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Santorum Calls Democrats 'Anti-Science'
ndogg writes with news that Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum has counterattacked those critical of conservative views on science, saying that they're 'anti-science' themselves. From a CBS report:
"In his remarks Monday, Santorum went beyond his usual discussion of the importance of increasing domestic energy production to deliver a blistering attack on environmental activists. He said global warming claims are based on 'phony studies,' and that climate change science is little more than 'political science.' His views are not 'anti-science' as Democrats claim, Santorum said. 'When it comes to the management of the Earth, they are the anti-science ones. We are the ones who stand for science, and technology, and using the resources we have to be able to make sure that we have a quality of life in this country and (that we) maintain a good and stable environment,' he said to applause, and cited local ordinances to reduce coal dust pollution in Pittsburgh during the heyday of coal mining."
... how stupid America really is ...
Santorum claiming that environmentalists are "anti-science" is like saying anti-rape activists are against sex. What a fucking lunatic, I can't believe this is the best the GOP can come up with. Are they sitting this one out or something?
Both political parties are willing to throw science under the bus when it suits their agendas. The more ideological the wing of the party, the more busses they find driving by.
By the same token, both parties are willing to embrace the infallibility of science, and the certainty of the consensus, when it validates what they already believe.
Science is in good company though; politicians will do the same with the Supreme Court, the Constitution, Religion, or anything else that they can get their hands on.
Careful with your spelling. Pot, kettle, all that.
I like Santorum. He says what modern Republicans are thinking, as wrong as that may be. He does not hide the crazy behind a manufactured persona like Romney. Ron Paul has too many heart felt beliefs that are antithetical to the GOP. Gingrich is a dishonest retread from a previous era, pushing the same failed policies.
But Ricky is a true reflection what Republicans are all about, and proud of it. If there is any justice, Rick will win the nomination where he faithfully campaign for what the GOP believes in.
...considering it's coming from someone whose view of science is something that you believe on faith, ignore inconvenient research, and consider even the slightest doubt or margin of error that an opposing viewpoint has to completely debunk it. It's not science to believe that since you have 100% confidence in your faith-based theory that has no evidence, but you can imagine a miniscule source of error in an opposing theory, that the person with the fewest doubts "wins". But just try telling a "Creation Scientist" that...or someone who believes on faith that there is not any possibility that there is human-caused global climate changed. They hold their views on faith, their minds will not be changed no matter how much evidence they're presented with.
> Intelligent design was brought to you by cavemen thousands of years ago
So what are you saying: that republicans and creationists are still at the intellectual level of cavemen ?
In other news, the irony meter was destroyed in a freak explosion earlier today.
"People don't want to learn linux" hasn't been a valid excuse since '03.
The Bible says...
evolution doesn't explain what happened before the beginning of time, or where all the mass in the universe came from in the first place.
Your point being what? The theory of evolution concerns the diversity of and relationship between life forms on this planet, nothing else.
Palm trees and 8
It's good to see a heavyweight intellectual like Rick Santorum weighing in on a complex environmental question. I think we can call "problem solved" on this one.
Somebody ought to ask Rick about global overpopulation. I bet he could solve that problem too! He'll just say "It's God's will. There's no overpopulation." Another problem solved.
Maybe Rick can solve all our complicated problems for us--so we don't have to think at all!!
I've known many republicans in my time, having lived in conservative states, and just about all of them believed in evolution AND creationism (that's correct, they're not mutually exclusive, bible says why and evolution says how).
No, the Bible most clearly says why *and* how. It says God spontaneously created all of the animals and Adam, and then created Eve from Adam's rib - this all about 10000 years ago. *That* is creationism, and a terrifying 40% of the US population still believes that story. Yes, that is "strict creationism", and yes, it really is 40%. Before you think about debating that fact, go look up the statistics yourself.
True evolutionary theory starts with the idea that all life evolved over billions of years, starting with simple inorganic compounds that combined into some of the basic organic building blocks (amino acids, nucleotides, etc).
