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Site of 1976 "Atomic Man" Accident To Be Cleaned
mdsolar writes with news about the cleanup of the site that exposed Harold McCluskey to the highest dose of radiation from americium ever recorded. Workers are finally preparing to enter one of the most dangerous rooms in the world — the site of a 1976 blast in the United States that exposed a technician to a massive dose of radiation and led to his nickname: the "Atomic Man." Harold McCluskey, then 64, was working in the room at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation when a chemical reaction caused a glass glove box to explode. He was exposed to the highest dose of radiation from the chemical element americium ever recorded — 500 times the occupational standard. Hanford, located in central Washington state, made plutonium for nuclear weapons for decades. The room was used to recover radioactive americium, a byproduct of plutonium. Covered with blood, McCluskey was dragged from the room and put into an ambulance headed for the decontamination center. Because he was too hot to handle, he was removed by remote control and transported to a steel-and-concrete isolation tank. During the next five months, doctors laboriously extracted tiny bits of glass and razor-sharp pieces of metal embedded in his skin. Nurses scrubbed him down three times a day and shaved every inch of his body every day. The radioactive bathwater and thousands of towels became nuclear waste.
Funny, I would have thought 'the radioactive boy scout' would have had the most exposure to americium (stockpiled from smoke detectors). His house needed a similar clean up after.
Because he was too hot to handle, he was removed by remote control and transported to a steel-and-concrete isolation tank.
If they had the tech to do all that remotely, then why didn't they just handle the americium remotely?
I know, I know. Just a thought that popped into my head.
Only the holy glow :)
In case you are serious, "hot" is a euphemism for someone or something having a high degree of radioactivity. Nothing to do with temperature.
The only thing ignorant people fear more than science in general is "radiation". The reasons for the quotation marks would make for a very long rant about ionizing vs. non-ionizing radiation and their complete ignorance of what is actually going on.
Typically they pray to god for healing, then see a doctor and take medical treatment, then thank god when they get better. The order of the first two steps varies. A few will skip the doctor part and either heal spontaneously (praise the lord!) or die, but most are quite happy to live with the contradiction.
A lot of the background for this article* comes from a 1984 piece in People Magazine, in some cases word for word:
http://www.people.com/people/a...
*It's an AP wire service piece
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Probably enough to pose danger of melting or expanding the materials in the protection suits of those who would have to handle him. Anything above 70C would be dangerous.
The important thing to remember here is that he survived 500 times the maximum dose a worker can be legally exposed to.
Try that with any chemical in any chemical plant.
" when a chemical reaction caused a glass glove box to explode"
any idea what that was?
My engineering brain struggles to find a heavy metal reaction that is unexpected. Oh, and enormous sympathy to HM, that's a horrible way to die.
His treatment sort of worked. He ended up with a lot of bad health effects, but kept alive until he was 75, eleven years later. You read about old people living near Chernobyl and now Fukushima. Perhaps their age related decline leads to fewer ways for radiation to be lethal. The quick onset of leukemia seems to affect children more, for example. http://www.rerf.jp/radefx/late...
Anything above 45C would mean he wouldn't be alive... ...as others have noted, it wasn't a reference to body temperature, but radioactivity.
Funny, after the accident, Harold McCluskey was very pro-nuclear. Stating that what happened was little more than an industrial accident (assuming that the Wikipedia entry is to be trusted).
Slow Down Cowboy! It's been 1 hour, 47 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment
Oh, I forgot. He was 64 years old at that time.
First Law of Superpowerdynamics: Only well muscled young men with washboard abs and manboob pecs get super powers
Second Law of Superpowerdynamics: Superpowers will make you wear your underwear over your pants.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The prayer is often for the doctor being competent.
Just so you are informed. Religious reasons for no vaccination is very low on the list and is mainly from groups such as the Amish and the main reason Amish don't vaccinate is not for religious reason but items such as since they are closed community the risk is not as high.
The biggest reasons for people not going with vaccines are not trusting of "big" science and vaccines are loaded with all those chemicals, similar to GMO.
What, wasn't their faith in god strong enough? It works wonders for children without vaccinations...
Sorry nope, and it doesn't seem to apply to children without vaccinations. Then again, pseudoscience does seem to apply to the parents of those who believe in the anti-vaxxer movement. How else can it be so, especially when they believe in debunked studies that were created by an ambulance chaser.
Om, nomnomnom...
they will use this method to clean up the site.
Having seen miracles I feel the need to confirm that the spontaneous healing directly after prayer does indeed result in praising the Lord! Usually the person involved is rather joyful and thankful too :)
The note would say "I am highly radioactive put the money in the bag."
Sex symbol.
Like Henry Kissinger.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
A few will skip the doctor part and either heal spontaneously (praise the lord!) or die
Thus reinforcing the selection bias.
Why does every discussion of anything nuclear related almost immediately turn into a straw man argument against some imaginary, fearful hoards of idiots? Why are do so insecure about it?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Your comment reminds me of the saying "God heals, and the doctor sends the bill".
Yes, modern medicine is great, but after a while you realize that doctors are shooting in the dark half the time.
