[i]So you're a moral relativist?[/i]
How could any responsible and culturally literate individual not be somewhat of a relativist? Given that there is never any absolutes and no action has any inherent meaning, it's time we stepped out of the dark ages.
I'm not saying we should go around killing people for petty crimes, or even murder, but there are a lot of sociopaths and absolute shitbags that only leech off society. You can, maybe, rehabilitate the shitbags, but the sociopaths I'm not so sure about.
This is clearly a straw man. Where is the compelling factor in learning something new? I'm sure you could set aside learning something new to do anything that needed to be done. This is not necessarily the case with someone addicted to something.
I wonder when we'll quit being so post-modernist about hobbies and activities and realize that yes, activities which truly engage the mind or body have some more worth than those which do not.
Comments like the parent's belie a subtle arrogance. There are certainly some profit driven organizations out there that try to modify public policy for the prosperity of their members (like the Cattleman's association). However, the main difference between an organization like that an one composed of academics is that the vast majority of researchers are in their field for their love of the material.
Why is it so far fetched that video games can be addictive? Ya'll sound like deniers of another phenomenon of which there is a scientific consensus. That is where the arrogance lies. You (the addiction denier) essentially are saying that any research done by anyone on the subject is bunk and you know better than all the best minds studying the behavior. Yeah, right.
Well, honeybees are not native at least. There are over 3500 species of bee native to North America, and it is actually they who do the bulk of pollenation.
Human evolution though had a lot to do with where the ancestral population was located and changing climate conditions. If things had been somewhat different, there probably is every reason to believe something akin to a chimpanzee would be running around instead of us.
The skeptic (non-believer as you call them) is not finding a reason to IGNORE or invent a counter-explanation, they are just NOT making those hops and skips to come to the same conclusion you are. Both you and a non-believer are presented with the same basic information. Granted, a true believer's mystic experience usually has the aesthetics of whatever culture they were raised, and it is this aesthetic appearance that forms anecdotal "evidence" that non-believers conveniently never can see. So the non-believer just sees an event, it is the believer that paints a grander picture through their faith (i.e., leaps in logic).
By the way, science by definition and the way it operates can only understand the naturalistic. It's not a choice what we call scientific. Of course, fundies would love to redefine science to include their mysticism. Why? Maybe because it adds an air of credibility. Funny, that. What a double standard.
>>Science has its limits. Science is just our provisional understanding of the universe and a set of methods for achieving that understanding... it's a human invention and so long as its being practiced by humans, it will be subject to human limitations.
We should be clear about these limitations. Quantum mechanics for instance is not something humans have a great deal of intuition about. Really, if we were just relying on human intuition and thought, we shouldn't be talking much about quantum mechanics. But we have the incredible tool of mathematics. Granted, the mathematics we do is limited by how our brains are wired, but it allows us to probe things to a detail lost on the layperson.
I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that one day humanity will possess understanding of the universe "so far as it matters." I.e., we have the precision down such that we can do, perhaps, interstellar space travel, without ending up in the wrong coordinate after 2 years of flight. Hell, right now, Newtonian mechanics is all that is really needed for travel within our solar system.
How in the world is saying something blatantly wrong or ridiculous in any way related to religious discourse? Granted our good friend didn't cite any studies, but there is plenty of reasons to believe that, in fact, dinosaurs did not walk with man. It's not like these museums go out, make observations, collect data, publish in archeological and anthropological journals, reach a consensus, etc.
This museum does NOT represent a competing and solid theory about human and dinosaur evolution. It's not science at all. Not necessarily because it didn't follow the above trappings of science, but because its underlying methodology is not scientific.
The problem is that in so far as understanding the natural world is concerned, science (what you are calling Evolutionism) is the top dog. Your intuition, dreams, drug induced visions, stories, fairytales, poetry, and impressions will never explain mechanistic objects as well as science can. True, science is a way of understanding things, but don't be fooled by those postmodernists.
