Bill Nye 'the Science Guy' Urges Letters To Obama To Restore NASA Budget Cuts

MarkWhittington writes "Bill Nye, once known as 'The Science Guy' for his 1990s PBS educational television show, has cut a YouTube video in his current capacity of CEO of the Planetary Society urging people to write to President Obama to restore cuts to planetary science. The budget cuts were enacted by the president last February, causing consternation in the scientific community. Nye writes, 'If that proposal continues the steep decline in funding to NASA's planetary program it will gravely endanger the unique capabilities and outstanding people that have delivered U.S. leadership in space. We will lose a capability that took decades to develop and may never be replaced.'"

Comments

Romney too.

[xzvf]

Write them both, either could be president in January, and maybe they'll bring up NASA funding around job creation during the election.

Re:Romney too.

[LostCluster2.0]

However, Romney has no credibility on budgets... he claimed that he left MA with a $20 Billion "Rainy Day Fund" when actually that was $20 Million in a debate just before the NH Primary that was televised by CNN.

Re:Romney too.

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, I'll harken you back to your own side's statement at the recent VP debate. Ryan waxed eloquently on how there was a difference between a person who only had criticism and somebody who had a solution, presenting himself as a solution provider.

Yet like him, you have only offered criticism and attacks, empty ones that you probably don't even support. Seriously, Obama compromised with Republicans on the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, and you still attack him on it?

Show some integrity.

Not that any of your other attacks are necessarily valid, but that one is especially void.

BTW, I prefer not letting a religion dictate to me what the laws are going to be. If you want to call making a decision on the laws based on objective principles and not the whims of a cranky old man in Rome to be a war on religion, that's on you.

Re:Romney too.

[Anonymous Coward]

Obama pulled the country out of a death spiral set in motion by 8 years of the exact same policy standards that Romney supports. If Romney managed to win and restored the failed Bush policies based in trickle down economics, the economy will crash again sometime around 2014, significantly worse than it did in 2008, and the Republicans can tell the masses it was Obama's fault to rally support for a full sweep of the house and senate.

Luckily Romney has no chance to win thanks to his countless lies, willingness to say anything, and complete lack of conviction. He's George W. Bush 2.0.

Re:Romney too.

[ohnocitizen]

Still Obama. You don't seem to understand credibility vs ability. Romney's budgets in MA, and his proposed budgets for the US are full of lies that don't add up. Obama's budget - and his inability to find funding for planetary science (and fight those in both parties who oppose such funding) is an issue of ability. He's not making up numbers.

Re:Romney too.

[jamstar7]

As compared to President Obama and a democratic majority in the Senate who create no budgets and spend $1 Trillion in deficits each year, yet can't manage to fund planetary science. Who has credibility then?

Except budgets are started in the House per Federal law, which has been packed with Teaparty & Teaparty wannabes the last 2 years. Also, the Senate has enough Repubs & Teapartiers to fillibuster a call to vote for lunch and the 'Democratic majority' doesn't have the votes to get them to shut the fuck up. Nice strawman. Try again.

Re:Romney too.

[morcego]

Write them both, either could be president in January, and maybe they'll bring up NASA funding around job creation during the election.

I wish people would take your (great) advice and just do it, instead of discussing the flaws and merits of their pet politician.

Wake up, guys. As Bill Nye said, write even if you don't like him (Obama or Romney). Afterwards we can discuss it. But don't waste time NOW.

Re:Romney too.

[sycodon]

Well, they might actually try working with them instead of trying to get them to "shut the fuck up".

Democrats seem to be all about compromise as long as it's the Republicans doing the compromising.

Re:Romney too.

[khallow]

Obama pulled the country out of a death spiral set in motion by 8 years of the exact same policy standards that Romney supports.

Then why is the country still death spiraling?

If Romney managed to win and restored the failed Bush policies based in trickle down economics, the economy will crash again sometime around 2014, significantly worse than it did in 2008, and the Republicans can tell the masses it was Obama's fault to rally support for a full sweep of the house and senate.

Oh, how the projection shines forth! We even have Obamacare to make that happen.

Luckily Romney has no chance to win thanks to his countless lies, willingness to say anything, and complete lack of conviction.

How glibly you speak when the other guy is Obama who has those problems in spades.

Re:Romney too.