The summary should have mentioned that he died of coronary artery disease, not of radiation exposure. The accident was terrible, sure, but the summary has led some to believe that he died of radiation exposure - which is terrible in a different way.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Some, arguably the smarter ones, pray for guidance, then see a doctor and take medical treatment, then thank god for guiding them to what they could have figured out themselves. But, they are happy.
Others pray only for a miracle, knowing that miracles are rare, and die knowing that either that was God's purpose or they just didn't deserve the miracle enough. But, they are happy.
Then there's those who really don't get that "God works in mysterious ways" might mean that God wants them to assign perfectly normal human interventions (like medical treatment) to being his work (and why not?, builds faith, saves work, lets him do more of whatever gods do when not babysitting their createes). Such people rarely go happy, as with the old flood joke: http://jokes.cc.com/funny-god-...
I've been witness to numerous "negative miracles", where the divine hand of our Lord decides to inflict his wrath upon some unworthy subject. It often does result in a "God Damnit!", so your hypothesis seems reasonable.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
It would be an impressive miracle indeed, aside from the bit about having an immune system and mitosis-capable cells. Life is actually pretty good at fixing itsself without supernatural aid. It seems suspicious that God is so eager to heal infections, yet never helps out any amputees.
I assure you that they are not imaginary.
Undue fear of radiation is very prevalent. In this case, the man initially suffered more from the actual explosion than from the massive dose of radiation, and over time he overcame the radiation related issues even though his exposure was on the order of hundreds of times greater than safety limits. Heart disease is what killed him.
Whether you think its Intentional or not, you can always count on mdsolar to submit anything he can find that says nuclear and there is something bad that happened.
"Medicine's role is to entertain us while Nature takes its course." - Voltaire
In fairness, I know scientists who are religious and believe in evolution and all the rest of the science, and see God as being outside of all of that, and see the Bible as being allegorical on the points which conflict with science.
Religion isn't always tied with being irrational like the crazies we sometimes see.
Hell, when I went to university there was still a Jesuit teaching physics. He saw no conflict whatsoever between science and religion.
I'm certainly not saying there aren't those who are a little overzealous in their interpretations, but there are many many people who aren't.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
So right , I propose a grass roots movement: Citizens agains chemicals on food
We should start with lobying the food industry in order to ban hydrogen and oxygen , those two are EVERYWHERE !!!
Think about the children!!!!!111!!!one
As far as I am aware the highest radiation dose anyone has received was Cecil Kelley, whom was exposed to a criticality accident at a plutonium processing plant. When the tank stirrer turned on, the geometry of the plutonium solution became critical, exposing him to ~12,000 rem. He died 36 hours later.
See Page 16 for a description of the accident here: http://ncsp.llnl.gov/basic_ref/la-13638.pdf
Or the wiki here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecil_Kelley_criticality_accident
Are you aware of the fact there were several decades in which the threat of nuclear war hung over everybody's heads, and the information being given out didn't include these details?
Anybody over 40 probably remembers several years of bomb drills, or the Bay of Pigs, or all sorts of things which most scared the bejeezus out people?
Even when Reagan got elected there was still a lot of fear that some idiot was going to let loose some nukes, and the rhetoric was quite high.
People were given far more fear than scientific information.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Not only did Harold get a dose that was way beyond the LD50 for humans, he lived for 11 more years and died of unrelated causes. His pastor had to convince people he was safe to be around.
Harold was far from the only Tri-Cities nuclear celebrity. There were also stories about guys who would drop their pants and squat over reactor vents until their balls got a little burned. Think of it like a nuclear vasectomy. I never documented any of those stories but there were a lot of them and worse.
One thing I did personally document was that, adjusted for age, the cancer rate for people who worked at Hanford was not statistically higher than that of the general population.
I achieved my own personal notoriety there by accidentally leaving my dosimeter in my shaving kit and leaving that on an orange Fiestaware platter that was so hot it would light up a pancake meter on three scales. A few weeks later I get a panic call from Rad Services asking if I'm okay. Hehe. God, I hated that place.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
It is only a contradiction to the biblethumpers that are contradictory in their interpretation of the Bible too. They will gladly take a small piece of the old testament to claim that gays are sinful and completely ignore that the bible also said that it is not for them to judge.
For the Christians who actually follow the word of Jesus and tries to be good people they will follow Luke 4:12
Jesus answered, "It is said: 'Do not put the Lord your God to the test.'"
In that they shouldn't task God with trivial things like their lives.
Just like many other statements in the bible it is a wise thing to live by. Do what you can to make thing better and even if everything appears to be hopeless it is better to strive on and if nothing else put your faith in God rather than give up.
The equivalent from Conan the Barbarian would be:
"Crom helps those who help themselves."
You can find similar ideas from most religions and it by trial and error you will find that things work out best if you follow them.
Well yes, that was pretty much true in Voltaire's time. Homeopathy was actually an improvement because the water isn't actively poisonous. These days, we have medicine that, you know, works.
Did he grow to 50 feet tall and rampage around Las Vegas?
What, wasn't their faith in god strong enough? It works wonders for children without vaccinations...
