When I originally submitted the article that my last sentence was something like: "giant tinfoil hat for a building or hitech deadbolt lock for the 21st century?"
Bzzzzzzzzt this should be a part of basic high school biology classes everyone takes. If we have people getting to the college level who are confused as the status of evolution as an accepted scientific theory we are already lost.
My point is, is that the chance that any one particular tribes story of how the world came into being is EXTREMELY unlikely to be true. I highly doubt that we came into existence riding on the back of giant walruses, or whatever, when big bang theory has modeled the universe coming into being back to the last second or so after the big bang. If you chose to be deluded and believe the walrus theory that is your right to do so but don't be surprised if I laugh at you. Ditto for the old testament, new testaments, Koran, etc, etc, which are just more "back of the walrus" theories with more believers. Most of us are over the tooth fairy and Santa Claus, isn't it time we grew up the way and progressed onward from the high standards set in the 18th century enlightenment? Are we really going to back slide towards a medieval conflagration of the Christian and Jewish God is better than the Muslim God in the information age when we should know better, and with nuclear weapons? Is that how little people have really learned in our million year plus journey on planet earth? And of course the belief mongers will tell you the Christian God doesn't want you studying evolution, etc, etc,
THAT is why I'm railing on faith, we can and MUST do better if we are survive the challenges of WMDs, global warming, population growth, energy scarcity, water scarcity, terrorism by BOTH state and non state actors, etc. If we really chose to fight like little kids in a sandbox over who's God is bigger when we face these sorts of crises than we will be getting EVERYTHING we deserve if for example we use our last drop of oil to kill the "unbelievers," and then we find our society collapses soon afterwards. Don't think we couldn't be that foolish, read Jared Diamonds collapse focusing on the foolish behavior on Easter Island and then think long and hard if your "faith is worth it again.
The thing that utterly terrifies me for the future is how credulous Americans are currently, it seems they'll believe any damn crap presented with a slick graphic on tee vee and I firmly BELIEVE (AH HA a belief) that the faith in "transcendental miracles" and other such who-haw Americans are taught as children is at the root at that credulity that allows them to transfer faith to the MSM and manipulative leaders. And that's all well and good until a dumbass who believes the "end times" are near has his finger on the button, listening George?
Really the point of my whole long screed in favor of scientific knowledge and against "faith," is a plea for skepticism and critical thinking in an age when some very stupid boys have some very dangerous toys. If we lapse into "believing" in childish fantasies at this critical juncture in history I have very little "faith" in the future of the human species.
The difference between faith and scientific knowledge is that a scientific statement can be proven or disproven in a definitive way which works to my advantage in the following way. Faith being unprovable thus far in human history has many different competing branches that all hate each other and say they are number 1. Which one am to believe? That Yawah is #1 and Jews are the "chosen people", that Allah is great and the Caliphate will rise again, that God commanded me to picket abortion clinics, that the Hopi land is the center of the earth from which all people arose, etc, etc. Of all the millions of mutually hostile fantasies humans have spun the chance that any one unproven one is right is slight. Scientific knowledge on the other hand can be proven by experiment to be right or wrong period end of story. I will take the knowledge certified again and again by observation over the GUESS all people of faith make that THEIR tribes god or goddess is number 1, the creator, etc.
This does not mean I'm hostile to other cultures. I think people should be left alone to believe any silly thing they want, but I ask that they not impose their silly unprovable beliefs on me in any way whatsover while I shall be free to pick and chose amongst the positive, beautiful, and ethically enlightening aspects of all cultures while not being bound by their metaphysical baggage in any way whatsoever.
Since you postulate there is a god the onus is one you to prove it's existence. Good luck, once you do that perhaps you can pull a purple unicorn out of your pocket for your next trick
You didn't accurately read what I said, I said ethics WERE subjective and important. Being subjective they themselves cannot be derived from science, yet once they are derived if we do not act on decsions based on empirical sense data we will act in a suicidal fashion. How we derive ethics is an interesting topic but it really seems outside the scope of this discussion.
Ethics rally have NOTHING to do with the subject at hand which is whether the government ought to be interfering with the research it funds based on ASSUMPTIONS of faith.
1. That statements of faith are different from theories derived from repeatedly testing reality. Some theories are less valid because they aren't testable. The reason that's true is there are an infinite number of untestable theories. For example I could say the magic snot of the purple unicorn provided the "energy" to make life possible. As an untestable theory it has the EXACT same epistemological status as the monotheistic creation myth. Basing ANY sort of political theory on an untestable by it's nature theory about reality is not wise. There are NOT an infinite number of equally provable scientific theories as the untrue ones TEST as untrue and are eliminated as Lamarckism and "ether" in space were. Therefore we have a solid way to tell if scientific theories are true very unlike the subjective feeling that faith requires you to privilege one of infinite number of by their nature unprovable theories above another unprovable theory. Sorry if that hurts your feelings sometimes reality plays hardball.
2. You can believe any damn stupid thing about the tentacles of the flying spaghetti monster feeding "energy" to your brain that you like as long as you don't interfere with people who are working hard to figure out the fundamental laws of the universe by theories substantiated by repeated testing. Or to put it bluntly Dr. Martin Luther King is one of my heroes but I wouldn't want him teaching my biology class.