Science isn't portrayed as truth, like a lot of pseudoscientists like to claim. It's simply a model of the universe. The interesting thing is that if your model predicts and behaves in the same fashion as the universe, the two structures are essentially isomorphic - i.e., the same thing just with the fundamentals relabeled. Dark matter, gravity, etc. might be a little different than our current formulations, but we might as well think about them the way we do because we can predict REAL results using our model.
Religions and pseudosciences in general do not make predictive theories. You speak of science and religion as being on opposite ends of the spectrum but actually they aren't even on the same spectrum at all. Pseudoscience directly appeals to the paranormal, which is impossible to study with science. Something that is purely paranormal also is completely of disinterest to humanity, since this phenomenon will have no affect whatsoever. Once the paranormal begins to interact with the universe, however, we can study it with science. Science and mathematics are THE tools to use when something has an effect upon the universe.
For example, take ESP. If ESP can manifest itself, then people should be able to use their ESP better than guessing. But all proper studies of ESP never show any positive result. So then you can chalk it up to methodology problems, so we change them a bit to give more leeway to the psychics and show again only a negative result. You do this enough and the only evidence for ESP becomes purely anecdotal, and it can only be used in a very noncontrolled, very unspecific setting, and so essentially becomes meaningless. Science can NEVER say that this ESP doesn't exist, but that it doesn't seem to manifest itself.
Religion is the same way. It makes certain claims about how the earth developed or is. I.e., it is making naturalistic claims. Like the ESP, we should be able to test these claims about the natural world with science. But we find that many of these claims (cataclysmic flooding) probably did not happen, are (in the case of irreducible complexity) just outdated and wrong or (in the case of specified complexity) plain bad math. Better yet, with science we have a pretty good understanding of the natural world. However, you can never use science to talk about whether a supreme being that never makes its presence known created all the rules of the universe first and set them free to interact.
Faith is that leap someone makes that, given how much we understand about the world, am I going search for an answer in a deity, or just let it be unknown. How much extra theory do I tack onto our BASIC, solid understanding of how things work. Faith is really how much you are willing to dull Occam's razor.
But what a lot of IDers and such wish to do is essentially redefine science to include the paranormal. That is where the conflict really lies. That's also why option 1 of teaching neither is ridiculous. Science isn't religion and religion isn't science. You teach science using science, not with some hocus pocus mix of fantasy.
The problem science gets such a bad rap in certain areas of the world is that people are scientifically ignorant. They have this idea that current science is a model that, at some time in the future, will be repalced wholesale by some newer model. That's not at all how science works. Rather, our understanding deepens. Newton's theory of gravity still works fine in so far as it works. We aren't going to throw out our ideas of the electron, or atom. Because they have predictive power.
One of the arguments against Magnet Therapy is that despite the iron in our blood being non ferromagnetic, magnetic fields just don't do much to us. A CAT scan introduces you to a significantly powerful magnet, and there is no physiological effects. Of course that isn't exactly long term exposure.
If you look at CAM (complementary and alternative medicine) advocates, you'll notice that a near ubiquitous claim for each modality is that there is this ONE thing that causes nearly all your ailments, or ONE treatment that is universal.
They thrive off of fear mongering and wishful thinking.
Nevermind their desire for double standards. They'll claim an abundance of evidence that shows their modality works, without ever citing references, and then you find out that it usually comes from the lab of one wonky scientist, usually in the middle of their career and feeling like a chump for doing 20 years of mediocre research, who now thinks they are on to something ground breaking. Then, when a ton of studies are done that show a negative effect for their woo woo, they claim that science isn't a good way to test their magic! Disgusting, truly.
You're treating each claim as an independent event, which it is not. Of course it's best not to be an a priori skeptic, but to consider every little thing undecided until it is shown to either be a real phenomenon or a bunch of crap is just plain myopic. There are categories of pseudoscience, and if a claim readily falls into a certain category there is pretty good reason to not only consider it undecided, but suspect it is improbable. For instance, if someone comes to the table claiming to be able to sense some new form of healing energy coursing through the universe and they can heal you over the phone, that's no different than any other pseudoscientific healing modality.
Erm, most useful results come from a lot of hard, waking work. Occasionally your brain will process enough during sleep so that you can perceive an answer, but the workhorse is just sitting and thinking about an idea.