In some cases, even religious people will trust science ... (though not enough if other persons are affected)
Seriously, have we gotten to the point that we're actually bigoted against all religions?
73% of Americans believe in God: http://www.pewforum.org/2012/1...
41% trust scientists, with another 46% trusting them "Somewhat" http://www.asanet.org/images/j...
73% believe in God, 87% trust scientists at least "somewhat" so, at the very least, 60% of people believe on God AND trust science at the same time! That's assuming there is no overlap.
If you disparage someone for their religious beliefs, you are a bigot. Seriously, you really are. It's not some different thing, you can't cite the crusades as evidence of how evil modern Christians are, you can't point to wars in the middle east. None of that has anything to do with the little old lady down the street that goes to church. You're making an offensive, and more importantly, incorrect generalization about an entire group of people based on the actions of a very small minority that has nothing to do with them at all.
I know this will get modded down pretty quickly on Slashdot. This site is notoriously intolerant of the faithful, but that doesn't make it right. Have fun modding me down troll, just keep in mind you're doing it for the same reasons sectarian bigotry happens all over the world. No one thinks they're a bigot while they're being a bigot. And if you're teaching your kids this mentality at home? Shame on you.
Making an amputee regrow a limb would be too obvious. Remember: "When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all."
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Some one in a article about science had a few sentences about religion.
OM!G? How dare your limited world view of all religious people must be zealot hicks be questioned.
Your world view is based on taking everything you disagree with with all the religions, combine it into one over reaching idea of what a religion is and just hate it, because when you put all the stuff you dislike about each one together you get something you really dislike.
A religion is controlled and managed by normal humans, like the general population everyone has ideas that may not be the same as everyone else. So with a lot of religions there will be some parts that you do not like, however they encourage a lot of things that are good and helpful.
Most major religions do not get in the way of science. Unless they see something unethical in the science.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I am a scientist and it does not threaten my faith.
The two are separate and I don't pit one against the other.
Both are tools to be used on a different scopes of work.
I keep the two isolated except at the very end of each day.
I wonder what the hell is going on and it's so elusive, I appeal to the gods for help.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
I've been witness to numerous "negative miracles", where the divine hand of our Lord decides to inflict his wrath upon some unworthy subject. It often does result in a "God Damnit!", so your hypothesis seems reasonable.
Shouldnt the "God Damnit" precede the harmful act?
Also, once, I was chastized by a Christian for saying "God Damnit" when I don't believe in god. My excuse was that it was such a good "damn" curse. I don't believe in religion, but I do like their curse words.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Occupational standards are 20mSv today. So 10 Sv in total?
I would think the article would explain *why* the building is being demolished (which sounds like an extremely good way to cause radioactive particles to escape into the environment).
Are they building condos? What's the story?
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Anybody over 40 probably remembers several years of bomb drills, or the Bay of Pigs...
That was in 1961, so... no. And, besides, you are confusing it with the Cuban Missile Crisis, which was in 1962.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
You're the one pulling the straw man here.
The question was about the apparent paradox of the two cases mentioned.
For some reason, fear of the radiation boogeyman is greater than their confidence in their interpretation of their faith.
Before I'm accused of calling every religious person an ignorant, allow me to add that religion is only one of many possible sources of ignorance (probably none of them guarantee ignorance either) - however, it is a very visible correlation.
I'm saying the older you get the more scary shit about this you likely remember.
At just over 40 you sure as hell don't remember the Cuban Missile Crisis, but you knew it happened and that everybody was talking like they'd be setting them off.
But anybody 40 or over lived through at least a period in which the likelihood of a nuclear war seemed like a very real possibility, and the older you get the more you remember.
And NOBODY ever differentiated between types of radiation while they were telling everybody how terrible it was going to be to die from it if we didn't get burned up in the initial blast.
So if you want to know why there's so much fear around radiation, it's because for several decades people lived in fear of dying from it, because people kept threatening to use the damned things.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
The only religious people I know of that have their beliefs disparaged are those who wish to impose those beliefs on others through the force of law.
You don't like gay marriage? Don't get gay married. Don't like abortions? Don't get one. Fully fund pre AND post natal care. Provide free contraception. Stop trying to force a reading from certain religious to start every government open meeting. Stop trying to keep people from buying alcohol on Sundays. The list goes on and on.
Its ok to hold beliefs those things above are bad or immoral. Don't get the government to enforce your morals on others.
I wonder if you removed the word religious from that sentence above if it still holds true? "If you disparage someone for their beliefs, you are a bigot." What makes religious beliefs so much different than any other kind of belief that it deserves this kind of protection? It seems that whenever anyone complains about the attacks on religious beliefs what they are really saying is that "If you disparage MY religious beliefs, you are a bigot." But if you want to give Mormons, or Christian Scientists, or Rastafarians a hard time, by all means.
You got to do something so you can damn the people that don't believe even after all the evidence. You got to do very little so those that believe you did it look crazy and you give people a reason not to believe in you.
See God invented Mexican food first. After that the Big Bang was inevitable.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Science doesn't try to turn homosexuals straight. Religion does.
