Given this Gallup Poll then perhaps the backers of science ought to be worried. After all it is the domain of the liberal,elite, socialist atheist fascists. All god-fearing Christians know that everything is described in teh bibul, no need for this science nonsense.
When I did my Ph.D. I had the good fortune to meet Charles Townes, the inventor of the maser. According to him he was told it was very interesting, but there would never be any real use for it.
As Bruce Salem notes those who support creationism and claim scientific credentials tend to be engineers - http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Salem_hypothesis
If they are wrong, and there turns out to be a judgement day they will spend eternity burning in hell.
The standard Christian thing, believe or burn in hell for ever. Such a good argument it has been used by the Mafia ever since.
Now others have pointed out that you are also invoking Pascal's Wager, something that relies on your god being so stupid he doesn't realise that you are only believing in the hope of a reward. A reward you will never get since only non-theists go to heaven.
Don't assume that the database has been switched off based on some valid arguments. The new government is one of the most ideologically driven ones the UK has had in many decades. Lots of its initiatives seem to be driven by an urge just to slash and burn anything that runs counter to their neo-con dogmas. In this they are continuing the work of both Thatcher and Blair.
As for the Lib Dems, they are irrelevant. I suspect that they will be wiped out in both local elections and the next general election.
You are joking, it fails at step 1: "Whatever begins to exist has a cause". How can the universal quantifier be justified in this case, it certainly isn't a necessary truth more like a "more of the same" inductive argument. "Everything we have seen coming into existence has a cause, therefore everything must have a cause. One could also use David Hume's argument on causality to undermine as well. What it certainly isn't is "intuitively obvious", which is just hand waving rhetoric.
The second premiss: "The universe began to exist." is also dubious. Again, it isn't an argument from necessity so how does one justify it? Empirically the best we do is to say that the universe was in existence after the Planck epoch.
Which renders the conclusion: "Therefore, the universe has a cause" unsound.
And even if the argument was sound, it doesn't justify the claim that the cause of the universe was the god of a tribe of cattle sacrificing primitives.
I think it's been a very long time since The Times has been "the anchor media of the community", except in the sense that it's sinking like an anchor (but then, they all are).
It ceased to be the newspaper of record a long time ago, possibly even before Murdoch took it over.
Now it is just an upmarket version of the Sun - http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/ with no tits and longer words.
So while you're being effusive in pointing out the fallibility of the people you're satirizing, do you also deny that the ideas of the individual worth of every human in western culture was influenced by Jewish and Christian scriptures?
It would be ridiculous to deny that Judaism and Christianity influenced Western culture. But it would be equally ridiculous to neglect the influence of the Greek philosophers (Thomas Aquinas and the rest of the scholastics based their ethics and other ideas on Aristotle and St. Augustine took ideas from the neo-Platonists), Roman culture (The Stoicism of Marcus Aurelius as a particular example). You might want to throw in the fact that Islam was both the repository and developer of many of the ideas from these cultures for a period until (arguably) theocratic dominance of their society killed this development.
Colleges worldwide are infested with left-wing socialist professors. No surprise that their graduates are at least open to the suggestion that these views deserve their support and adoption.
You are saying that left-wing socialist professors support terrorism? Specifically left-wing socialist engineering professors? I presume you can warrant this assertion.
This sounds disturbingly like my wife's argument for buying things in a sale:
W; "I just saved [x] pounds!" H: "How did you do that?" W: "I bought [unneeded object] for [y] pounds in the sale, it was [x + y] pounds before" H: "But we didn't need [unneeded object]!"
[fx]Wife smashing husband over head with sabre[/fx]
Wouldn't it be better not to generate the CO2, or at least minimise its production, in the first place?
They seem to think that the preservation provides good evidence for the Noachic flood - http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2009/05/19/ida-missing-link
Scientists really do need to discover a crocoduck, but I doubt that would even cause these idiots to shut up. They have so much foot in mouth they resemble a hoop.
Very very small mountains. More like molehills, compared to what we should have been able to find by now. What we have been unable to find is far more telling than what we have found. And given past indiscretions, it's difficult to see any current evidence as particularly trustworthy.
Piltdown man was suspicious from the start (see Miller's letter from 1915) and was debunked in 1953. A 50 year old fake hardly helps your case.