[Anonymous Coward]

The republicans will not be "worked with" while there is a black man in the white house. They made this abundantly clear in 2009 and have been towing the party line.

Re:Romney too.

[sycodon]

Tthe Race Card...now why didn't I see that coming?

Re:Romney too.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes it is pathetic: the Republicans sponsored a bill that they called the president's budget when it of course was not, and it was unsurprisingly defeated 97-0. The 99-0 vote was a repeat of the same pathetic Republican political antics. You have to be stupid to believe that zero Democratic Senators would be willing to vote for an actual White House budget.

Re:Romney too.

[sycodon]

So...Republicans did NOT work with the Democrat Bill Clinton to pass the (now gutted by Executive Order) Welfare Reform which helped launch several years of balanced budgets (at least as balanced as they get in D.C.)

No, you are playing the race card, plain and simple. Congratulations, you won the race to the bottom.

Re:Romney too.

[sumdumass]

How is the GDP going to rise if people have no money to spend? What's left of the middle class is going to get fucked.

lol.. and the alternative is to tax the people who can invest in jobs. Your right, the middle class is getting fucked, but they seem to have largely consented to it with promises

Re:Romney too.

[Anonymous Coward]

There have been tax cuts for the past 10 years. Where are the goddamn jobs at? Oh right, they're in India and China. How is giving the rich another tax break going to help the middle class? Face it, trickle down doesn't work and is one of the biggest lies foisted on the American people. It's not a cooincidence that the standard of living in this country started going to shit after Reagan.

Re:Romney too.

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Well, they might actually try working with them instead of trying to get them to "shut the fuck up".

Democrats seem to be all about compromise as long as it's the Republicans doing the compromising.

Your statement is so completely opposed to reality that I have to wonder what color the sky is on your planet.

The simple fact is that the Republicans in Congress have voted as a unified bloc, over and over, ever since Obama took office, while the Democrats have not. That's about as objective a measure of (un)willingness to compromise as you can find. The Democrats have compromised over and over again in a futile attempt to get the Republicans to agree to something--anything!--to help fix the mess the Republicans created, and which the Republicans are clearly determined to maintain. The Republican definition of compromise is "do everything I tell you, and I might hold off on calling you an America-hating socialist terrorist-lover for a day or so."

Re:Romney too.

[sycodon]

One might say they same thing of the Senate. So I expect you would hold the exact same opinion of them? Didn't think so.

Or, another way to look at t is that the Republican legislation actually makes enough sense that some Democrats feel they can tell Nancy to shove it and vote for it.

The bottom line is that the House is actually doing their job and legislation is being voted on. The Senate may as well just leave and be done with it.

Re:Romney too.

[Zagnar]

Maybe it's feeding trolls here but this is correct. The budget wasn't the president's, it was put forth by an Alaskan senator. We're all civilized people here, perhaps we should check that our sources aren't from far left news sites next time. Here's a source from a local newspaper, not some dreadfully slanted news site. http://www.denverpost.com/nationworld/ci_20640869/senate-rejects-budget-passed-by-republicans-house

Re:Romney too.

[khallow]

In any case, if I want something, and somebody agrees to let me have it, I will consider it dishonest to criticize them for that compromise.

I don't have that issue. I see the Guantanamo Bay thing as something Obama had to do which gets dressed up as a compromise.

Re:Romney too.

[fyngyrz]

No doubt. It's the one where Bush had us losing jobs, and Obama turned it around and has us gaining jobs.

You know. This one.

It's the one where Romney would have let GM die; and Obama saved it, along with a huge number of jobs.

It's the one where the (rich) credit card companies were taking advantage of credit card users right and left, particularly lower and middle class, screwing them on interest rates in specific, and the Obama admin saw to it that the means they used to do that were taken from them.

That death spiral.

Re:Romney too.