I have yet to see a war declared where a faction says, "Science is on our side!" Religion most definitely does.
Science doesn't encourage people to be stupid and proud of it. Religion actively *discourages* critical thinking. There are plenty of studies out there showing strong correlations between religion and education levels. (Yes, I know there are plenty of examples of this to the contrary, but these people are few and far between)
Science doesn't convince people that they should deny their children life-saving therapies. There are tons of people who have allowed their children to die because things as simple as a blood transfusion is anathema.
What's the phrase? Bad people do bad things, but religion makes good people do bad things.
So yes, we *need* to be bigoted against religion. Religion has been the direct cause of so much damage and pain in this world that it *deserves* to be hated.
If you disparage someone for their religious beliefs, you are a bigot. Seriously, you really are. It's not some different thing, you can't cite the crusades as evidence of how evil modern Christians are, you can't point to wars in the middle east. None of that has anything to do with the little old lady down the street that goes to church. You're making an offensive, and more importantly, incorrect generalization about an entire group of people based on the actions of a very small minority that has nothing to do with them at all.
Religious beliefs are a personal choice, unlike things like skin color. I am not required, and will not, oblige your delusion that the sky is green.
The biggest reasons for people not going with vaccines are not trusting of "big" science and vaccines are loaded with all those chemicals, similar to GMO.
Well, we did see what happened to Osama Bin Laden when people pushing vaccines were let into the building!
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
Or for monetary relief from an incompetent doctor.
Nothing posted to
I was wondering if, regarding the recent ruling on health insurance in the US, businesses owned by Scientologists can refuse to pay for any form of health insurance, except for "touch healing."
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
That is 50% better than blindly trusting in the god of your choice.
You haven't seen miracles, because miracles are imaginary. Just like your imaginary lord, serf. Name one person that prayed to have an amputated limb grow back and got their limb back. Spontaneous remission of disease isn't a miracle, but might be seen as such by soft-headed religious types.
Making fun of stupid, superstitious beliefs is now bigotry? How else do you suggest getting religious chumps to wise up? Education cures many of them as young people, but once someone has failed to reason their way out of religion by adulthood, they're very resistant to reality-based information. Are you a religious chump?
No, following the negative miracle is the correct order. The person whom the negative miracle was inflicted on is merely praying for the intercession of the divine being to stop the causing negative miracles. Literally, they are praying to God, asking God to 'dam' the flow of negative miracles.
So it is not cursing at all unless saying 'Hoover Dam' has become a curse.
Of course, many non-believers use a similar curse phrase that nay lead to confusion. The just and enlightened believers are merely praying for and end to the flood of negative miracles.
They should really be wondering what sins they have committed that lead to divine wrath being brought down upon them, and begin wallowing in guilt, powerless to act.
I know this will get modded down pretty quickly on Slashdot. This site is notoriously intolerant of the faithful, but that doesn't make it right. Have fun modding me down troll, just keep in mind you're doing it for the same reasons sectarian bigotry happens all over the world. No one thinks they're a bigot while they're being a bigot. And if you're teaching your kids this mentality at home? Shame on you.
Am I allowed to point how very wrong this particular belief of yours appears to be in reality, or is that off limits?
People will pass up steak once a week, for crap every day.
Wisdom, if you can handle it. Cognitive dissonance, if you can't.
the general population everyone has ideas that may not be the same as everyone else
Exactly. There are plenty of people who watch The Bachelor, but it's definitely not for me. That's about as close an example to a religion as I can come up with from pop culture. Or at least it seems to be with some people.
Well....not nothing to do with it. I can imagine some actual heat being a result.
Sure, but what does that have to do with the straw man the GP set up? This story is about a very specific accident and doesn't sensationalize it into "all radiation is extremely bad" like the straw man does. We could have an interesting debate about it, but instead ericloewe wants to use it as a platform for attacking people who don't, for a variety of genuine and rational reasons, like nuclear power.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
If you disparage someone for their religious beliefs, you are a bigot
A lot of people's beliefs are tied to their actions (no matter how contradictory to the actual theology it is). There's nothing wrong with having faith, just when it overrides common sense, facts, etc.
People who believe that the earth is a few thousand years old, that homosexuality is a choice (and a sin), and those that revel in their own ignorance... I'll happily disparage them.
The little old lady - or even the middle-age man - who goes to church to pray for a better world and helps his/her neighbours... nothing to look down upon there.
I think your definition of "morals" is skewed towards, my 'religious morals' versus any sort of accountable moral code which prevents people from impeding on others.
For instance, is it immoral for two men you don't know have sex? Is it also immoral for those one of those men to kill the other? Is it immoral for one of those men to marry his brother afterwards?
One of these things is morally ambiguous, one is immoral, and the other completely fucking irrelevant. But an unaccountable religious moral code would ban all three.
---Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A START
I agree its an interesting story. It really has nothing at all to do with nuclear power. But its also fair to point out trends where the evidence is obvious to anyone who looks, and that is some submitters have an agenda. Consistent submittable of headlines that have nuclear and negative connotations is intended to have an overall impact. Many here don't notice it, so I point it out. Many don't distinguish between nuclear power and other nuclear activities. Many don't read beyond the summary. That's what the submitter counts on.
