I understand them well. I would never cede their understanding to Julien Assange however. His *version* of them never involves himself, or perhaps always or only involves himself. If your life blood is "leaks" then you had best be squeaky clean yourself, and open. He is not. At least Robin Hood admitted he was a thief.
Why? Because every armchair quarterback with 20/20 hind-site will be on you like a pack of flies. Sure we all want to bust the Rodney King beaters, but who can justify every working moment at their jobs when the whole world gets to critique? it degenerates to "OMG! He just sat 4 8 hrs radaring speeders....go catch some real crims!!"
See, there is no step. None. You can't actually have one there. I didn't gloss over it, it is a logical impossibility. It is like saying "I have teeth therefor aliens exist" or "3+2=5 therefor I like hazel nuts" it is a non-sequitur. How does this parallel "with the creation stories of many major religions"? Because the parent made up a straw man? Really? that is your argument?
"I'm sure they took plenty of sensible precautions, like "test it as thoroughly as possible in the lab to make sure it's not dangerous", and "keep it separate and distant from actual crops to prevent genetic transfer". "
I'm not. One drive through an actual farm area should tell you the same. Do you honestly believe they tear up a mile square plop down a few plants and a single bee hive and stand back and use a flamethrower on anything that tries to leave the property? If your answer is no... then you are leaking genetic information. And just so you know where I am coming from, having made GM crops I have (almost) no problems with them. I always loathe the shotgun approach to field testing however.
"And is just further proof to me that religion does far, FAR more harm than it does good."
Yeah, no bias here.
Take a step back. You just managed to connect the dots 'Germany and power' to 'All religion is bad' with no intervening step. But don't worry - *They* are the crazy unscientific ones...right?
Science is not derived from the writing of men?... Tell me more of this Radiance which delivers Science deus ex machina.
"The idea that we can take seriously people's theism the majority of which is based on writings of ancient human beings in pre-scientific and pre-literate times is still ludicrous."
"I am sure to get flamed to death, but I can try." - is me bitching? And I was exactly right, so you would down mod because I was right? I am just trying to see your mindset here. What I said *is* controversial (read: wrong? What an amazing cop out. Stand up and speak your mind or not, but don't hide behind mod points you amazing coward.)
Thank you for the response, it is so hard to have these conversations, but I appreciate the effort on your part to make it sensible.
Ultimately I agree with you.
I don't need to invest the time to know how an atom works in a chem lab ( 6 semesters of chemistry was enough thank you) I will trust the people doing the grunt work have all their ducks in a row.
And you are right, it all boils down to trust. If we could quantify that we might get somewhere. Perhaps this is the way to look at it. I have been working the piles of dirt analogy, but maybe the better one is the Electro-Magnetic spectrum (your green light is the same as my Pogues song)
"In other words, the results you got are very different to a miracle or a prayer being answered, because neither of those are repeatable or verifiable" - As a scientist I am not sure this is true. I am not sure the experiment has ever been done. Or ever could be done. To do a double blind study of prayer...it would have to be a twin study on steroids, caffeine and meth...yuk. Even thinking about the methodology gives me a headache.
Thanks again for the reasonable response. and in deference to your Atheism, I will not pray for you;) (all in good fun)
"NO one prays to Dawkins. No one says he is divine. No one treats him like a saint."
Few people in the hard sciences use all encompassing statements....just wanted to point that out.
"It is by no logical definition a religion." - and I never said that, your words, get them out of my mouth. "Nothing is taken on faith, nothing is above critism(sic)" - snort, go back and actually read what I said. Just because your dirt pile is small doesn't mean it isn't a dirt pile.
"nothing is written on stone" - um, the Rosetta Stone has writing on it. Oh, you meant *in* stone. Ask the folks who have run up against this. A decent example is the cold/warm blooded dinosaur debate. Go back and see what happened to the Apostates who first suggested that they might just possibly be warm blooded, and how they tempered their science do to the canon writ on the 'stone'.
"and nothing depends on blind faith." 'I can...' is not a verifiable scientific method. 'I can reproduce the results of the super collider' - No, *you* can't. You have to accept (and without the math background) on blind faith that what they are reporting is true. 'But other will check for me!!' No, not really. Who version controls Linus' submissions to the Kernel? I think there is one guy that looks every so often, but who checks him? and so on and so forth.
"religion is all about Blind faith." - I love it when Atheists tell me what religion is, like a white guy telling what it is to be black. Does it never occur to you that people have seen things that you have not? Minus a telescope the fact that you have seen Halley's comet and I have not means that I get to degrade you when you speak of it?
"The argument is no one can offer proof of gods existence" - again the all encompassing statement. No one you have ever met or heard of.
", and every property of god people claim exists has been proven wrong." Proven? By all means point me to the study.