Finally note I'm not saying various cultures creation myths aren't beautiful or don't have valuable ethical lessons to teach, just that we shouldn't use these fundamentally unprovable myths to squelch the pursuit of more provable knowledge.
Actually the scientific method itself has not changed in over a century. Individual theories HAVE changed precisely because of the CONSISTENT application of the scientific method itself has shown that we need changes in individual theories as we have new insights into the fundamental laws of nature and new mathematical and technological tools to refine and the theoretical statement of those laws with. Mostly we are at the point of refining theories and not radically overthrowing them, for example Newtons laws of gravity are still true at the macroscopic level, it's only at extreme speeds or scales that relativistic effects show up. Those relativistic effects don't invalidate Newton's laws but extend them into realms that were not testable in Newton's time period. We may come up with further refinements in physics, but we can also be quite confident that they will not completely turn over the empirically verified theories of Newton and Einstein. Further applications of the SAME scientific method Einstein used will yield refinements and that's all to the good.
Note again I'm not really a rocket scientist or physicist would some hard core scientist please jump in here and confirm what I've said? Thanks.
I prefer a solid and complete defense of the scientific method to the feel good relativism of "your belief is just as good as my belief." See the Sokal thread I posted for the pernicious effects of realativistic philosophy. News flash if your belief is an ignorant myth it is NOT as valid as my rigorously tested scientific theory. And I only have a stock of scientific theories to know about at all if the scientific method as a whole is defended against superstition such that scientific progress may continue. Your feel good moderate relativism is just the wedge towards undermining the scientific method that the theocrats are looking for, screw that.
No the null hypothesis is purple unicorns DON'T exist. Somehow being a "balanced moderate" is the fashionable position to take these days on all matters controversial. Yet there is no obligation to endorse nonsense and "creationism" is just purple unicorns stated in a more pretentious, impenetrable, and obscure fashion and is the exact mirror image of the lefts gobbledygook post-modernism. "Standing on the sidelines" is PRECISELY what the medievalists are counting on to use an endarkening (opposite of enlightenment) to seize power. If we don't FIGHT them vigorously then the 300 year old enlightenment experiment will end in an age of corporate feudalism with plasma t.v. stained glass windows for the ignorant masses. Is that really the way we want to go?
Your Bush kisser lost nah, nah, nah, hah. Yep, totally immature, I'm entitled after seeing Bush and Lieberman's failed policies kill tens of of thousands of people in Iraq, 2600 American soldiers, and spend hundreds of billions of OUR tax payer dollars to plunge Iraq into a bloody civil war. People are starting to wake up and you dittobot loons are about to bite. And no it's not about right or left, true small government paleo-cons and Libertarians have ALSO been against this war like Pat Buchanan, Paul Craig Roberts, and Ron Paul from the beginning. Bloggers got the power, yeeeeah boooooy. That sort of of internet power ability to cut through MSM bullshit is FAR more important than SOAP that will be forgotten in 2 months.
Bloggers can make a difference in a world, for example the Daily Koss and Moveon most certainly helped to sink neo-con Dem Lieberman in Connecticut and good riddance. That's good and important, really much more important than an overly hyped movie not grossing the tens of millions it didn't deserve. Hint to movie producers, less mindless crap please. When was the last time we had an Alfred Hitchcock quality mainstream movie that was both entertaining and mentally challenging? The first Matrix movie? Maybe, and even that was more pretentious pseudo philosophy than art.
Sorry but I haven't seen a Linux MP3 (yes mp3 clears throat) player quite as good as itunes yet. While I'm not on mu Ubuntu box now I use the Gnomee equivalent to Amarok and it's SLOOOOOOOOOW to synch DAAP, and doesn't have NEARLY as many categories for sorting music. Plus smart playlists are a big plus once you figure how to use them in powerful ways, like all tunes I haven't listened to yet, or all tunes added in the last 3 weeks, etc. As far as I know no Linux MP3 player has smart play lists or equivalent function out of the box as a pre-compiled binary. And Amarok last time I tried it was worse and DAAP didn't work at all. I truly support free software, the GNU movement and it stands for, etc. But sorry, Linux MP3 players are not as good as itunes yet, if you think they are you probably don't have 15,000 + songs like I do sorted into a couple dozen genre and smart play list categories.
Who sez you have to use Apple's dumbass ear buds with your ipod they sound terrible. I use Sony clip on headphones that sound much better (I know, I know off topic and a Sony reference sue me oh wait...) So I'm a pod person and a Sony clone, oh my....
No I'm just tired of the hypocrisy of people who shill for the U.S. and Israel who say it's O.K. to bomb civilian areas as long as a "terrorist" criminal MIGHT be in the area, but they would never allow the same behavior regarding their own neighborhood. Raw rank double standards are very galling indeed.
What next do I have say to my mom when I'm over at the family for dinner, please pass the Apple trade marked pea pods please, thanks. Enough already, seriously.