While the parent was a bit harsh, he really does characterize a certain sect of woo wooers out there who have never studied anything more than high school physics but somehow think that every working scientist is wrong and missing some crucial insight that they, of all people, are privy to.
In all honesty, that need is self-created by the religion. That's what organizations like AA are all about - shifting responsibility and control. When you reject the claims of most mysticisms, you are forced to really enjoy the moment. The effects of religion are entirely euphoric.
I think you are wrong on this one. A lot of people who come to terms with death do so because they have lived a fulfilling life. It's not so much boredom but just utter satisfaction. Won't experience that though if you don't get out much.
Do you have any facts to base up your assertions? Where are the surveys done by, say, neutral countries that suggest what you are saying is true? I'm assuming you are not being sarcastic.
The US is notorious for supporting dictatorships and coup d'etas against democratically elected governments. Consider Honduras for instance, when the CIA supported a coup at the behest of the United Fruit and Standard Fruit companies. The US basically blockaded Fiji because they wouldn't allow for the testing of nuclear bombs near their shores. We've had heavy involvement in Iran for many years. Oh, and the support for Pol Pot?
Anyone who says that envy drives the hatred of America is woefully ignorant of American foreign policy.
I wonder if there is a certain combination of attributes that leads to a person being picked on. I also very much despised the pop culture in my high school, would admit to being an atheist and a vegan if someone asked, and hung out with some of the eccentric or lower echelon kids. That pretty much sounds like committing social suicide, especially the non-carnivore bit. Yet no one ever gave me any grief besides a few intellectual challenges. What's more is that I pretty much got along with all the ridiculously popular, from the teeny boppers to the prima donnas to the football jocks. Hell, some of them were even my friends. Any eccentricity I had seemed to work for me.
I don't really consider myself that charismatic, either. I liked to crack humorous remarks, and that's probably what did it for me. I'd laugh a lot and not give anyone else any grief, and everyone seemed to dig that. Wit really goes a long way. That and having competent teachers. I never had to sulk and whine about my education. Boil it all down, and I had a fantastic high school experience.
I came away from the experience feeling that people who bitch overly much about their situation probably have a chip on their shoulder, though I admit to having a bias. So I'd say that people who put too much stock in anything get depressed.
People are always paranoid of copycats. I was in high-school during Columbine and a few girls who would always disrupt my mathematics class had enough of me telling them to shut up. Next thing I know I get pulled out of class and asked if I own any guns, and told I was accused of making death threats. I wasn't entirely the victim of overreaction, for I did make a the comment, "Bring out the guillotine!" in an obviously joking manner when one of the girls, a friend of a friend, proved incapable of hitting a softball during P.E. class. But somehow my comment born out of competitiveness got transformed to, "I'm going to put a gun to your head and blow you away."
I think the girls felt a little guilty once they saw that the administration was ready to kick my ass out of school, and they admitted to fabricating most the details and I never heard anything again. Now I look back at that and roll my eyes because I was also a straight A student with a very level head, nor was I a social outcast. I got along with pretty much everyone as long as they weren't a douchebag.
I have a bit of unfortunate news. Even if you can see a virtually rendered part of the world it still doesn't mean you've been there. There is a lot more to an experience than the visual cues.
Slashdot Mirror
[i]So you're a moral relativist?[/i] How could any responsible and culturally literate individual not be somewhat of a relativist? Given that there is never any absolutes and no action has any inherent meaning, it's time we stepped out of the dark ages.
I'm not saying we should go around killing people for petty crimes, or even murder, but there are a lot of sociopaths and absolute shitbags that only leech off society. You can, maybe, rehabilitate the shitbags, but the sociopaths I'm not so sure about.
This is clearly a straw man. Where is the compelling factor in learning something new? I'm sure you could set aside learning something new to do anything that needed to be done. This is not necessarily the case with someone addicted to something.
I wonder when we'll quit being so post-modernist about hobbies and activities and realize that yes, activities which truly engage the mind or body have some more worth than those which do not.