"Prayer? doesn't work. Healing? nope." Prayer may have influence on medical outcomes. Google it yourself. the Science on this is still out.
"Second coming? nope* God on earth? nope* and so on. *If you bother to actually read the bible, Jesus is saying those thing will happen in the life time of the disciples." - That is one interpretation. There is however many Apocryphal books that say otherwise. If you care to read those.
"What you describe is an organization and cult of personalities; which are not religions or faith based." -And here is the crux, yes that is it exactly. I was tasked to explain why it looks like a religion and I answered that. Which in now way deserves this =
"Your test is another example of the hate and irrationalities that religion spreads." Hate? Irrationality? I answered a FUCKING QUESTION YOU PINHEAD. What did I get - your drunken diatribe about Christianity. I got YOUR personal hate. Because I answered a question. I tried to add some perspective. Leave it to one of the 'Faithful' to have an issue with it and kick up a bunch of dust and bullshit. You remind me of nothing more than a republican tapping his shoe in an airport bathroom while standing firm against the gay. In other words - you are trying too hard, clean your own house before you try to clean mine.
HA! I knew it. I answered a fair question and got modded down. No good deed goes unpunished. Hey Mod Troll, how about you agree to disagree, or heaven forfend actually articulate your point? Someone asked, I answered. Don't like the answer? Too f'n bad.
I am a religious person, made the decision as an adult, have a degree in Botany form a big 10 school, worked in a lab for years evolving germs for a living. (in that order - decision, degree, job) I utterly reject Intelligent Design on both Scientific and Theistic grounds.
That should give you a bit of an idea of where I am coming from.
The criteria are like trying to define speciazation, viz. If it looks like a duck, waddles, and quacks like a duck, it is probably is a duck.
To many of the religious, all of the analogues are there.
Zealots(plenty), Saints (Dawkins, et al), A Pontiff (Hitchens), and from them the 'Holy' books. A creed ("No aspect of Religion has *ever* been good", etc.), proselytization (too many to list), schisms("I am an agnostic athiest", it starts to become a bad version of Boggle after a while, just like Christianity) and lastly Faith*.
To many religious people it looks, waddles and quacks.
Seraphim
*The last one is the stickiest and causes the most ire I think. There is a lot more faith in science itself than the average atheist wants to see. By way of example take any journal out there, sure some of the results will be repeated, but most will never be checked, other scientists will take it on faith that the results are right. The gothcha - the argument is that that is a different kind of faith. Perhaps small 'f' vs large 'F'. IMHO like the letters all that it is is a matter of scale. dirt is dirt no matter the size of the pile. The argument goes that the individual can always replicate an experiment, but they can't replicate God. Fair enough. What they never ask is if they can replicate a person's faith. There is a way to try to do the experiment (several really) but no one seems interested to try. I darkly used to suggest one way. All you needed was a bullet, some way to fire it, and your own open mouth. It is a quick experiment and in seconds will give you the answer you are looking for. Recording it is going to be a problem, but sacrifices must be made in the pursuit of knowledge.;)
Except of course you are wrong. "The $whatever" can easily refer to a subset.
Try this.
"I was walking downtown and the protesters threw garbage at me."
Are you implying that all protesters everywhere threw garbage? Or even the subset of them that were downtown. Or the subset of that that was where she was walking, or the subset of that that was at a particular protest. "the protesters" is an identifier of a subset of {the people throwing garbage}. The only erroneous part of it is assuming all of those people that threw garbage at her were indeed protesters and not people that joined in for the fun.
In other words there is a whole lot more nuance here than you think.
and to quote you - "I imagine "the atheists damn near crucified" you because the kind of illogical contortions you have to make to get to a statement like yours is the same kind of thinking that leads to most theistic beliefs."
Yes, because as a Scientist I always trust an extrapolation that goes from 1000 to 500 million. On our Earth I believe these people normally peddle Homeopathy.
Slashdot Mirror
I understand them well. I would never cede their understanding to Julien Assange however. His *version* of them never involves himself, or perhaps always or only involves himself. If your life blood is "leaks" then you had best be squeaky clean yourself, and open. He is not. At least Robin Hood admitted he was a thief.
is the identity of the original leakers also subject to your postulate on selective leaking?
It certainly is part of Assange's. I can only ever assume that it was the papers that heald him back. His redactions are a joke after all.
is there any category of information that should not leak?
Many say no. But claiming special dispensation on a leak .. that is just delicious.
-Seraphim
Females are not. Children are. Dumb ass.
"If you're old enough and healthy enough to break someone's wrist, I don't see why you should object to having someone's hand on your crotch."
My God, do you wake up this dumb *every* morning? ..."But I prefer my plane to be bomb-free."