I agree, although I love my ipod nano, ibook, and G5 tower in an almost fanboyish manner, the takeover of the English language by corporations HAS to be stopped if we are not to enter into an age of Orwellian new speak.
I think Apple should be ridiculed about this as "invasion of the pod people", ala invasion of the body snatchers.
If this is about trademark law then it is the law that is wrong not our usage of common English words. Change the law not our heritage of the English language that is thousands of years old I say.
Yes quite so, I think from now on if a criminal escapes into a neighborhood the cops should just carpet bomb everyone in the neighborhood, after all it doesn't matter how many civilians die, right? And surely the neighborhoods is just a human shield of un-people who deserve to die, they're probably just Muslims or something.
Dumbass. Looks a little different when it's your neighborhood and family and friends about to be bombed escaped murdered or no, doesn't it?
The direct action of sitting at a segregated lunch counter on the restaurant owners private property and not eating thus denying the restaurant owner their livelihood is not one bit different than non violently blocking a logging road using direct action. I'm quite certain that seeing your attitude of justifying police violence against environmental activists who harmed no one, that in 1962 you would have advocated for the same against civil rights activists using the justification of
"it's violence against the means of production, it's violence against the citizens who depend on unrestricted use of that LUNCH COUNTER for their livelihood."
Of course you can't say that NOW because people who advocated non violent direct action for civil rights for African Americans won a great moral victory, and you know you'd look like an asshole if you tried to argue for Dr. King being sprayed with a fire hose. Similarly in 20 years my prediction is that justifying police violence against activists who harmed no one trying to save the last 4% of old growth Redwoods (1) will be similarly frowned upon and you will change your tune conveniently forgetting your previous position on the matter. Your ATTITUDE and form of argument is the EXACT same one segregationists used in the south, think about that for a moment and hang your head in shame.
p.s there is no such thing as "violence against the means of production." Only sentient beings that can suffer EXPERIENCE violence. You can say property destruction is unjustified sabatoge but it is not violence. Remember as well that sabatoge is always debatable too, after all one mans sabatoge wielding terrorist, is another mans French resistance.
The whole long argument you put forth boils down to the idea that governments get to kill innocent people because of the clothes they wear (a uniform). I suspect it matters very little to the relatives of a dead family (say in Lebanon) whether their murderers were wearing the uniform of the military of a state (say Israel), gang colors (another sort of uniform), or a tee shirt. Further it probably matters very little to them as well if the decsion to kill was made by a small band of people or a Republic in which leaders are elected from a small pool of rich men who use extensive propaganda to get elected and then are COMPLETLY unaccountable once elected. Dead is dead to the family of the victims.
Please note also that most of the things you responded to were written by Libertarian scholar Murray Rothbard, I'd ask you to respond to him but alas he's dead, the closest you might be able to come to is to write his biographer Justin Raimondo at the Libertarian web site, antiwar.com .
Here is another thing to keep in mind, the state ALWAYS claims it's under attack and often lies about this fact for example Nazi Germany for example claimed it was under attack by Polish "terrorists." The U.S. in the Gulf of Tonken incident lied that it was under attack by the Vietnamese:
Regardless of whether we should have entered WWII or not the repeated use of deceit by the government regarding WWII and Vietnam is certainly damning in trying to decipher whether the governments estimate of the terror danger ought to be trusted. Anyone who believes the state when it says it's under attack is an utter fool who is most likely buying lies from the one institution in human history that it is known for certain has killed tens of millions of people. Our government alone for example killed AT LEAST two million people based on a fraudulent casus belli in Vietnam alone:
"The lowest casualty estimates, based on North Vietnamese statements (now discounted by Vietnam), are around 1.5 million Vietnamese killed. Vietnam's Ministry of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs released figures on April 3, 1995, reporting that 1.1 million fighters--Viet Cong guerrillas and North Vietnamese soldiers--and nearly 2 million civilians in the north and 2 million in the south were killed between 1954 and 1975. Robert McNamara, in his regretful memoir of the war, references a figure of 3.2 million. The number of wounded fighters was put at 600,000. It remains even more unclear how many Vietnamese civilians were wounded."
Considering how often governments lie I'll take my chance with chances with the rag tag band of people with boxes of box cutters and I'll take back the bill of rights, 400 billion dollars, 30,000 + dead Iraqi civilians, and 2500 hundred dead Iraqis all so we could create a civil war that far from fighting terrorism is in fact acting as training ground for car bombers and other killers of innocents.
The terrorists scare me very little, certainly less than taking a drive in my car, or eating a cheese sandwich with mayonnaise. A president who uses singing statements that blatantly disregard Congress's intentions in passing laws based on the (false) idea that we are at war, on the other hand terrifies me.
If you are saying that non violent tactics such as monkey wrenching, sabotage, blockaids, and propaganda as strictly non violent tactics constitute war such that the state is justified in using violence against these tactics I'd say you are justifying a first use of violence against non violent people which is truly abhorrent. By that logic turning the fire hoses on Dr. King was perfectly justified as he was somehow "at war" with the state by using "subterfuge and propaganda" to change fundamentally racist government policies in the south such as segregated lunch counters, being made to ride on the back of the bus, segregated schools, and poll taxes and literacy tests and other sham tactics to disenfranchise African Americans. So no I don't think someone who is using non violent tactics is "at war" (slippery term) with society I don't accept your fundamental premise in the argument.