Why is it so far fetched that video games can be addictive? Ya'll sound like deniers of another phenomenon of which there is a scientific consensus. That is where the arrogance lies. You (the addiction denier) essentially are saying that any research done by anyone on the subject is bunk and you know better than all the best minds studying the behavior. Yeah, right.
Well, honeybees are not native at least. There are over 3500 species of bee native to North America, and it is actually they who do the bulk of pollenation.
Human evolution though had a lot to do with where the ancestral population was located and changing climate conditions. If things had been somewhat different, there probably is every reason to believe something akin to a chimpanzee would be running around instead of us.
By the way, science by definition and the way it operates can only understand the naturalistic. It's not a choice what we call scientific. Of course, fundies would love to redefine science to include their mysticism. Why? Maybe because it adds an air of credibility. Funny, that. What a double standard.
We should be clear about these limitations. Quantum mechanics for instance is not something humans have a great deal of intuition about. Really, if we were just relying on human intuition and thought, we shouldn't be talking much about quantum mechanics. But we have the incredible tool of mathematics. Granted, the mathematics we do is limited by how our brains are wired, but it allows us to probe things to a detail lost on the layperson.
I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that one day humanity will possess understanding of the universe "so far as it matters." I.e., we have the precision down such that we can do, perhaps, interstellar space travel, without ending up in the wrong coordinate after 2 years of flight. Hell, right now, Newtonian mechanics is all that is really needed for travel within our solar system.
This museum does NOT represent a competing and solid theory about human and dinosaur evolution. It's not science at all. Not necessarily because it didn't follow the above trappings of science, but because its underlying methodology is not scientific.
Science isn't portrayed as truth, like a lot of pseudoscientists like to claim. It's simply a model of the universe. The interesting thing is that if your model predicts and behaves in the same fashion as the universe, the two structures are essentially isomorphic - i.e., the same thing just with the fundamentals relabeled. Dark matter, gravity, etc. might be a little different than our current formulations, but we might as well think about them the way we do because we can predict REAL results using our model.
Religions and pseudosciences in general do not make predictive theories. You speak of science and religion as being on opposite ends of the spectrum but actually they aren't even on the same spectrum at all. Pseudoscience directly appeals to the paranormal, which is impossible to study with science. Something that is purely paranormal also is completely of disinterest to humanity, since this phenomenon will have no affect whatsoever. Once the paranormal begins to interact with the universe, however, we can study it with science. Science and mathematics are THE tools to use when something has an effect upon the universe.
For example, take ESP. If ESP can manifest itself, then people should be able to use their ESP better than guessing. But all proper studies of ESP never show any positive result. So then you can chalk it up to methodology problems, so we change them a bit to give more leeway to the psychics and show again only a negative result. You do this enough and the only evidence for ESP becomes purely anecdotal, and it can only be used in a very noncontrolled, very unspecific setting, and so essentially becomes meaningless. Science can NEVER say that this ESP doesn't exist, but that it doesn't seem to manifest itself.
Religion is the same way. It makes certain claims about how the earth developed or is. I.e., it is making naturalistic claims. Like the ESP, we should be able to test these claims about the natural world with science. But we find that many of these claims (cataclysmic flooding) probably did not happen, are (in the case of irreducible complexity) just outdated and wrong or (in the case of specified complexity) plain bad math. Better yet, with science we have a pretty good understanding of the natural world. However, you can never use science to talk about whether a supreme being that never makes its presence known created all the rules of the universe first and set them free to interact.
Faith is that leap someone makes that, given how much we understand about the world, am I going search for an answer in a deity, or just let it be unknown. How much extra theory do I tack onto our BASIC, solid understanding of how things work. Faith is really how much you are willing to dull Occam's razor.
But what a lot of IDers and such wish to do is essentially redefine science to include the paranormal. That is where the conflict really lies. That's also why option 1 of teaching neither is ridiculous. Science isn't religion and religion isn't science. You teach science using science, not with some hocus pocus mix of fantasy.