No, I guess not.
Just like cops watch cop shows and "learn" how to behave from them
[Citation Needed]
I call bullshit. You said rockets, name the system.
"We installed 20 emergency stop pendants so those people could still be required."
You installed 20 pendants because your software was shit. Name the place and rocket, there can only be a few.
Except of course the entire industry of finding and avoiding those cops that are doing it. FuzzBusters etc.
Why? Because every armchair quarterback with 20/20 hind-site will be on you like a pack of flies. Sure we all want to bust the Rodney King beaters, but who can justify every working moment at their jobs when the whole world gets to critique? it degenerates to "OMG! He just sat 4 8 hrs radaring speeders....go catch some real crims!!"
By all means, I implore you to only kill your meat with your claws and teeth and eat it raw.
See, there is no step. None. You can't actually have one there. I didn't gloss over it, it is a logical impossibility. It is like saying "I have teeth therefor aliens exist" or "3+2=5 therefor I like hazel nuts" it is a non-sequitur. How does this parallel "with the creation stories of many major religions"? Because the parent made up a straw man? Really? that is your argument?
"I'm sure they took plenty of sensible precautions, like "test it as thoroughly as possible in the lab to make sure it's not dangerous", and "keep it separate and distant from actual crops to prevent genetic transfer". "
I'm not. One drive through an actual farm area should tell you the same. Do you honestly believe they tear up a mile square plop down a few plants and a single bee hive and stand back and use a flamethrower on anything that tries to leave the property? If your answer is no ... then you are leaking genetic information. And just so you know where I am coming from, having made GM crops I have (almost) no problems with them. I always loathe the shotgun approach to field testing however.
"And is just further proof to me that religion does far, FAR more harm than it does good."
Yeah, no bias here.
Take a step back. You just managed to connect the dots 'Germany and power' to 'All religion is bad' with no intervening step. But don't worry - *They* are the crazy unscientific ones ...right?
"Or anything much more advanced than 2+2 (which equals 4 for any Creationists reading this.)" - Yes you said that exactly.
Science is not derived from the writing of men? ... Tell me more of this Radiance which delivers Science deus ex machina.
"The idea that we can take seriously people's theism the majority of which is based on writings of ancient human beings in pre-scientific and pre-literate times is still ludicrous."
And yet we use their science without question.
Try again. Here is a hint - the sentence contradicts itself.
Proving you have no actual background in science. Good luck with that.
"I am sure to get flamed to death, but I can try." - is me bitching? And I was exactly right, so you would down mod because I was right? I am just trying to see your mindset here. What I said *is* controversial (read: wrong? What an amazing cop out. Stand up and speak your mind or not, but don't hide behind mod points you amazing coward.)
Thank you for the response, it is so hard to have these conversations, but I appreciate the effort on your part to make it sensible.
Ultimately I agree with you.
I don't need to invest the time to know how an atom works in a chem lab ( 6 semesters of chemistry was enough thank you) I will trust the people doing the grunt work have all their ducks in a row.
And you are right, it all boils down to trust. If we could quantify that we might get somewhere. Perhaps this is the way to look at it. I have been working the piles of dirt analogy, but maybe the better one is the Electro-Magnetic spectrum (your green light is the same as my Pogues song)
"In other words, the results you got are very different to a miracle or a prayer being answered, because neither of those are repeatable or verifiable" - As a scientist I am not sure this is true. I am not sure the experiment has ever been done. Or ever could be done. To do a double blind study of prayer...it would have to be a twin study on steroids, caffeine and meth...yuk. Even thinking about the methodology gives me a headache.
Thanks again for the reasonable response. and in deference to your Atheism, I will not pray for you ;) (all in good fun)
Seraphim
"NO one prays to Dawkins. No one says he is divine. No one treats him like a saint."
Few people in the hard sciences use all encompassing statements....just wanted to point that out.
"It is by no logical definition a religion." - and I never said that, your words, get them out of my mouth.
"Nothing is taken on faith, nothing is above critism(sic)" - snort, go back and actually read what I said. Just because your dirt pile is small doesn't mean it isn't a dirt pile.
"nothing is written on stone" - um, the Rosetta Stone has writing on it. Oh, you meant *in* stone. Ask the folks who have run up against this. A decent example is the cold/warm blooded dinosaur debate. Go back and see what happened to the Apostates who first suggested that they might just possibly be warm blooded, and how they tempered their science do to the canon writ on the 'stone'.
"and nothing depends on blind faith." 'I can...' is not a verifiable scientific method. 'I can reproduce the results of the super collider' - No, *you* can't. You have to accept (and without the math background) on blind faith that what they are reporting is true. 'But other will check for me!!' No, not really. Who version controls Linus' submissions to the Kernel? I think there is one guy that looks every so often, but who checks him? and so on and so forth.