And as for evidence - have a glance at http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/ I think you might find a fair amount there. And a nice simple example can be found here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUxLR9hdorI
Radio-carbon dating is less accurate than using a random-number generator. It relies on far too many assumptions. There are other dating methods that are more likely to be close to the truth, although none of them have a particularly good track record.
How about dendrochronology, varves, ice cores, coral banding, thermoluminescence etc. Care to tell us why all these are wrong? And why they are all wrong by the same amount?
I can show you gravity in action, to your face, on video, and to crowds. Evolutionary theory is based on guesses and unproven scientific methods (such as radio dating), and fossil "evidence", which is circumstantial at best.
I can show you evolution in action too, look at Google Scholar for the origin of Spartina Anglica. I can point even more close to home - why do you think I need a new flu shot every year?
Oh, nice conflation of "evolution" and "theory of evolution" by the way.
It's an unprovable theory (as unprovable as the existence of God). ID is not a theory - there is no evidence for it, it isn't testable and it isn't falsifiable.
And as for ID not being the same as creationism, would you like to explain this - http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2005/11/missing_link_cd.html
Umm... Stein is not discussing the Science. But, the Atheistic philosophy of Darwinism that says its all an accident and random. Lets take this one bit at a time:
1. There is no such thing as "Darwinism". If you want to talk about "Darwin's theory of evolution then that's fine.
2. Darwin's theory offers a possible mechanism for evolution. It is a scientific theory. It is not a philosophy
3. The second element of the theory, mutation, is random (though not completely). The critical third part, selection is not random. This is the bit that cretinists always fudge.
Slashdot Mirror
Given this Gallup Poll then perhaps the backers of science ought to be worried. After all it is the domain of the liberal,elite, socialist atheist fascists. All god-fearing Christians know that everything is described in teh bibul, no need for this science nonsense.
When I did my Ph.D. I had the good fortune to meet Charles Townes, the inventor of the maser. According to him he was told it was very interesting, but there would never be any real use for it.
As Bruce Salem notes those who support creationism and claim scientific credentials tend to be engineers - http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Salem_hypothesis
As was noted in the article, the girl had an underlying condition which the vaccine aggravated. It was a very specific case.
This does not validate the views of the anti-vaccination brigade.
If they are wrong, and there turns out to be a judgement day they will spend eternity burning in hell.
The standard Christian thing, believe or burn in hell for ever. Such a good argument it has been used by the Mafia ever since.
Now others have pointed out that you are also invoking Pascal's Wager, something that relies on your god being so stupid he doesn't realise that you are only believing in the hope of a reward. A reward you will never get since only non-theists go to heaven.
Don't assume that the database has been switched off based on some valid arguments. The new government is one of the most ideologically driven ones the UK has had in many decades. Lots of its initiatives seem to be driven by an urge just to slash and burn anything that runs counter to their neo-con dogmas. In this they are continuing the work of both Thatcher and Blair.
As for the Lib Dems, they are irrelevant. I suspect that they will be wiped out in both local elections and the next general election.
Trends for Goat, horse, camel and sheep sex - http://www.jesusandmo.net/2010/07/26/sheep/
You are joking, it fails at step 1: "Whatever begins to exist has a cause". How can the universal quantifier be justified in this case, it certainly isn't a necessary truth more like a "more of the same" inductive argument. "Everything we have seen coming into existence has a cause, therefore everything must have a cause. One could also use David Hume's argument on causality to undermine as well. What it certainly isn't is "intuitively obvious", which is just hand waving rhetoric.
The second premiss: "The universe began to exist." is also dubious. Again, it isn't an argument from necessity so how does one justify it? Empirically the best we do is to say that the universe was in existence after the Planck epoch.
Which renders the conclusion: "Therefore, the universe has a cause" unsound.
And even if the argument was sound, it doesn't justify the claim that the cause of the universe was the god of a tribe of cattle sacrificing primitives.
I think it's been a very long time since The Times has been "the anchor media of the community", except in the sense that it's sinking like an anchor (but then, they all are).
It ceased to be the newspaper of record a long time ago, possibly even before Murdoch took it over.
Now it is just an upmarket version of the Sun - http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/ with no tits and longer words.
So while you're being effusive in pointing out the fallibility of the people you're satirizing, do you also deny that the ideas of the individual worth of every human in western culture was influenced by Jewish and Christian scriptures?