And yes I do know of what I speak for I have been arrested for blockading a logging road in Northern California. It's definitely the cops who used violence in this case, they hurt my wrist when they put the cuffs on, and very severely injured my friends shoulder. Note this is the same Humboldt county Sheriffs office that lost a court case for swabbing pepper spray directly in activists eyes, see:
If you want to say the cops who use violence against non violent demonstrators are "at war" with the activist community then I might be in agreement with you.
P.s. I'm curious as to what premise you disagree with in my argument regarding private terrorism v.s. state terrorism. Do you think the state has a special status when it comes to being allowed to kill innocent people? I'd be quite interested to see how you would justify that level of coercion against innocent people by the state. Though I have many problems with the Libertarian philosophy as a whole I have a great respect for Libertarian/paleo con Murray Rothbard's argument that mass indiscriminate killing by the state is always an act of terrorism as it treats people who wind up as collateral damage as mere means to an end.
"But "aggression" only makes sense on the individual Smith-Jones level, as does the very term "police action." These terms make no sense whatever on an inter-State level. First, we have seen that governments entering a war thereby become aggressors themselves against innocent civilians; indeed, become mass murderers. The correct analogy to individual action would be: Smith beats up Jones, the police rush in to help Jones, and in the course of trying to apprehend Smith, the police bomb a city block and murder thousands of people, or spray machine-gun fire into an innocent crowd. This is a far more accurate analogy, for that is what a warring government does, and in the twentieth century it does so on a monumental scale. But any police agency that behaves this way itself becomes a criminal aggressor, often far more so than the original Smith who began the affair.
********
The libertarian foreign policy, then, is not a pacifist policy. We do not hold, as do the pacifists, that no individual has the right to use violence in defending himself against violent attack. What we do hold is that no one has the right to conscript, tax, or murder others, or to use violence against others in order to defend himself. Since all States exist and have their being in aggression against their subjects and in the acquiring of their present territory, and since inter-State wars slaughter innocent civilians, such wars are always unjust - although some may be more unjust than others. Guerrilla warfare against States at least has the potential for meeting libertarian requirements by pinpointing the guerrilla's battle against State officials and armies, and by their use of voluntary methods to staff and finance their struggle."
OK you asked for it, I believe that violence is only defensible as a strictly defensive last measure. Thus I don't think a few bedraggled "terrorists" with a box of box cutters are any danger to the security of the U.S. whatsoever, and thus fail the test of going to war over. Call me me when the Chinese army has 10 million soldiers massed on the border then we can speak of a legitimate casus belli, and legitimate defense of the continental U.S. as a whole. As far as I'm concerned 911 was a vast and horrendous terrible crime and ought to be dealt with as such. In a way treating it as a war only gives Bin Laden MORE credit than he deserves. By treating him and his henchman as a legitimate threat to the power of the U.S. state it vast inflates the petty thug Bin Laden's true power in the world.
You asked and I answered, you're welcome. I do BTW appreciate your at least civil response to my previous response and retract your "foe status.
Who cares how many "converts" it won, it's simply logic, that goes like this:
1. The class terrorist is the set of all people who kill innocent people for a political agenda
2. Governments such as the U.S. and Israel kill innocents for their political agenda.
3. Therefore the governments of Israel and the U.S. belong to the class terrorist.
Now given that the governments can be terrorist organizations we ought to be most outraged about their actions compared to private terrorist organizations as state terrorists kill far more people than private paramilitary organizations like Hamas or Hizbollah. Yes all murder is bad and all terrorists ought to be condemned, however, we condemn MORE those who kill more in the same way a serial killer will get a longer sentence than an individual murderer.
When a proposition follows from simple logic it doesn't matter how many people support it, it is in fact true even if no one supports it in the same way that 2 + 2 = 4 even if no one were to believe that fact. Only demagogues try to base the truth value of their propositions on how many "converts" they win. That's why the neo-cons are so scary when they disparage the "reality based community," and why Colbert's concept of truthiness is so powerful for it is EXACTLY a critique of the idea that "converts" to something that sounds good equals the truth when of course converts to an untrue position do not suddenly make it true.
1. Wow the U.S. govt. did something good FORTY years ago, that's sooooo relevant to how our government behaves today.
2. Meanwhile on the today front the Iraqi people HATE us and want us to leave IMMEDIATELY"
"82% of Iraq People Want U.S. & UK Troops to Leave; Near-Majority Support Guerrilla Insurgency
From http://www.organicconsumers.org/Politics/insurgenc y102505.cfm
(I did try to find the Original article in the U.K. Sunday Telegraph and it seems to have expired, however, several blog entries refer to the 82% figure so I'm quite certain the article is legit.)
Slashdot Mirror
When I originally submitted the article that my last sentence was something like: "giant tinfoil hat for a building or hitech deadbolt lock for the 21st century?"
Bzzzzzzzzt this should be a part of basic high school biology classes everyone takes. If we have people getting to the college level who are confused as the status of evolution as an accepted scientific theory we are already lost.