These theories are so far from compatible with each other a 4 year old can instinctively comprehend the contradiction. Unfortunately, society then spends the next 10 years teaching the child the obvious conclusion is wrong...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7Q8UvJ1wvk
Science funding goes up under republicans, and down under Democrats.
Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so. ~ Douglas Adams
Calling someone "anti-science" because they advise restraint when using up natural resources and changing the environment, is like calling someone "anti-capitalist" if they refuse to spend all their money and go into debt.
Huh...I think I just figured out Republican fiscal policy.
They foolishly think that opinions can change reality.
No, they correctly think that if you can change opinions in your favor, then reality doesn't matter (or at least is someone else's problem).
The reality of AGW is irrelevant as long as they can sow enough doubt that they never have to take substantive action. Which has pretty much already worked. Reality loses.
The enemies of Democracy are
That about sums it up: emotion and aggression. Rush "Limbo" and similars often mention something along the lines of "trust your common sense". But this is a code-phrase for "you are as smart as subject-experts in their respective fields".
If "common sense" says the world is flat, then it's flat! This is how it worked in the cave-man era (unless the guy with the bigger club says it's a cube, then it's a cube.)
Table-ized A.I.
So what are you saying: that republicans and creationists are still at the intellectual level of cavemen ?
Please stop insulting cavemen.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
The faith in a creator is not diametrically opposed to accepting science.
You are free to believe anything you want about the universe, and you are free to squeeze your beliefs into the space where science has not yet demonstrated those beliefs to be false. However, faith is irrelevant to discussions about science. Science is a process for determining what is or is not true in a very organized way, which allows people to verify claims; faith is belief regardless of and sometimes in spite of the available evidence.
One of the major problems we have in America is the confusion about science. Science is the product of a particular philosophy, and that philosophy stands in opposition to most of the world's religions. Discussions about science are discussions that are restricted to the philosophy upon which science is built, and there is no room for faith in that philosophy (except, perhaps, faith that we live in a logical, consistent universe). This is the point that is generally lost on Americans: religious faith represents an entirely different way of thinking about the world than science.
Palm trees and 8
Democrats don't deny the Laffer curve, we deny the claim by Republicans that we're on the right side of the curve. I would actually say that Republicans don't seem to believe in the Laffer curve - it seems more like they believe in a straight line where tax revenue increases whenever you lower taxes, no matter where you're currently at. Why do I say that? Because Republicans are constantly complaining about wanting to lower taxes, but by historical standards, the US currently has one of the lowest tax rates of the past 80 years.
I know you're joking, but I think that is more like almost imperceptibly grey pot calling the carbon nanotube kettle black -- there is a big difference between someone who makes a typo and Rick Santorum -- he is simply a frothy black hole of stupidity.
To the haters: You can't win. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
FWIW, I'm a Christian who believes in both creation and evolution.
FWIW, that is also roughly the position of the Catholic Church and has been for decades.
Santorum is a catholic but seems to be very much in the intelligent design camp.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Actually, science does say everything you believe should be backed up by evidence. Science allows you to say "I don't know." It also allows you to say the evidence is weak, but the best theory is X. Science never says all you need is faith and/or an old book.
Anarchists never rule
So what are you saying: that republicans and creationists are still at the intellectual level of cavemen ?
Please stop insulting cavemen.
Indeed. Cavemen couldn't know better. We've had millenia of progress, and we have no excuse to dwell still on magical thinking.
Because funding comes from Congress that is usually the opposite party of the president?
Nobody on the left has a bold scientific vision
The left? I thought you were talking about Democrats?
Dilbert RSS feed
Sorry, but Science fared a lot better during the Islamic Golden Age.
Isn't history great?
No sig for the moment.