[thrich81]

More accurately, the American governmental structure has failed in this age of computer generated gerrymandering and microtargeted "news" networks and sites. The voters hear only what reinforces their exiting biases and elect representatives to resist the "evil" of the other side, not compromise. The House can pass fully partisan bills with no cooperation from the minority party so it appears to function, but since the legislation passed in the House can't be passed in the Senate then the House's efforts are only for show. If the House passed more bi-partisan bills, then they may have a chance in the Senate. The Senate has its problems from arcane rules, most glaringly that a minority (and sometimes a single Senator) can block any progress at all. This is all exacerbated by the "winner take all" type of elections the US has where a winner of an election by 50.1% can govern like he got a mandate -- the poster child for this was the first term of GW Bush, who won election with fewer total votes than the loser but governed like he had got 80% of the vote -- his VP famously said, "Elections have consequences". There is no incentive for any lawmaker to compromise any more. The federal system is totally broken. Interestingly, California may have found a way out of this disaster with their new primary system which rewards centrists, we'll see...

Re:Romney too.

[fyngyrz]

That graph shows new job creation. When above the 0 line, that's a job gain. It's consistently been holding there all through Obama's term, once it was dug out of the republican mess it was in.

Yes, we'd like it to be higher -- a truly healthy economy would have it at a gain of 400k/month or better, because there's a normal rate of loss that it needs to serve as a counterforce for. We sure as heck don't want it looking like it did under republican policies, though. We *surely* don't want the catastrophe the republicans foisted off upon us.

The fact is, under the republicans, we had the normal job loss, the overseas-moved job loss, and the recession job loss, AND we had a negative number for jobs creation. Obama did better -- a LOT better.

The rich are very rich right now, and corporate coffers are very cash heavy. The rich get a huge tax break on earnings from investments. Case in point, look at Romney, paying only about 13% because he's all-investment income at this juncture. I pay a great deal more than that, and I sure as heck don't earn what he does, and I see zero justification for the difference. I don't want his 13%; I can afford my taxes. I want him to pay at the same rate I do, though: earnings are earnings, I don't care how you came by them.

The republicans claimed they got congress on a mandate about jobs. Over the time they've controlled the lower house, they've passed not even one jobs bill.

What's going on here?

Re:Romney too.

[ohnocitizen]

1. Using the words "utterly fail" doesn't matter when you are wrong: White House Budget. Yes, Congress enacts the budget. The President has the ability to use his office to shape the budget debate - a more powerful president can do so to a significant degree. A large part of the power that comes with the executive branch is the gravitas and social power it can potentially wield.

2. You are attempting to nitpick away from the point of my original post - that the parent post tried - and failed - to attack Obama's credibility and by extension offer cover to Romney's. Romney has worked hard at eroding any credibility he could have had on the budget through lies, obfuscation, and willful ignorance. Obama has, regardless of one's views of him as a politician and leader - maintained credibility. The only place he's arguably hurt his credibility is by buying into the conservative myth that austerity measures are either necessary or helpful (one need simply look at Europe to see what a catastrophic failure they have been). That is in an entirely different league from willfully and intentionally trying to hide the economic instability and class war engendering greed of the Romney/Ryan budget.

3. We keep getting shafted by politicians because we do not have an adequate feedback loop to punish the corrupt, we need to elect politicians as package deals (taking bad positions with the good), and we have a twisted two party system driven by corporate influence. Not because "99%" of the country believes campaign promises.

Re:Romney too.

[Rockoon]

However, Romney has no credibility on budgets... he claimed that he left MA with a $20 Billion "Rainy Day Fund" when actually that was $20 Million in a debate just before the NH Primary that was televised by CNN.

..and Obama has claimed to have campaigned in 57 States, with one left to go!

If this is the game you want to play, then we can go all day.

Re:Romney too.

[Rockoon]

So...Republicans did NOT work with the Democrat Bill Clinton to pass the (now gutted by Executive Order) Welfare Reform

To be quite fair, the Republicans forced Clinton into a balanced budget by shutting down the government and threatening to shut it down again. The Democrats have been saying that Clinton was responsible for the balanced budget for so long now, that even people such as yourself that contradict that belief still give him some credit.

It all started with a document called Contract With America, and while we may no longer like Newt because of his womanizing and corruption, he still got real beneficial stuff done while Speaker of the House. Very smart man, with certainly questionable ethics. Nobody is perfect, but we benefited.

All-in-all tho, the most credit for the balanced budget should go to the tech bubble, not to Newt, the Republicans, and certainly not to Clinton.

Re:Romney too.

[Rockoon]

The simple fact is that the Republicans in Congress have voted as a unified bloc, over and over, ever since Obama took office, while the Democrats have not.