My point is, is that the chance that any one particular tribes story of how the world came into being is EXTREMELY unlikely to be true. I highly doubt that we came into existence riding on the back of giant walruses, or whatever, when big bang theory has modeled the universe coming into being back to the last second or so after the big bang. If you chose to be deluded and believe the walrus theory that is your right to do so but don't be surprised if I laugh at you. Ditto for the old testament, new testaments, Koran, etc, etc, which are just more "back of the walrus" theories with more believers. Most of us are over the tooth fairy and Santa Claus, isn't it time we grew up the way and progressed onward from the high standards set in the 18th century enlightenment? Are we really going to back slide towards a medieval conflagration of the Christian and Jewish God is better than the Muslim God in the information age when we should know better, and with nuclear weapons? Is that how little people have really learned in our million year plus journey on planet earth? And of course the belief mongers will tell you the Christian God doesn't want you studying evolution, etc, etc,
3 33473-9723953?v=glance&n=283155
THAT is why I'm railing on faith, we can and MUST do better if we are survive the challenges of WMDs, global warming, population growth, energy scarcity, water scarcity, terrorism by BOTH state and non state actors, etc. If we really chose to fight like little kids in a sandbox over who's God is bigger when we face these sorts of crises than we will be getting EVERYTHING we deserve if for example we use our last drop of oil to kill the "unbelievers," and then we find our society collapses soon afterwards. Don't think we couldn't be that foolish, read Jared Diamonds collapse focusing on the foolish behavior on Easter Island and then think long and hard if your "faith is worth it again.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0670033375/104-0
The thing that utterly terrifies me for the future is how credulous Americans are currently, it seems they'll believe any damn crap presented with a slick graphic on tee vee and I firmly BELIEVE (AH HA a belief) that the faith in "transcendental miracles" and other such who-haw Americans are taught as children is at the root at that credulity that allows them to transfer faith to the MSM and manipulative leaders. And that's all well and good until a dumbass who believes the "end times" are near has his finger on the button, listening George?
Really the point of my whole long screed in favor of scientific knowledge and against "faith," is a plea for skepticism and critical thinking in an age when some very stupid boys have some very dangerous toys. If we lapse into "believing" in childish fantasies at this critical juncture in history I have very little "faith" in the future of the human species.
The difference between faith and scientific knowledge is that a scientific statement can be proven or disproven in a definitive way which works to my advantage in the following way. Faith being unprovable thus far in human history has many different competing branches that all hate each other and say they are number 1. Which one am to believe? That Yawah is #1 and Jews are the "chosen people", that Allah is great and the Caliphate will rise again, that God commanded me to picket abortion clinics, that the Hopi land is the center of the earth from which all people arose, etc, etc. Of all the millions of mutually hostile fantasies humans have spun the chance that any one unproven one is right is slight. Scientific knowledge on the other hand can be proven by experiment to be right or wrong period end of story. I will take the knowledge certified again and again by observation over the GUESS all people of faith make that THEIR tribes god or goddess is number 1, the creator, etc.
This does not mean I'm hostile to other cultures. I think people should be left alone to believe any silly thing they want, but I ask that they not impose their silly unprovable beliefs on me in any way whatsover while I shall be free to pick and chose amongst the positive, beautiful, and ethically enlightening aspects of all cultures while not being bound by their metaphysical baggage in any way whatsoever.
Since you postulate there is a god the onus is one you to prove it's existence. Good luck, once you do that perhaps you can pull a purple unicorn out of your pocket for your next trick
You didn't accurately read what I said, I said ethics WERE subjective and important. Being subjective they themselves cannot be derived from science, yet once they are derived if we do not act on decsions based on empirical sense data we will act in a suicidal fashion. How we derive ethics is an interesting topic but it really seems outside the scope of this discussion.
Ethics rally have NOTHING to do with the subject at hand which is whether the government ought to be interfering with the research it funds based on ASSUMPTIONS of faith.
Mod parent up that is my two points exactly.
1. That statements of faith are different from theories derived from repeatedly testing reality. Some theories are less valid because they aren't testable. The reason that's true is there are an infinite number of untestable theories. For example I could say the magic snot of the purple unicorn provided the "energy" to make life possible. As an untestable theory it has the EXACT same epistemological status as the monotheistic creation myth. Basing ANY sort of political theory on an untestable by it's nature theory about reality is not wise. There are NOT an infinite number of equally provable scientific theories as the untrue ones TEST as untrue and are eliminated as Lamarckism and "ether" in space were. Therefore we have a solid way to tell if scientific theories are true very unlike the subjective feeling that faith requires you to privilege one of infinite number of by their nature unprovable theories above another unprovable theory. Sorry if that hurts your feelings sometimes reality plays hardball.
2. You can believe any damn stupid thing about the tentacles of the flying spaghetti monster feeding "energy" to your brain that you like as long as you don't interfere with people who are working hard to figure out the fundamental laws of the universe by theories substantiated by repeated testing. Or to put it bluntly Dr. Martin Luther King is one of my heroes but I wouldn't want him teaching my biology class.