Any doubts, just look up the submittal history yourself.
"hot" is a euphemism for someone or something having a high degree of radioactivity.
That is not a euphemism. It is a colloquialism.
"That woman is hot" is a colloquialism for "I desire sexual congress with that woman".
Both of these phrases are euphemisms for "I'd fuck her".
A euphemism is the substitution of an offensive word or phrase with a genteel or inoffensive one.
I love Jesuits. They're pretty awesome.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
The reasons for the quotation marks would make for a very long rant about ionizing vs. non-ionizing radiation and their complete ignorance of what is actually going on.
If you really want to get the far right riled up about radiation, you could call something different than non-ionizing. Can you imagine if the public were exposed to unionizing radiation?
yeah, but at least they're shooting in the general direction.
faith healing is like trying to throw a hail mary... in golf.
i don't like religious extremists for obvious reasons. I don't like religious moderates on the one hand because they work to allow for the growth of religious extremism, and on the other hand because they are intellectually bankrupt. At least the fundamentalists stick to one view of the universe. It might be wrong, but they have no cognitive dissonance.
either the religious text is the word of god or it isn't. saying it's allegory means that you're waving away the miracles as something other than actual. which undermines the authority of the work.
I may like the little old lady down the street. but i have absolutely no respect for her position.
Jeebus either walked on water or he didn't, he either rose from the dead or he didn't. physics either governs our reality or it doesn't. you can't have both. and if he isn't the son of god, literally and actually, then his moral authority is bankrupt. Tell me you think it's good morality that you're cherrypicking from the bible, but don't tell me it's truth.
Jargon would require it to be technical and, y'know, correct.
I think the word we're looking for is "slang."
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Seriously, have we gotten to the point that we're actually bigoted against all religions?
christ, i hope so.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
Which incident was this? The guy in the article lived another 11 years and died of other causes.
I'm aware of some WWII accidents but none spring to mind with that teeth description.
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Are you contending that the horde of idiots doesn't exist at all -- and is thus imaginary -- or that the horde of idiots is not right here right now and therefore not worth addressing, i.e., 'imaginary.'
I've never met a native Swede and none are right here right now, but I'd hardly call them imaginary.
I did some google searching, and all I can find is "He was exposed to the highest dose of radiation from the chemical element americium ever recorded — 500 times the occupational standard".
When I don't see actual numbers, I get suspicious. Plus, it had the qualifier "from the chemical element americium". Some articles were otherwise copy-n-paste but left out th Americium qualifier. As we all know, there have been some boo-boos with plutonium and things like Chernobyl that resulted in immediate death.
All the articles extant seem to have been be copy and pasted from each other back in the 1970-80's, so that 500 times number would be related to the safety standards of 1976.
For one thing there are two different numbers to consider: the instantaneous dose or level of radiation, and the cumulative dose. There's a big difference between getting 10 Sieverts in an hour and getting it over 50 years.
I have to wonder if what we're talking about with Mckluskey is a cumulative dose because he had it inside him for years.
Has anyone seen an actual number in Sieverts or equivalent?
No you missed completely what guides my moral compass........
My moral compass is guided by accountability and impact to others outside of free will. Religious morals approach it from the ass end. They deny you free will (without irony) to serve unaccountable morals.
---Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A START
For the record I am VERY consistent in my application of morals here.
1) no one is hurt
2) someone is hurt
3) someone may be hurt, but that person is dead. family may be hurt, but if they are not, what is the big deal?
---Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A START
There's a wide gap between believing a particular example of religious literature is literally true in all ways and believing it's irrelevant. If I don't believe every word in the Bible is literally true and written by God, then I'm probably finding parts I think really inspired and parts that I think relics of their time, best forgotten. Seriously, you can construct a far more coherent system of belief if you don't feel compelled to believe every word (of every translation?) to be absolute truth.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Were you beaten by a Christian as a kid? I bet you're fun at parties.
You know what? I don't believe what Mormon's believe. However hey're nice, kind, generally thoughtful. Why would I actively disparage them? I KNOW what I know and what they think. Why make it a fighting point? But I'd rather sit around with a bunch of Mormon's discussing religion than half the people trumpeting self-important "I'm right, you're wrong, fool." statements.
If you're 40 years old, you were born in 1974, long after the Cuban Missile Crisis. I'm 60 now, and I was 8 at that time. I doubt some of my slightly younger cousins even remember that time. (I was frightened.) When I was born, the general attitude was that bombers were invincible in the air and vulnerable on the ground, so there would be strong arguments for starting a nuclear war before the other side could. By the seventies, MAD was pretty well entrenched, and so the general attitude was that both sides would lose a nuclear war, and the situation was far more stable.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
There was a joke going on during the 1980 campaign: "What's green, glassy, and glows in the dark?" "Iran, five minutes after Reagan's inauguration." In fact, the Iranians released their diplomatic hostages almost immediately after the inauguration, so I don't know how they perceived it.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I have yet to see a war declared where a faction says, "Science is on our side!"