The problem science gets such a bad rap in certain areas of the world is that people are scientifically ignorant. They have this idea that current science is a model that, at some time in the future, will be repalced wholesale by some newer model. That's not at all how science works. Rather, our understanding deepens. Newton's theory of gravity still works fine in so far as it works. We aren't going to throw out our ideas of the electron, or atom. Because they have predictive power.
One of the arguments against Magnet Therapy is that despite the iron in our blood being non ferromagnetic, magnetic fields just don't do much to us. A CAT scan introduces you to a significantly powerful magnet, and there is no physiological effects. Of course that isn't exactly long term exposure.
They thrive off of fear mongering and wishful thinking.
Nevermind their desire for double standards. They'll claim an abundance of evidence that shows their modality works, without ever citing references, and then you find out that it usually comes from the lab of one wonky scientist, usually in the middle of their career and feeling like a chump for doing 20 years of mediocre research, who now thinks they are on to something ground breaking. Then, when a ton of studies are done that show a negative effect for their woo woo, they claim that science isn't a good way to test their magic! Disgusting, truly.
You're treating each claim as an independent event, which it is not. Of course it's best not to be an a priori skeptic, but to consider every little thing undecided until it is shown to either be a real phenomenon or a bunch of crap is just plain myopic. There are categories of pseudoscience, and if a claim readily falls into a certain category there is pretty good reason to not only consider it undecided, but suspect it is improbable. For instance, if someone comes to the table claiming to be able to sense some new form of healing energy coursing through the universe and they can heal you over the phone, that's no different than any other pseudoscientific healing modality.
Rabid TV watchers remind me a lot of heroin addicts.
Erm, most useful results come from a lot of hard, waking work. Occasionally your brain will process enough during sleep so that you can perceive an answer, but the workhorse is just sitting and thinking about an idea.
Next those faithless scientists will be telling us a dog gave birth to kittens!
Your entire last paragraph is a logical fallacy, mostly an argument from personal incredulity. It's amazing how often people make this.
While the parent was a bit harsh, he really does characterize a certain sect of woo wooers out there who have never studied anything more than high school physics but somehow think that every working scientist is wrong and missing some crucial insight that they, of all people, are privy to.
In all honesty, that need is self-created by the religion. That's what organizations like AA are all about - shifting responsibility and control. When you reject the claims of most mysticisms, you are forced to really enjoy the moment. The effects of religion are entirely euphoric.
Nice ad hominem arguments there, buddy. Very compelling.
I think you are wrong on this one. A lot of people who come to terms with death do so because they have lived a fulfilling life. It's not so much boredom but just utter satisfaction. Won't experience that though if you don't get out much.
You have done your duty well, comrade.
Do you have any facts to base up your assertions? Where are the surveys done by, say, neutral countries that suggest what you are saying is true? I'm assuming you are not being sarcastic.
The US is notorious for supporting dictatorships and coup d'etas against democratically elected governments. Consider Honduras for instance, when the CIA supported a coup at the behest of the United Fruit and Standard Fruit companies. The US basically blockaded Fiji because they wouldn't allow for the testing of nuclear bombs near their shores. We've had heavy involvement in Iran for many years. Oh, and the support for Pol Pot?
Anyone who says that envy drives the hatred of America is woefully ignorant of American foreign policy.
I don't really consider myself that charismatic, either. I liked to crack humorous remarks, and that's probably what did it for me. I'd laugh a lot and not give anyone else any grief, and everyone seemed to dig that. Wit really goes a long way. That and having competent teachers. I never had to sulk and whine about my education. Boil it all down, and I had a fantastic high school experience.
I came away from the experience feeling that people who bitch overly much about their situation probably have a chip on their shoulder, though I admit to having a bias. So I'd say that people who put too much stock in anything get depressed.
I think the girls felt a little guilty once they saw that the administration was ready to kick my ass out of school, and they admitted to fabricating most the details and I never heard anything again. Now I look back at that and roll my eyes because I was also a straight A student with a very level head, nor was I a social outcast. I got along with pretty much everyone as long as they weren't a douchebag.
I have a bit of unfortunate news. Even if you can see a virtually rendered part of the world it still doesn't mean you've been there. There is a lot more to an experience than the visual cues.