Finally note I'm not saying various cultures creation myths aren't beautiful or don't have valuable ethical lessons to teach, just that we shouldn't use these fundamentally unprovable myths to squelch the pursuit of more provable knowledge.
Actually the scientific method itself has not changed in over a century. Individual theories HAVE changed precisely because of the CONSISTENT application of the scientific method itself has shown that we need changes in individual theories as we have new insights into the fundamental laws of nature and new mathematical and technological tools to refine and the theoretical statement of those laws with. Mostly we are at the point of refining theories and not radically overthrowing them, for example Newtons laws of gravity are still true at the macroscopic level, it's only at extreme speeds or scales that relativistic effects show up. Those relativistic effects don't invalidate Newton's laws but extend them into realms that were not testable in Newton's time period. We may come up with further refinements in physics, but we can also be quite confident that they will not completely turn over the empirically verified theories of Newton and Einstein. Further applications of the SAME scientific method Einstein used will yield refinements and that's all to the good.
Note again I'm not really a rocket scientist or physicist would some hard core scientist please jump in here and confirm what I've said? Thanks.
I prefer a solid and complete defense of the scientific method to the feel good relativism of "your belief is just as good as my belief." See the Sokal thread I posted for the pernicious effects of realativistic philosophy. News flash if your belief is an ignorant myth it is NOT as valid as my rigorously tested scientific theory. And I only have a stock of scientific theories to know about at all if the scientific method as a whole is defended against superstition such that scientific progress may continue. Your feel good moderate relativism is just the wedge towards undermining the scientific method that the theocrats are looking for, screw that.
http://www.iep.utm.edu/r/relativi.htm
No the null hypothesis is purple unicorns DON'T exist. Somehow being a "balanced moderate" is the fashionable position to take these days on all matters controversial. Yet there is no obligation to endorse nonsense and "creationism" is just purple unicorns stated in a more pretentious, impenetrable, and obscure fashion and is the exact mirror image of the lefts gobbledygook post-modernism. "Standing on the sidelines" is PRECISELY what the medievalists are counting on to use an endarkening (opposite of enlightenment) to seize power. If we don't FIGHT them vigorously then the 300 year old enlightenment experiment will end in an age of corporate feudalism with plasma t.v. stained glass windows for the ignorant masses. Is that really the way we want to go?
Your Bush kisser lost nah, nah, nah, hah. Yep, totally immature, I'm entitled after seeing Bush and Lieberman's failed policies kill tens of of thousands of people in Iraq, 2600 American soldiers, and spend hundreds of billions of OUR tax payer dollars to plunge Iraq into a bloody civil war. People are starting to wake up and you dittobot loons are about to bite. And no it's not about right or left, true small government paleo-cons and Libertarians have ALSO been against this war like Pat Buchanan, Paul Craig Roberts, and Ron Paul from the beginning. Bloggers got the power, yeeeeah boooooy. That sort of of internet power ability to cut through MSM bullshit is FAR more important than SOAP that will be forgotten in 2 months.
Bloggers can make a difference in a world, for example the Daily Koss and Moveon most certainly helped to sink neo-con Dem Lieberman in Connecticut and good riddance. That's good and important, really much more important than an overly hyped movie not grossing the tens of millions it didn't deserve. Hint to movie producers, less mindless crap please. When was the last time we had an Alfred Hitchcock quality mainstream movie that was both entertaining and mentally challenging? The first Matrix movie? Maybe, and even that was more pretentious pseudo philosophy than art.
Sorry but I haven't seen a Linux MP3 (yes mp3 clears throat) player quite as good as itunes yet. While I'm not on mu Ubuntu box now I use the Gnomee equivalent to Amarok and it's SLOOOOOOOOOW to synch DAAP, and doesn't have NEARLY as many categories for sorting music. Plus smart playlists are a big plus once you figure how to use them in powerful ways, like all tunes I haven't listened to yet, or all tunes added in the last 3 weeks, etc. As far as I know no Linux MP3 player has smart play lists or equivalent function out of the box as a pre-compiled binary. And Amarok last time I tried it was worse and DAAP didn't work at all. I truly support free software, the GNU movement and it stands for, etc. But sorry, Linux MP3 players are not as good as itunes yet, if you think they are you probably don't have 15,000 + songs like I do sorted into a couple dozen genre and smart play list categories.
Who sez you have to use Apple's dumbass ear buds with your ipod they sound terrible. I use Sony clip on headphones that sound much better (I know, I know off topic and a Sony reference sue me oh wait...) So I'm a pod person and a Sony clone, oh my....
No I'm just tired of the hypocrisy of people who shill for the U.S. and Israel who say it's O.K. to bomb civilian areas as long as a "terrorist" criminal MIGHT be in the area, but they would never allow the same behavior regarding their own neighborhood. Raw rank double standards are very galling indeed.
What next do I have say to my mom when I'm over at the family for dinner, please pass the Apple trade marked pea pods please, thanks. Enough already, seriously.
I agree, although I love my ipod nano, ibook, and G5 tower in an almost fanboyish manner, the takeover of the English language by corporations HAS to be stopped if we are not to enter into an age of Orwellian new speak.