Then you need to study the history of the 20th Century, and eugenics.
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
i'm not talking about every word of every page. i'm talking the big stuff... the miracles. stopping the sun, resurrection, things that just don't jive with our understanding of the way the universe operates. If you don't believe that miracles happened, and the bible is a somewhat accurate (simply using bible as a placeholder) description of what took place... where the hell does divinity come into the equation?
how the hell do you know the god you worship except by what others have told you and the texts? you trace the knowledge, and it comes back to people believing what they believe because they read, heard or witnessed miracles. And a carpenter had some nice things to say about morality. If Jesus isn't divine, is it religion or a lifestyle choice?
As they say, even if there's a god, it doesn't mean you know what the fuck he's all about.
do you even know what would happen if the earth stood still for a day? I don't, but i imagine it involves massive tidal waves and every civilization on earth collectively shitting itself.
Me drinking on Sundays doesn't affect you. Me getting married doesn't affect you. Me getting an abortion doesn't affect you. Me murdering you affects you.
One of those things is not the other, one of those things is not the same.
They're more ignorant than hypocritical in history-related contexts, despite bitching about theological study being historical study. Try celebrating Easter for realz. Other than not going to church, they probably wouldn't get much conceptual difference. Think open-air/nature services and restorative/spring themes particularly. They'll throw a fit when you start talking about a goddess named Easter though. Actually...they might start calling your group a church and accuse you of copying them just for having any kind of religious meet-up. The ones I grew up under certainly would.
"A soft answer turneth away wrath. Once wrath is looking the other way, shoot it in the head."
You forgot to add promoting comprehensive, real-world sex education from an early age, if you don't like abortions.
Although it has nothing to do with religion in general, but more with culture and what specific sub-type of religion people follow. Case in point being Scandinavian countries which are ostensibly Christian, but have the type of sex education I mentioned, a much healthier and natural attitude towards sex, and a much lower incidence of unwanted pregnancies as a result of both.
It's not exactly a strawman and the horde of idiots is far from imaginary. There are people who go into a panic if some reactor somewhere on the other side of the world vents even an insignificant trace of radiation. The same people don't think twice about the coal fired power plant they live near even though it exposes them to radiation on a continuous basis.
All the things you mention are not born out of religious faith. They are born out of organized religious groups (churchs, etc.) that twist people's faith to their advantage.
If you want to hate someone because they believe there is a spiritual being that pulls the strings of the world, well that's being bigoted against a person that has beliefs that can't be proven.
If you want to hate someone because they preach about the sins of other groups/religions and promote violence and attacks on those groups, that is fine.
The fine line is that many people that speak like you do go beyond hating the people that use religion to promote violence and hate, and start hating people just because they believe in something that you don't believe in.
Wow you're a genius. How's this. I'm pro choice- morally. Dumbass.
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No. Morality is about making choices for yourself and not impacting others without choice negatively. It has nothing to do with me, or what I see as clear- but apparently you need someone to follow?
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This is absolute bullshittery. Morality is rational, it is irrational. It is codified, it is not codified. Wow, you are the weakest minded person I've met on the Internet all day- perhaps all week. Grow a pair and post as yourself too AC, if you want to talk about what morality actually is.
morality
mralt,mô-/Submit
noun
principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behavior.
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In the early to mid-seventies we did the bomb drills (I think they called them "emergency drills") where the siren posted on top of the tower right next to the elementary school went off once a month (the first Wednesday, if I recall correctly). At that time the teachers didn't insist we crawl under the desks any more, so that is probably a sign that the fear was waning. I haven't seen any of those sirens in a very long time.
I think it's fairly certain that it hasn't happened, or the church who had best claim to it would never stop braying about it. A verifiable spontaneous limb regeneration would be like religious gold.
Sex symbol.
Like Henry Kissinger.
Henry Kissinger
How I'm missing yer
You're the Doctor of my dreams
With your crinkly hair and your glassy stare
And your machiavellian schemes
I know they say that you are very vain
And short and fat and pushy but at least you're not insane
Henry Kissinger
How I'm missing yer
And wishing you were here
Henry Kissinger
How I'm missing yer
You're so chubby and so neat
With your funny clothes and your squishy nose
You're like a German parakeet
All right so people say that you don't care
But you've got nicer legs than Hitler
And bigger tits than Cher
Henry Kissinger
How I'm missing yer
And wishing you were here
"Religious gold" and you'd be okay with being forced to accept theism immediately, your "decision" being irrelevant, correct?
Incidentally, you are talking about a very near-term time frame in which you claim would hold (and not all places on Earth even today). Up until, say, 1800, it would be as likely as not that if it would have happened there'd be no channel of communication by which you would hear about it--and we do in fact have such claims preceding that, which you have no actual way to dismiss.
The scope of "never" is not "very modern times in which it happening would make faith universally irrelevant."
There's a lot of ignorance too. Maybe people in an insular social circle who've never met anyone religious. For example, it's ludicrous to expect that religious people don't believe in science and all rely upon faith healing, and yet that's the implication you get from some people here. The vast majority of religious people in the US absolutely rely upon medical science, I suspect most of those doctors grew up in a church or still attend.