I take a more extreme view of faith as a form of solipsism. If you fully separate faith from science, faith becomes an entirely personal matter: you can only gain faith by some kind of mysterious internal light inaccessible to the methods of science. OK, fine. From this view there's no reason not to believe that God created the universe five minutes ago, exactly as we recall it to have been five minutes ago, replete with another 13.7 billion years of back story (which can be boiled down rather succinctly to the big bang, QED, and self-organizing primordial goo--for which the exact mechanism in the last case remain a trifle mysterious). For some reason, God loves the evolutionary back story. No creation is complete without one. Either way, evolution is the minimum description length account of what we observe as the history of the universe in rocks and oceans and nebulae. This is true whether or not evolution actually happened. Even if God created the earth and human kind a mere 10,000 years ago evolution is still the minimum description of what we observe in the fossil record and the genetic heritage of life (an exploding data set which poses a looming and insurmountable challenge to 10,000 year literalism).
If you feel the illumination of faith from within, you can show it by how you choose to live. If you inner glow so moves you, you can reflect honour on the divine creator by living your life to a high moral standard however you perceive this.
Where I tend to draw the line is when two people get together who each feel an inner glow, who then compare notes and decide that they believe in the same divine spirit. This consensus is not achieved through a scientific process. Faith is not amenable to science. How do you really know you believe in the same deity as anyone else?
Here's how the slight of hand works in organized religion. You posit a sacred text, and then attribute authorship of the sacred text to a unique and singular deity. Yesterday's TED talk on the Cyrus Cylinder shows the Book of Isaiah attributing to Jehovah what had previously been attributed to the Babylonian god Marduk. One story, multiple originating deities. Fancy that.
I have a lot of problems when a group of 100 million people go around absolutely secure in the belief that they feel within themselves a sliver of the same divine flame, when most of them can't even agree on the right way to tie your shoe.
Santorum, to his credit, is not so secure: he views the Democrats as hewing to the wrong Christian god. Now let's repeat this bisection step until every believer is a faith until himself or herself. Faith as a personal matter. Wonderful.
I have no real problem with faith, but I have a deep problem with the aggregation of faith. Let's suppose Obama believes that he and Santorum both believe in the same god, but Santorum disputes this. How is such a discrepancy resolved? Remember, you can't use science. Faith is not amenable to science (or it wouldn't be faith). I guess you need a prophet of especially reliable connection to the Big One. Shades of Russell's type theory. And we agree on the nature of this prophet exactly how? Are we back to the aggregation of unique inner glows? I thought so.
There's no conflict between science and faith as such, but there is a conflict between science and the aggregation of faith (for some reason, faith tends to aggregate along racial lines, and never takes the last critical step to one world religion).
Message to Santorum: if you want to dis-aggregate the Christian granfalloon, by all means fill your boots.
In science you accept postulates which can neither be proven nor disproven.
Only one: that we live in a logical and consistent universe. In other words, that if we reproduce the conditions under which a phenomenon was observed, then the phenomenon itself will be reproduced. This is not something that can be definitively proved (the next attempt to reproduce any experiment could always be the one that shows that the universe is not consistent), but if we lived in an inconsistent universe there would be no "truth" to speak of -- things would be true and false at the same time, and any claim that could be made would be true.
Beyond that, however, there is not much in science that goes without proof or evidence. That postulate is all that is needed for scientific experiments to be meaningful, because it allows us to draw conclusions from the phenomena we can observe, and it allows experiments to be reproduced by others.
it is a cardinal violation of science to believe in anything that can't be tested, then why is it acceptable to believe definitive in the inverse?
Except that there is more evidence to suggest that the Christianity's deity is the invention of human beings than that such a deity exists in the real world. The characterization of the Christian deity is dependent on the age of the particular story characterizing that deity, with the new testament painting a very different picture from the old testament, and with elements of the Jesus story being apparent in the mythology of those cultures that Jews had contact with in the early days of Christianity. Not quite enough evidence to say exactly what happened or to build a well-developed theory, but more than has ever been collected to suggest that such a deity actually exists (which is, "none at all").
Palm trees and 8
In college I reproduced an experiment that showed this was possible. Combine a few gases (nitrogen, CO2, methane) with water in an oxygen-free sealed container and expose to electricity with a spark gap, and a few days later you have a variety of amino acids in solution. Others have performed slightly more complex experiments to create nucleotides (the precursors to RNA & DNA).