It would be ridiculous to deny that Judaism and Christianity influenced Western culture. But it would be equally ridiculous to neglect the influence of the Greek philosophers (Thomas Aquinas and the rest of the scholastics based their ethics and other ideas on Aristotle and St. Augustine took ideas from the neo-Platonists), Roman culture (The Stoicism of Marcus Aurelius as a particular example). You might want to throw in the fact that Islam was both the repository and developer of many of the ideas from these cultures for a period until (arguably) theocratic dominance of their society killed this development.
Many a left-wing Progressive doesn't seem to realize that the Left is largely co-opted by what we right-wingers call terrorists.
You can warrant this statement too I presume? You wouldn't be making a bare assertion would you?
Colleges worldwide are infested with left-wing socialist professors. No surprise that their graduates are at least open to the suggestion that these views deserve their support and adoption.
You are saying that left-wing socialist professors support terrorism? Specifically left-wing socialist engineering professors? I presume you can warrant this assertion.
Not quite the same thing, but Bruce Salem spotted this some while back - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salem_hypothesis
Not really tools, but a lot of fun - http://www.particlezoo.net/
This sounds disturbingly like my wife's argument for buying things in a sale:
W; "I just saved [x] pounds!"
H: "How did you do that?"
W: "I bought [unneeded object] for [y] pounds in the sale, it was [x + y] pounds before"
H: "But we didn't need [unneeded object]!"
[fx]Wife smashing husband over head with sabre[/fx]
Wouldn't it be better not to generate the CO2, or at least minimise its production, in the first place?
They seem to think that the preservation provides good evidence for the Noachic flood - http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2009/05/19/ida-missing-link
Scientists really do need to discover a crocoduck, but I doubt that would even cause these idiots to shut up. They have so much foot in mouth they resemble a hoop.
And will people in Texas (*cough* Don McLeroy *cough*) believe it, or will they just come up with the usual "well its still a virus" meme.
Nowhere near as good as this one - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Serriffe
Travel agents were besieged after the article appeared.
Orwell was distinctly against this kind of activity.
What I think you mean is Stalinist.
Very very small mountains. More like molehills, compared to what we should have been able to find by now. What we have been unable to find is far more telling than what we have found. And given past indiscretions, it's difficult to see any current evidence as particularly trustworthy.
Piltdown man was suspicious from the start (see Miller's letter from 1915) and was debunked in 1953. A 50 year old fake hardly helps your case.
And as for evidence - have a glance at http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/ I think you might find a fair amount there. And a nice simple example can be found here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUxLR9hdorI
Radio-carbon dating is less accurate than using a random-number generator. It relies on far too many assumptions. There are other dating methods that are more likely to be close to the truth, although none of them have a particularly good track record.
How about dendrochronology, varves, ice cores, coral banding, thermoluminescence etc. Care to tell us why all these are wrong? And why they are all wrong by the same amount?
I can show you gravity in action, to your face, on video, and to crowds. Evolutionary theory is based on guesses and unproven scientific methods (such as radio dating), and fossil "evidence", which is circumstantial at best.
I can show you evolution in action too, look at Google Scholar for the origin of Spartina Anglica. I can point even more close to home - why do you think I need a new flu shot every year?
Oh, nice conflation of "evolution" and "theory of evolution" by the way.
Like this series of exchanges you mean?
http://www.badscience.net/2008/06/all-time-classic-creationist-pwnage
Where the original experiments are being touted as evidence for ID by Behe and as flawed by Dembski.
So what happens when someone invents an algorithmic method of producing such pictures? Do we start banning programs like "Blender"?
If they are putting this beta into an LTS then I must admit I don't understand why they can't put KDE 4.0.3 in.
It's an unprovable theory (as unprovable as the existence of God). ID is not a theory - there is no evidence for it, it isn't testable and it isn't falsifiable.
And as for ID not being the same as creationism, would you like to explain this - http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2005/11/missing_link_cd.html
1. There is no such thing as "Darwinism". If you want to talk about "Darwin's theory of evolution then that's fine.
2. Darwin's theory offers a possible mechanism for evolution. It is a scientific theory. It is not a philosophy
3. The second element of the theory, mutation, is random (though not completely). The critical third part, selection is not random. This is the bit that cretinists always fudge.