I think Apple should be ridiculed about this as "invasion of the pod people", ala invasion of the body snatchers.
If this is about trademark law then it is the law that is wrong not our usage of common English words. Change the law not our heritage of the English language that is thousands of years old I say.
Yes quite so, I think from now on if a criminal escapes into a neighborhood the cops should just carpet bomb everyone in the neighborhood, after all it doesn't matter how many civilians die, right? And surely the neighborhoods is just a human shield of un-people who deserve to die, they're probably just Muslims or something.
Dumbass. Looks a little different when it's your neighborhood and family and friends about to be bombed escaped murdered or no, doesn't it?
The direct action of sitting at a segregated lunch counter on the restaurant owners private property and not eating thus denying the restaurant owner their livelihood is not one bit different than non violently blocking a logging road using direct action. I'm quite certain that seeing your attitude of justifying police violence against environmental activists who harmed no one, that in 1962 you would have advocated for the same against civil rights activists using the justification of
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"it's violence against the means of production, it's violence against the citizens who depend on unrestricted use of that LUNCH COUNTER for their livelihood."
Of course you can't say that NOW because people who advocated non violent direct action for civil rights for African Americans won a great moral victory, and you know you'd look like an asshole if you tried to argue for Dr. King being sprayed with a fire hose. Similarly in 20 years my prediction is that justifying police violence against activists who harmed no one trying to save the last 4% of old growth Redwoods (1) will be similarly frowned upon and you will change your tune conveniently forgetting your previous position on the matter. Your ATTITUDE and form of argument is the EXACT same one segregationists used in the south, think about that for a moment and hang your head in shame.
(1) http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/environment/jan-ju
p.s there is no such thing as "violence against the means of production." Only sentient beings that can suffer EXPERIENCE violence. You can say property destruction is unjustified sabatoge but it is not violence. Remember as well that sabatoge is always debatable too, after all one mans sabatoge wielding terrorist, is another mans French resistance.
The whole long argument you put forth boils down to the idea that governments get to kill innocent people because of the clothes they wear (a uniform). I suspect it matters very little to the relatives of a dead family (say in Lebanon) whether their murderers were wearing the uniform of the military of a state (say Israel), gang colors (another sort of uniform), or a tee shirt. Further it probably matters very little to them as well if the decsion to kill was made by a small band of people or a Republic in which leaders are elected from a small pool of rich men who use extensive propaganda to get elected and then are COMPLETLY unaccountable once elected. Dead is dead to the family of the victims.
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Please note also that most of the things you responded to were written by Libertarian scholar Murray Rothbard, I'd ask you to respond to him but alas he's dead, the closest you might be able to come to is to write his biographer Justin Raimondo at the Libertarian web site, antiwar.com .
Here is another thing to keep in mind, the state ALWAYS claims it's under attack and often lies about this fact for example Nazi Germany for example claimed it was under attack by Polish "terrorists." The U.S. in the Gulf of Tonken incident lied that it was under attack by the Vietnamese:
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2261
Further the U.S. most likely allowed the Japanese to attack us at Pearl Harbor to get us into WWII despite already having broken Japan's Naval code.
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?i
Regardless of whether we should have entered WWII or not the repeated use of deceit by the government regarding WWII and Vietnam is certainly damning in trying to decipher whether the governments estimate of the terror danger ought to be trusted. Anyone who believes the state when it says it's under attack is an utter fool who is most likely buying lies from the one institution in human history that it is known for certain has killed tens of millions of people. Our government alone for example killed AT LEAST two million people based on a fraudulent casus belli in Vietnam alone:
"The lowest casualty estimates, based on North Vietnamese statements (now discounted by Vietnam), are around 1.5 million Vietnamese killed. Vietnam's Ministry of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs released figures on April 3, 1995, reporting that 1.1 million fighters--Viet Cong guerrillas and North Vietnamese soldiers--and nearly 2 million civilians in the north and 2 million in the south were killed between 1954 and 1975. Robert McNamara, in his regretful memoir of the war, references a figure of 3.2 million. The number of wounded fighters was put at 600,000. It remains even more unclear how many Vietnamese civilians were wounded."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War#Casualti
Considering how often governments lie I'll take my chance with chances with the rag tag band of people with boxes of box cutters and I'll take back the bill of rights, 400 billion dollars, 30,000 + dead Iraqi civilians, and 2500 hundred dead Iraqis all so we could create a civil war that far from fighting terrorism is in fact acting as training ground for car bombers and other killers of innocents.
The terrorists scare me very little, certainly less than taking a drive in my car, or eating a cheese sandwich with mayonnaise. A president who uses singing statements that blatantly disregard Congress's intentions in passing laws based on the (false) idea that we are at war, on the other hand terrifies me.
If you are saying that non violent tactics such as monkey wrenching, sabotage, blockaids, and propaganda as strictly non violent tactics constitute war such that the state is justified in using violence against these tactics I'd say you are justifying a first use of violence against non violent people which is truly abhorrent. By that logic turning the fire hoses on Dr. King was perfectly justified as he was somehow "at war" with the state by using "subterfuge and propaganda" to change fundamentally racist government policies in the south such as segregated lunch counters, being made to ride on the back of the bus, segregated schools, and poll taxes and literacy tests and other sham tactics to disenfranchise African Americans. So no I don't think someone who is using non violent tactics is "at war" (slippery term) with society I don't accept your fundamental premise in the argument.