"religion is all about Blind faith." - I love it when Atheists tell me what religion is, like a white guy telling what it is to be black. Does it never occur to you that people have seen things that you have not? Minus a telescope the fact that you have seen Halley's comet and I have not means that I get to degrade you when you speak of it?
"The argument is no one can offer proof of gods existence" - again the all encompassing statement. No one you have ever met or heard of.
", and every property of god people claim exists has been proven wrong." Proven? By all means point me to the study.
"Prayer? doesn't work. Healing? nope." Prayer may have influence on medical outcomes. Google it yourself. the Science on this is still out.
"Second coming? nope* God on earth? nope* and so on. *If you bother to actually read the bible, Jesus is saying those thing will happen in the life time of the disciples." - That is one interpretation. There is however many Apocryphal books that say otherwise. If you care to read those.
"What you describe is an organization and cult of personalities; which are not religions or faith based." -And here is the crux, yes that is it exactly. I was tasked to explain why it looks like a religion and I answered that. Which in now way deserves this =
"Your test is another example of the hate and irrationalities that religion spreads." Hate? Irrationality? I answered a FUCKING QUESTION YOU PINHEAD. What did I get - your drunken diatribe about Christianity. I got YOUR personal hate. Because I answered a question. I tried to add some perspective. Leave it to one of the 'Faithful' to have an issue with it and kick up a bunch of dust and bullshit. You remind me of nothing more than a republican tapping his shoe in an airport bathroom while standing firm against the gay. In other words - you are trying too hard, clean your own house before you try to clean mine.
HA! I knew it. I answered a fair question and got modded down. No good deed goes unpunished. Hey Mod Troll, how about you agree to disagree, or heaven forfend actually articulate your point? Someone asked, I answered. Don't like the answer? Too f'n bad.
I am sure to get flamed to death, but I can try.
I am a religious person, made the decision as an adult, have a degree in Botany form a big 10 school, worked in a lab for years evolving germs for a living. (in that order - decision, degree, job) I utterly reject Intelligent Design on both Scientific and Theistic grounds.
That should give you a bit of an idea of where I am coming from.
The criteria are like trying to define speciazation, viz. If it looks like a duck, waddles, and quacks like a duck, it is probably is a duck.
To many of the religious, all of the analogues are there.
Zealots(plenty), Saints (Dawkins, et al), A Pontiff (Hitchens), and from them the 'Holy' books. A creed ("No aspect of Religion has *ever* been good", etc.), proselytization (too many to list), schisms("I am an agnostic athiest", it starts to become a bad version of Boggle after a while, just like Christianity) and lastly Faith*.
To many religious people it looks, waddles and quacks.
Seraphim
*The last one is the stickiest and causes the most ire I think. There is a lot more faith in science itself than the average atheist wants to see. By way of example take any journal out there, sure some of the results will be repeated, but most will never be checked, other scientists will take it on faith that the results are right. ;)
The gothcha - the argument is that that is a different kind of faith. Perhaps small 'f' vs large 'F'. IMHO like the letters all that it is is a matter of scale. dirt is dirt no matter the size of the pile.
The argument goes that the individual can always replicate an experiment, but they can't replicate God. Fair enough. What they never ask is if they can replicate a person's faith. There is a way to try to do the experiment (several really) but no one seems interested to try. I darkly used to suggest one way. All you needed was a bullet, some way to fire it, and your own open mouth. It is a quick experiment and in seconds will give you the answer you are looking for. Recording it is going to be a problem, but sacrifices must be made in the pursuit of knowledge.
Except of course you are wrong. "The $whatever" can easily refer to a subset.
Try this.
"I was walking downtown and the protesters threw garbage at me."
Are you implying that all protesters everywhere threw garbage? Or even the subset of them that were downtown. Or the subset of that that was where she was walking, or the subset of that that was at a particular protest. "the protesters" is an identifier of a subset of {the people throwing garbage}. The only erroneous part of it is assuming all of those people that threw garbage at her were indeed protesters and not people that joined in for the fun.
In other words there is a whole lot more nuance here than you think.
and to quote you - "I imagine "the atheists damn near crucified" you because the kind of illogical contortions you have to make to get to a statement like yours is the same kind of thinking that leads to most theistic beliefs."
Thanks for making ThePowerOfGrayskull's point.
Welcome to being the last SuperPower. Don't like it? Defund the military 90%.
You are missing the fact that the Arab League asked for this. Though I hate that we are putting our men in harm's way, this wasn't our decision.
Yes, because as a Scientist I always trust an extrapolation that goes from 1000 to 500 million. On our Earth I believe these people normally peddle Homeopathy.