The actual voting record says that BOTH parties have behaved as a unified block on the exact same issues.

These are the very last 10 House votes, no cherry picking of any kind.. I just picked the last 10.

Roll Call 603 Republicans 214-13, Democrats 19-162
Roll Call 602 Republicans 0-227, Democrats 173-6
Roll Call 601 Republicans 215-10, Democrats 11-171
Roll Call 600 Republicans 218-11, Democrats 10-172
Roll Call 599 Republicans 7-222, Democrats 161-21
Roll Call 598 Republicans 3-225, Democrats 157-25
Roll Call 597 Republicans 224-4, Democrats 23-159
Roll Call 596 Republicans 2-227, Democrats 162-20
Roll Call 595 Republicans 0-228, Democrats 164-18
Roll Call 594 Republicans 222-6, Democrats 20-162

These are the actual numbers, not just some pundit bullshit. Notice that the largest deviation from "uniform block" on the Democrat side was only 1 out of 7.28. Sure, the Republicans are a bit more partisan, but the Democrat voting record hardly paints the picture that you are trying to paint.

It almost seems like you just believe whatever Democrat pundits will tell you. I check up on claims like these because I know for a fact that the media will not, while you just repeat whatever bullshit your party tells you to repeat. What does that tell you about the difference between people like me and people like you, and will this demonstration that should be wholly embarrassing for you effect your future critical thinking when listening to Democrat pundits? Will you just repeat a lie next time when you arent sure what the facts actually are? I wonder.

Re:Romney too.

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Aaaand now you've demonstrated the complete Republican departure from reality. Did you actually look at the numbers you posted? It is absolutely clear from that list that far more Democrats are willing to vote against the majority of their fellow party members than Republicans are. Let's look at the numbers in terms of percentage of members breaking from the party line:

603: Republicans 6% / Democrats 10%
602: Republicans 0% / Democrats 3%
601: Republicans 4% / Democrats 6%
600: Republicans 5% / Democrats 5%
599: Republicans 3% / Democrats 12%
598: Republicans 1% / Democrats 14%
597: Republicans 2% / Democrats 13%
596: Republicans 1% / Democrats 11%
595: Republicans 0% / Democrats 10%
594: Republicans 3% / Democrats 11%

On average, again just going from your own numbers, Democrats are willing to vote against their party line 10% of the time, Republicans 2%, a fivefold difference, and more than enough to make the difference in a close vote. If even 8% of Republicans were as willing to compromise as their Democratic colleagues are, the country wouldn't be in the mess it's in right now.

Oh yeah, here's the R code in case you want to accuse me of playing games:

# index
rollcall = 603:594

# 1 indicates members voting with party majority, 2 indicates members voting against
r1 = c(215, 227, 215, 218, 222, 225, 224, 227, 228, 222)
r2 = c(13, 0, 10, 11, 7, 3, 4, 2, 0, 6)
d1 = c(162, 173, 171, 172, 161, 157, 159, 162, 164, 162)
d2 = c(19, 6, 11, 10, 21, 25, 23, 20, 18, 20)

# capital letters indicate ratios of members voting against party majority to total part members voting, expressed as percentages
R = 100 * r2 / (r1 + r2)
D = 100 * d2 / (d1 + d2)

# package it up
report = data.frame(rollcall, R, D)
print(round(report))

# mean percentages
print(round(colMeans(report[c("R", "D")])))

That should be enough to get you started for running some significance tests if you like.

Read the Constitution...

[CajunArson]

The House is the body responsible for spending authorizations. If you want an increase in NASA's budget, write to your local congressman/woman first. The nice thing about the House is that with 435 members, it's theoretically possible that you might get some sort of response if there is enough constituent interest on the issue.

Re:Read the Constitution...

[Anonymous Coward]

You should check out the FAQ about this: http://www.planetary.org/blogs/casey-dreier/20121011-write-the-president-for-planetary-exploration.html#faq

The point is that Congress is not working on a budget right now, and won't be until 2013. They put some money back into this area within NASA, but since they never passed the budget, NASA has to assume that the President's proposed budget is all they have to work with.

The Office of Management and Budget is the agency that allocates money and long-term spending within federal agencies. The President has control over the OMB. By ordering the OMB to release (or reallocate) funding to the planetary exploration division, the budget can be restored without special action from Congress.