Science did try to turn homosexuals straight. Ok, not theoretical physics or chemistry, but definitely medical science and psychology. This was not even from a religious viewpoint either but rather from a belief that homosexuality was a psychological disorder and that they would be happier if they fit into society. This happened around the world, including in officially atheist Soviet Union. The American psychiatric and psychological institutions of the time were very un-religious, some even anti-religious.
You counter examples for religion and education levels is wrong, "few and far between" is just outright bigoted. The majority of universities in the US were founded on religious principle and even today many of them are still affiliated with religious groups. If you factor out regional and social differences then I don't think you'll find fewer religious people deciding to attend college, I suspect you're seeing correlation between rural/poor who attend college and rural/poor who are religious.
There's also the factor of what society you grew up in. If you grew up in a society where religious people were common then you think it is normal. If you grew up in some enclave within a city that never sees anyone religious except on comedy shows, then you grow up thinking that every single one of them is a kook.
We do not hoard our idiots, not in boxes, banks, nor caves. Not even if we had a horde of idiots could we be accused of hoarding them.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Dissociative Identity Disorder?
What if you disparage someone for their choices ?
Nullius in verba
Currently he appears to be abducting and killing teenagers.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Actually his autopsy showed that if he had not been old and died of heart disease he would have developed various cancers in time.
If anything, it's the "radiation is safe!!" brigade that is ignorant.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Just about everyone on the planet would eventually get cancer if they didn't die. But in this case, where the dose was so extreme, many envision a quick, miserable, cancerous death. But to those knowledgeable, there is little surprise that cancer spread was comparatively minimal. In reality, cancer isn't likely to happen even in very high exposure scenarios. Since you are more likely to win the lottery than ever get even a small percentage of this dose, even if you work directly with nuclear fuel, waste, power, or processing, the fears we hear are clearly out of line with the real risks.
The life on our planet was shaped while bathed in radiation. If you are afraid of it, do yourself a favor and learn more.
What, precisely, is the conflict?
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Steve Jobs didn't need a God for his wacky religious delusions involving getting treatment for cancer.
God!=Religion and similarly Atheism!=Non-religious.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
It's a shame that gravity still works for them, even though it's "just a theory".
Learn to love Alaska
Depends on where they get to touch you.
Learn to love Alaska
With a jai alai glove on?
Learn to love Alaska
And if free will is an illusion, then you have no rights?
Learn to love Alaska
Didn't you hear? Reagan deliberately sabotaged the negotiations for the release of the American hostages so that they'd not be released before the election. Not his last Treason. It was a good election ploy, though.
Learn to love Alaska
You don't need religion to be deluded, but it helps.
There is no straw man, if anything it's AmiMoJo who introduced one.
Nobody was discussing an "imaginary, fearful hoard of idiots". The discussion was about a very specific group of people, who was then identified with a larger group that acts in a similar way.
There is always some minority of idiots. There are people who post on Slashdot saying it's a good idea to routinely irradiate our food, even though that would cause our existing weak immune system and high allergy rate problems to get worse. Using them to make your argument is a classic straw man.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
What in the world makes you think a quick blast of radiation to food would weaken our immune system or increase allergies? What's that tugging sensation on my ankle?
Living in a highly sterile environment and eating sterile food denies our bodies the opportunity to take on bacteria and minor infections, in order to develop immunity to them. It's known to be a problem for children in particular, and is thought to be behind a rise in allergies over the past few decades. We use powerful cleaning agents everywhere now.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I certainly agree we shouldn't sterilize the environment the way we do now, but I don't see the harm for shelf stable foods that will be cooked anyway (or that have to be pasteurized).
In any event, it wouldn't be the radiation itself that constitutes the problem. There do seem to be an awful lot of people who think it will make the food itself radioactive and give them cancer.
If he got that big a dose and lived, he should seriously play the lottery.... IIRC, that's right about at the line where everybody above that line dies within a week or so....
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Haven't found his dose, but abstract of a Health Physics Journal's article mentioned between 1 to 5 curies deposited (for the whole room?), which would make it 37 to 185 GBq in SI units.
Troll 2.0 Fear my asocial networking!
That's my point. The Slashdot posters who think they know what they are talking about and assume any objection to their brilliant plan is due to unwarranted and mindless fear of radiation vastly overestimate their understanding of the situation.
To give another example, people here have reported travelling past Fukushima on the train with Geiger counters and dosimeters. They didn't specify how close they got, and Fukushima is a very large area. Anyway, they claimed that because they didn't detect anything it must be safe... The mind boggles.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I think I have misled you somewhat; I'm not a Christian, and have arrived at my religious opinions by different means than accepting what some authorities said or wrote.
Anyway, you're missing the point of miracles. Believing in miracles depends on believing the laws of physics. If you thought water could spontaneously turn to wine, then the report of Jesus doing it is entirely unremarkable. (Think of me running a simulation program, and changing a few variables in the debugger. Instant miracle. Or if I'm running a role-playing game.)