So I guess this either means that I am officially a God, or it requires a "Supreme Being" to guide it about as much as a baking a decent chocolate cake. I'll take Occam's Razor, at least I can use it to cut the cake...
Yea, republicans are definitly the dumbest.
They're not dumb, they're just following an agenda that requires a bit of science denial now and then.
For global warming, it's because the rich assholes they toady to don't want to change the way they do business, even if it means destroying the nest we live in.[*]
For creationism, it's because there aren't enough rich people to win elections, so they have to con various flavors of fools into voting against their own best interests.
They will eventually deny the basic facts of chemistry, or that grass is green, if they think it will help the rich get richer.
[*] Related note, the junk food industry is fighting efforts to remove vending machines from gradeschools, because their profits are more important than the kids' health. It's "tobacco is harmless" all over again. We've evolved into a society where the haves only care about having more, fuck the consequences.
Never assume that a corporation, or their political pawns, will tell the truth if that would shave a few pennies off their profits.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Athens, yes, I'm certainly an atheist but I have no trouble believing in the capital of Greece.
Except that there is more evidence to suggest that the Christianity's deity is the invention of human beings than that such a deity exists in the real world. The characterization of the Christian deity is dependent on the age of the particular story characterizing that deity, with the new testament painting a very different picture from the old testament, and with elements of the Jesus story being apparent in the mythology of those cultures that Jews had contact with in the early days of Christianity. Not quite enough evidence to say exactly what happened or to build a well-developed theory, but more than has ever been collected to suggest that such a deity actually exists (which is, "none at all").
Anyone with two semesters of study in ancient Greek culture (language, literature, mythology, etc.) can plainly see that Christianity is just another Hellenistic mystery cult. With lots of Greek mythology grafted on.
Virgin birth? Miracles? Witty destruction of you're opponents' positions? Raising the dead? Executed by the state for "impiety", yet embracing that murder? Harrowing Hell? Taken up into heaven?
You can't make this stuff up... because it was all made up centuries before Christianity ever got started.
And continued to be made up: We know of a Roman citizen who was prosecuted for raising the dead.
Except for the supernatural bits, Jesus is just Socrates promoted to godhood.
A tiny amount of education can dispel a huge amount of superstition.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Not only is he from the party that brought you Intelligent Design, he is the candidate that epitomizes anti-science..
He wants to call Democrats anti-science, fine with me. As long as we are engaging in irrational nonsensical twisting of the language, I will call him anti-religion.
His anti-religious views seek to crush all that is true and good about God. Everything he says is Jeblasphmey (New word I just made up, from Jesus and Blasphemy) His Jeblasphmey is also santic (deliberate, not a spelling error) because he worships the anti-santa (also deliberate, spelling Nazis GTFO). May the good lord protect us from Jeblasphmey and smite this anti-religionist in his Santorum hole.
Conservative idiots have been befouling clear thought and rational language for decades now, why should this fuck-up be any different?
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I was perplexed for the longest time how the republican party worked since all of their policies seem to be in favor of the rich. where did they get their votes? It finally clicked for me: they get their money from the rich (by favoring that segment in policies, taxes etc.) and the votes from the religious zealots (by appealing to the creationism, every-sperm-is-sacred etc. crowds).
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful. - Seneca
Both "sides" often overdo things or make mistakes. The presences of mistakes does not necessarily mean everything resulting from an idea is wrong. But at least the left respects subject experts for the most part rather than think their gut feeling or "God's hand" is good enough by itself.
As far "permanent poor", you do realize that capitalism requires inequality? Inequality is the primary fuel of the motivational mechanism of capitalism. Also, other nations have reduced the percentage of poor better than we have without cranking up capitalism higher. Thus, "more capitalism" as the solution to poverty does not hold water to observation.
Table-ized A.I.
As would Orwell.
Attack your opponent with what your opponent should be attacking you on.
Turn the truth and the meanings of words completely around.
It goes so far beyond lying that I'm not sure that there's a word for it outside of a Newspeak dictioary.
Check your premises.