Re:Read the Constitution...

[Score Whore]

The Office of Management and Budget is the agency that allocates money and long-term spending within federal agencies.

No they aren't. OMB is part of the executive branch. The executive branch is constrained by Congress, they cannot spend money on anything they want nor can they shuffle money around willy-nilly. Yes, the President submits a proposal to Congress and that proposal is developed at the OMB. But if Congress doesn't adopt that proposal then the President's budget is meaningless.

Didn't you guys get the memo?

[krisamico]

It has been decided that we will be staying here. We will pray to our Gods for nice weather and the forbearance of asteroids.

Nickname predates PBS

[93 Escort Wagon]

He was "Bill Nye the Science Guy" back when he was a role player on "Almost Live!", which was a Seattle-area comic sketch show in the 80s and 90s.

Most of the time he was just a stock player, but occasionally he'd do a science-comedy mashup; and for each year's New Year's special episode he'd rig up some Rube Goldberg sciency contraption that'd be used to count down to the new year.

Although I think I liked him best as Speed Walker, who fought crime while adhering to the conventions of the International Speed Walking Association.

Re:Mr. Obama prefers Big Bird

[Mabhatter]

Because Big Bird only needs Millions in support.... NASA's projects require BILLIONS over multiple years.

Big Bird helps little kids... NASA helps rich defense contractors.... They usually vote Republican.

Re:Bill Nye

[Riceballsan]

Umm... Bill Nye actually has a job as executive director of the planetary society, has a degree in mechanical engineering and he's worked as an engineer at boeing. The man knows his physics, just because his acting is why he is well known, does not effect his actual qualifications.

Wait, what?

[wonkey_monkey]

Bill Nye 'the Science Guy' Urges Letters To Obama To Restore NASA Budget Cuts

"Restoring cuts" sounds like NASA getting less money.

NASA broke even and even made money

[danbuter]

Unlike just about every other branch of government, NASA routinely either broke even or even made money, thanks to all of the stuff they invented. Heck, if they had patented all of it, the government would have a huge cash cow in NASA.

Re:Not sure I care what Bill Nye thinks

[tbird81]

Anyone who truly understands science is inherently anti-religion. Sciences looks for answers for things that religion would rather you just shut-up and believe (and give money and power).

Ultimatley this shouldn't be Obama's choice

[Karmashock]

Which departments are funded and how much funding they get is up to congress and not the president.

The president is not king or emperor and people need to stop treating the position this way. It is very dangerous because if we do this for too long the president will become emperor.

The majority of power must always reside in the legislature. They make the laws, they set policy, they debate the issues, they cut the deals. The president just runs the show after he's been given the rules.

Re:Not sure I care what Bill Nye thinks

[bill_mcgonigle]

Believing that writing to Obama to change things will do any good requires a higher level of ignoring all available evidence than does belief in any given diety.

Re:or...

[sycodon]

There is no budget...give me a break.

Whatever passes in the house will be round filed by Harry and he'll just write a continuing resolution.

The Senate has ceased to act as a deliberative legislative body and is just a place for rich Senators to hang out.

Why not wait?

[nurb432]

Wait until you see who wins the election. Then write that person. No need to write the loser as he is packing his bags.

Re:Not sure I care what Bill Nye thinks

[sumdumass]

You obviously do not know what science is. Science is not religion and does not say anything to religion because religion is full of supernatural claims that Science cannot prove or disprove.

Anyone who truly knows what science is would be indifferent about religion. They simply wouldn't care about it as it does not effect science at all.

Re:Lose what exactly?

[c0lo]

NASA was impressive, when it was committed to human exploration. They already lost that legacy. They replaced it with the shuttle, and then started doing an endless stream of space research.

Sometimes you have to shoot the scientists and turn it over to the engineers.

You sure wasn't exactly the engineers that cut the manned human space exploration? After all, it's a sensible idea when it comes to pragmatic solutions.

Besides, the "Lose exactly what?" is a good question. Except that the alternatives are not "manned/unmanned space exploration" but the choices are: the "leadership in space" or the "capability"?
Because... you know?... other solutions may exists for maintaining the capability (e.g. collaboration./contracts with other space agencies, be them national or private), but if it's the "leadership in space" then yes, you have to pay for it.