Moreover, miracles don't have to exist for there to be a god. Christianity rather depends on the resurrection of Jesus, but the other miracles could have been made up or be from poetic language that somebody took literally or something. Other religions do not necessarily require miracles.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
i didn't assume you were a christian, but that's the one i'm most familiar with and i used the collective "you". I would not classify religions without divinity religions at all. But regardless, all religions/spirituality claim special knowledge of the truth of nature. and the majority claim authority in their views from putative records of the suspension of physical laws.
Lets go new-age with this, if you say science doesn't have all the answers, i'd wholeheartedly agree with you. If you go further to say that because science doesn't have all the answers it means that some of your answers are correct, i'd have to call BS. We know what causes many diseases, we have good ideas of what causes the rest. We know where we've come from, we know where your personality lives. The part of my "soul" that controls my volition, my speech, my happiness and my sadness reside in that 3 lb mass of computation in my head.
believing the laws of physics are simply the suggestions does not jive with the world we live in today, that's why i don't respect their position. If people disbelieve that much in the laws of physics to think that there was the possibility of them being broken in the past, then they should really stop using things.... all things.
I think you're still missing what I'm trying to say.
Let's consider people who think the laws of physics are really more like guidelines. Tell them that this guy was walking on water. Their reaction: "Okay, I guess surface tension was funny that day." The guy walking on water out there is only a miracle if you know darn well that it's impossible. Jesus rising after three days of death is only impressive if you know that people just don't do that.
Now, people can't normally walk on water, but there was a nice little scene in Bruce Almighty where Bruce and God were walking and talking. Doors don't open just because somebody orders them, but nowadays that'd be easy to set up. You can't just make magical gestures and have things happen unless there's a Kinect or something involved.
Therefore, if you believe that God is omnipotent, or at least has supernatural powers, then God can make the water support people. You know that's impossible, except that God has the cheat codes to the laws of physics. A miracle is a sign that God is above the laws of physics. It doesn't mean the laws of physics are wrong.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
:)
a good scientist knows... for a fact, that human perception is the weakest of evidence. That my senses are fallible is what drives science to document. Eye witness to the resurrection, eye witness to the, eye witness to the...
i don't find it particularly scholarly or admirable to believe something with incredibly flimsy evidence. Ugh, we've lost the thread along the way. My point being that science and faith, aren't coherent. And religious scientists must sacrifice either what they know or what they believe.
as dawkins relayed. promising geologist turned out to be a young earth creationist, partway through his studies he suddenly dropped out of his program. his reasoning, was that even if all the evidence told him that the earth was old, he could not reconcile it with his faith so he must give up science. - that is conviction in one's faith. I respect it, I lament it but I respect it.
Human perception is what we use to get evidence, although a lot of scientific instruments exist to quantify things in objective form (you can write down the reading from a voltmeter, and it's more accurate than using your tongue to short the poles). The problem here is not that human perception is inaccurate, but that we need to depend on the reports.
We have reports of Jesus dying on the cross, being buried, and showing up again three days later. If these events actually happened, the witnesses were competent to observe them. However, what we've got is at best secondary sources, and at least one is tailored to fit the story into earlier prophecy. (I'm not a Biblical scholar.) The veracity of the original reporters is unknown, as is the veracity of the authors of the Gospels which showed up something like 80 years later (or so I'm told - I have friends that are Biblical scholars).
Science and religion work on different bases. Science involves objectively verifiable evidence, while religion is based on authority and subjective perceptions. There is no reason why they have to conflict. Religious and moral issues are not able to be investigated scientifically, since we have no clear objective evidence, so an attitude that you follow the objective evidence where it exists and a religion and morality where the objective evidence doesn't is completely consistent. In this case, you can wind up with science as a religious activity since it seeks to find how God did things.
This does require that a religious scientist needs two different ways to believe things, but that's perfectly possible.
Personally, I don't respect people who let their religious beliefs override their thinking, scientific or otherwise. That seems to me not only contradictory (why did God give you that brain and expect you to misuse it?), but positively dangerous to those people and others.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
"Religious and moral issues are not able to be investigated scientifically" but they do make claims, almost all of them that can be verified to some extent. Most religions make claims of the natural world that we can test for today. If these claims are invalidated, the credibility and authority claimed by the entire proposition is weakened.
again, it'd be fine if they were entire separate spheres, but there is overlap. And in those overlaps religious scientists are being intellectually dishonest. Science has nothing to say about morality, but it does have something to say regarding religious authority.
I am made so that I cannot believe. belief is not something i choose. I would believe in religious claims, provided compelling evidence it'd be real easy. saying that having 2 different ways to believe things is a foreign concept to me.
Either the "bible" is correct, or science is correct. both can't be correct in the same universe, because that's not how reality works.
religious authority is derived from truth claims about the reality in which we live. God wants you to behave in this way, and live this way, because it is moral and good. I know this because of the religious texts he's left us. we know these religious texts are his because in antiquity he proved it to his followers, and his prophecies came true.... yadda yadda. the accuracy of religious texts are the foundation on which religious authority rests.
I also don't respect those that believe at the expense of rational thought... but i respect their coherence and integrity of thought.