behind scientific assertions and make your own judgements.
It's been a long time.
Actually, you're not as enlightened as you think. The people claiming that this and that don't exist are the people with a stake in claiming it doesn't exist. Most Goddites probably don't give two shits about global warming, and will probably accept the often stated theory that we're causing it and it exists. Large industrial interests, on the other hand, don't care much about evolution, but they'll fight Global Warming to the death, long after it's become unfashionable to do so.
It's been a long time.
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!".
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