As an engineer, I'd say: pick what you want first (picking also a why would be even better) then assess the solutions from this perspective... in this case, if picking "capability" maybe the "defunding" is a good enough solution?

Re:Not sure I care what Bill Nye thinks

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not how burden of proof works. You are suggesting that the older idea is presumptively correct in the absence of proof. In reality, religion has had thousands of years to prove anything at all, and failed utterly to do so, whereas science has routinely either proven its claims, discarded them, or built more capable equipment for gathering evidence.

Re:Mr. Obama prefers Big Bird

[tompaulco]

The last time we funded NASA, it resulted in three decades of Earth shattering scientific advances, an increase in desire for higher education and an explosion of growth in employment in technology fields. Let's be sure not to make that mistake again.

NASA has almost never been funded very much.

[Seumas]

Except for the couple of years immediately after the president insisted we needed to go to the moon, where NASA consumed more than 4% of the national budget (but still wasn't very much), it has almost never accounted for a significant part of the budget in any way. For the entire life of the agency, the average budget (in 2007's dollars) has been something like $17,000,000,000/yr.

Hell, since 9/11, we have spent TWICE as much conducting war in the middle east as NASA has spent in its entire fifty-five year live time, in which it developed rocket technology. Developed shuttle technology. Helped improve countless other technologies (including those for the military). Helped generate entire new private industries. Shot a man into space. Shot around the moon. Landed men on the moon several times. Built space-suit-jets for men in space. Conducted space walks. Built a space car. Built and deployed a telescope to see to the beginning of time. Built and manned a space station. Built one (wait, two?) little RC cars that we landed on the surface of Mars. Then built an SUV that we landed on Mars. Not to mention the satellites above our heads. The satellites far out in space, exploring the universe for decades, now. . .

All of that is in *today's* dollars.

So, let's not fool ourselves into believing NASA has ever had a "ton of funding". But, just think what we could accomplish if we blew up a few less brown people or facilitated a few fewer corporate (Haliburtin, KDR, etc) contracts in Afghanistan or Iraq with government resources and just funneled that little bit of money to NASA. Maybe push 5% of that "searchin' for WMDs" money over to NASA. Who knows what fucking amazing shit we could do?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Private industry yadda yadda. That'd be fine, if we apply that consistently. But if we're going to be debating what's worth funding, how the fuck is pursuing one of the most primitive needs of mankind not near the top of the list?

Instead, we have to bank the whole of our space exploration on the guy who ships books and kindles to your doorstep, the guy behind Doom and Rage, and the guy behind PayPal. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but . . .

Re:Not sure I care what Bill Nye thinks

[neo8750]

"Tell people there’s an invisible man in the sky who created the universe, and the vast majority believe you. Tell them the paint is wet, and they have to touch it to be sure." - George Carlin

Re:AND no one will have health care then as well

[roc97007]

Right right right... I've heard Mitt is going to outlaw Tampons also. It'll be just horrible.

Re:Not sure I care what Bill Nye thinks

[Atriqus]

No True Scottsman notwithstanding, I would disagree.

It's not a matter of what science has taught us. It's a matter of methodology. Science is about modeling the observed, proving the model, and proving a better model. Religion boils down to trusting an unobservable and unprovable model to be fact. Attempting to apply scientific rigor to a religion inevitably leads to an outright dismissal. To suggest the concepts are indifferent or not at odds seems only plausible through some sort of cognitive dissonance.

Re:Not sure I care what Bill Nye thinks

[sumdumass]

Actually, they are closer then you think. Religion is about a set of people saying a God told them something and passing it down the ages to others. You cannot do half the science out there, so you are trusting and believing what someone else is telling you.

But you are also wrong. This is because science and religion are separate things. You do not need to apply the scientific method to it or any other thing and religion doesn't require you to ignore the scientific method to anything. So saying someone who truly understand science, would imply that they would also truly understand that religion is not science therefore their scientific understanding would be indifferent to religion in much the same way as it would be indifferent to the Saturday morning cartoons or love or poetry.

Re:Not sure I care what Bill Nye thinks

[tbird81]

Examples of "supernatural" (a.k.a. bullshit) claims that science can help answer:
* Does prayer work to cure the sick? Sciences indicates no.
* Was the world formed in six days? Science indicates no.
* Did Noah get every species onto a boat? Science indicates no.
* Are we reincarnated? Sciences indicates no.