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And yes I do know of what I speak for I have been arrested for blockading a logging road in Northern California. It's definitely the cops who used violence in this case, they hurt my wrist when they put the cuffs on, and very severely injured my friends shoulder. Note this is the same Humboldt county Sheriffs office that lost a court case for swabbing pepper spray directly in activists eyes, see:
http://www.mindfully.org/Heritage/2005/Pepper-Spr
If you want to say the cops who use violence against non violent demonstrators are "at war" with the activist community then I might be in agreement with you.
See also: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0407-06.h
P.s. I'm curious as to what premise you disagree with in my argument regarding private terrorism v.s. state terrorism. Do you think the state has a special status when it comes to being allowed to kill innocent people? I'd be quite interested to see how you would justify that level of coercion against innocent people by the state. Though I have many problems with the Libertarian philosophy as a whole I have a great respect for Libertarian/paleo con Murray Rothbard's argument that mass indiscriminate killing by the state is always an act of terrorism as it treats people who wind up as collateral damage as mere means to an end.
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"But "aggression" only makes sense on the individual Smith-Jones level, as does the very term "police action." These terms make no sense whatever on an inter-State level. First, we have seen that governments entering a war thereby become aggressors themselves against innocent civilians; indeed, become mass murderers. The correct analogy to individual action would be: Smith beats up Jones, the police rush in to help Jones, and in the course of trying to apprehend Smith, the police bomb a city block and murder thousands of people, or spray machine-gun fire into an innocent crowd. This is a far more accurate analogy, for that is what a warring government does, and in the twentieth century it does so on a monumental scale. But any police agency that behaves this way itself becomes a criminal aggressor, often far more so than the original Smith who began the affair.
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The libertarian foreign policy, then, is not a pacifist policy. We do not hold, as do the pacifists, that no individual has the right to use violence in defending himself against violent attack. What we do hold is that no one has the right to conscript, tax, or murder others, or to use violence against others in order to defend himself. Since all States exist and have their being in aggression against their subjects and in the acquiring of their present territory, and since inter-State wars slaughter innocent civilians, such wars are always unjust - although some may be more unjust than others. Guerrilla warfare against States at least has the potential for meeting libertarian requirements by pinpointing the guerrilla's battle against State officials and armies, and by their use of voluntary methods to staff and finance their struggle."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard84.ht
Taps foot I'm waiting for a sound counter argument.
OK you asked for it, I believe that violence is only defensible as a strictly defensive last measure. Thus I don't think a few bedraggled "terrorists" with a box of box cutters are any danger to the security of the U.S. whatsoever, and thus fail the test of going to war over. Call me me when the Chinese army has 10 million soldiers massed on the border then we can speak of a legitimate casus belli, and legitimate defense of the continental U.S. as a whole. As far as I'm concerned 911 was a vast and horrendous terrible crime and ought to be dealt with as such. In a way treating it as a war only gives Bin Laden MORE credit than he deserves. By treating him and his henchman as a legitimate threat to the power of the U.S. state it vast inflates the petty thug Bin Laden's true power in the world.
You asked and I answered, you're welcome. I do BTW appreciate your at least civil response to my previous response and retract your "foe status.
Who cares how many "converts" it won, it's simply logic, that goes like this:
1. The class terrorist is the set of all people who kill innocent people for a political agenda
2. Governments such as the U.S. and Israel kill innocents for their political agenda.
3. Therefore the governments of Israel and the U.S. belong to the class terrorist.
Now given that the governments can be terrorist organizations we ought to be most outraged about their actions compared to private terrorist organizations as state terrorists kill far more people than private paramilitary organizations like Hamas or Hizbollah. Yes all murder is bad and all terrorists ought to be condemned, however, we condemn MORE those who kill more in the same way a serial killer will get a longer sentence than an individual murderer.
When a proposition follows from simple logic it doesn't matter how many people support it, it is in fact true even if no one supports it in the same way that 2 + 2 = 4 even if no one were to believe that fact. Only demagogues try to base the truth value of their propositions on how many "converts" they win. That's why the neo-cons are so scary when they disparage the "reality based community," and why Colbert's concept of truthiness is so powerful for it is EXACTLY a critique of the idea that "converts" to something that sounds good equals the truth when of course converts to an untrue position do not suddenly make it true.
Clear now?
1. Wow the U.S. govt. did something good FORTY years ago, that's sooooo relevant to how our government behaves today.
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2. Meanwhile on the today front the Iraqi people HATE us and want us to leave IMMEDIATELY"
"82% of Iraq People Want U.S. & UK Troops to Leave; Near-Majority Support Guerrilla Insurgency
From http://www.organicconsumers.org/Politics/insurgen
(I did try to find the Original article in the U.K. Sunday Telegraph and it seems to have expired, however, several blog entries refer to the 82% figure so I'm quite certain the article is legit.)