These can all be proved negative to my satisfaction.

I didn't say science has anything to say about religion. Science is merely the act of trying to find answers with reason, and proving it with evidence. It's not a religion - it doesn't say a thing.

I said "Anyone who truly understands science is..." not "Science is...".

People who understand science see people being swindled by religion all the time - people are hurt by religion. Think about the babies raped in Africa to "cure HIV" - this is an extreme example of a false belief that is widely shared - basically a disorganised religion. If these people thought scientifically, they wouldn't do that. Same with faith healers, fortune telling, cold reading, greedy evangelists, stoned women etc.

restore cuts? ... or restore funding?

[swell]

I'm very confused as to why it is desirable to restore cuts.
Or even possible.
If cuts exist, how can they be restored?
Perhaps he wants to increase cuts?

Or perhaps everyone at /. failed English as well as Logic.
I'm pretty sure that most of you want FUNDING restored, not CUTS.

Re:Not sure I care what Bill Nye thinks

[sumdumass]

And of course the absurdity of it all is this fallacious argument you seem to hold that is saying because a group of people organized into a religion believes the teachings and eye witness stories from 2000 to 6000 or more years ago to be fundamentally true that they have to ignore science, math, or anything else in their present day tasks.

No one, let me repeat this, No one, thinks that because of their beliefs that something will automagically happen. Even the people who think God will provide what they need, do not sit around waiting or wishing, they actually attempt to accomplish something using the best tools available to them at the time and pray that it was enough. You bring up NASA and yes, there are people working for NASA, even on the mars rover and the Cassini project that are religious.

You and everyone else who thinks so is living in a delusional world that has no connection to reality. The people who achieve things with science do so because they do not confuse science and religion. If you can look at science and claim it mandates a rejection of religion, you have no clue about science or religion at all and are more likely using science as your religion.

Re:Not sure I care what Bill Nye thinks

[sumdumass]

Your things that science can answer is not very strong. First, does prayer work, yes it does, about as well as a placebo. But that doesn't mean it hasn't worked either. Second, created in 6 days, well, despite the word used to day is also used to era or time span, the fact that it was created means it can appear to be anything the creator wanted. So if science indicates no, that could be specifically a result of the creation. That is why science and religion are separate things. I think you get the drift, or should be able to get it.

These can all be proved negative to my satisfaction.

That's fine. Just don't force your opinion on others and we should be getting along just fine.

I didn't say science has anything to say about religion. Science is merely the act of trying to find answers with reason, and proving it with evidence. It's not a religion - it doesn't say a thing.

You said "Anyone who truly understands science is inherently anti-religion". This indicates to me that you are saying in order to truly understand science, you must evaluate and reject religion. I said that is false, science and religion are separate and you do not need to think anything about one or the other.

People who understand science see people being swindled by religion all the time - people are hurt by religion. Think about the babies raped in Africa to "cure HIV" - this is an extreme example of a false belief that is widely shared - basically a disorganised religion. If these people thought scientifically, they wouldn't do that. Same with faith healers, fortune telling, cold reading, greedy evangelists, stoned women etc.

You are really screwed up in the head of you think someone convincing idiots in Africa to rape babies in order to get rid of AIDS is a religious value. Of course I see what you are doing, everything you do not see a support consensus for in science must be a religion right. Just like Eugenics right, just like electromagnetism and all the scientific advancements it brought about with the crazies. Lets cure society with lobotomies by shoving wire rods up someone's knows and turning their frontal cortex into a scrambles egg. oh wait, science kicked that to the curb, it must have all been a religion right?

Get a fucking grip on yourself. You describes fraud and eugenics and claimed it was a religion. (yes, telling HIV and AIDS infected people to rape those too young was little more then a ploy to wipe an entire tribe out of existence just like the forced sterilizations and even the chemical sterilizations that went on in south africa..)

Principle of Explosion

[Tenebrousedge]

Do tell me the difference between considering the unprovable to be false and considering it to be null.

You might call that the difference between skepticism and empiricism. Religion violates the principle of parsimony, is untestable, and provides nothing in the way of explanatory power. You're arguing about whether or not science should treat religion as being wrong, or not even wrong.