Separation of church and state

Right, but the truth is that in eight investigations nobody at Hadley-CRU was found to have manipulated data, concealed data, acted against the public's interest, or done anything dishonest at all.The only person who broke the law was the climate denier who hacked the Hadley-CRU email system and violated the privacy of dozens of research scientists. If people in the scientific community want to have "political control", they leave the scientific community and become politicians. Honestly you sound like a raving moonbat with this conspiracy theory stuff. You've been lied to, Marc; the only conspiracy is the very well-funded one to deny the troubling but valid scientific truth of anthropogenic global warming. He's already a millionaire. "Millions"? Chump change compared to the billions in profits at stake in oil and gas production. Marc, the oil and gas industries produced the most profit last year of any year of any business in all of recorded human history. If you want to follow the money, don't you think that's where it leads? To the enormous amount of money that stands to be lost by oil and gas producers if we reduce our carbon emissions even a tiny bit? Sure, but it's just against having gay sex, not actually against being gay or being gay married. Isn't that kind of weird? And what, specifically, did it say about origin of life? Yeah, and I didn't learn in Civics class that J. Edgar Hoover persecuted homosexuals but was a transvestite. Some stuff just isnt going to make it. And anyway you've completely confused the chain of causality, here - Darwin had already developed evolution by natural selection by the time his daughter died. He was hardly on a quest for "fulfilled atheism" - his degree was in theology, remember? And remember how you just made up the part where he supposedly joined some kind of atheist-geologist cabal? No, I kind of suspect they're talking about dragons, unicorns, fairies - you know, from mythology. What indication is there that this paragraph is supposedly referring to the Bible? Don't you think kids these days know about mythology? At least from video games?What "mythological creatures" are you teaching about in Sunday School, anyway? That sounds way cooler than what I had to suffer through. I don't even see the word "naturalism" in what you quoted. Pull your tinfoil hat a little tighter, Marc; you're interpreting any statement of scientific inquiry into the natural world as being a secret code for atheism. Marc, you're talking about a group of people that legalized slavery. Right into the US Constitution. (Does your copy not have that?) No, I'm not, Marc. Not even close. Go back and re-read. Provide even one example of a scientist who has asserted a divine right of rule to "save the planet." One example, please. In other words the difference is what you're talking about doesn't exist. Pull the tinfoil hat a little tighter! Right - the results of religious demagoguery and manipulation of an ignorant populace. You know, people like you. I doubt that the Founding Fathers were referring to global warming, a phenomenon not discovered until 1970 or so. I don't see "environmental interest" in the material you quoted.

If the attempt is to "overwhelm" why are people doing you the favor of dropping out? Pull the tinfoil hat a little tighter yet. Nothing. We were speaking of creationists, which is why I said "creationists." See? It's right there in the first line. Get too far and... what, exactly? Marc, I already told you - you can have a Great Debate opened with anyone you want. Any one person, or any number. Your choice! And no one else can barge in. You can literally put anyone you want on the spot, subject to their desire to participate. I think it's obvious that any of us, would.Why would we offer such accommodation if the point was to gang-bang every creationist who stumbles in? And if it's truly so vexing for you to field replies from multiple people, why haven't you started a Great Debate on the topic of your choice? Your arguments should be in your own words. They should be supported by fact, which should be corroborated by a source.Honestly I don't see why this is so hard to follow. You never had to do this in college? High school, even? Make an argument supported by cited facts, but without plagiarizing? Nobody wants to side-track you. We want to correct your copious errors of fact.You say dozens of things that just aren't true, Marc. Every post is riddled with errors of fact and we take it upon ourselves to research and correct them, so that the debate can proceed from a basis of fact, not fantasy. Again - you need to understand that we just don't give a shit about you. I know that's hard to believe, since you've wrapped us all up in another one of your self-serving tinfoil hat conspiracy theories, but we just don't care about you. What you say is interesting and we respond to it but nobody is sitting at home thinking "how can I trip Marc up, tonight?"These sweeping accusations of dishonesty and bad faith are fallacious well-poisoning and violate the forum rules about arguing in good faith. Nobody is presenting an argument except because they believe it's an effective response to yours. But I'm beginning to see that you're wrapped up in so many paranoid delusions of persecution that it may not be possible to reach you at all. We'll see, I guess. Why is it so hard for you to believe that the same might be true of us? That it actually has nothing to do with you at all? If that's true why are half of Americans creationists? No, I was rather thinking about the treatment of Christians in Muslim Saudi Arabia, or the treatment of Jews by Christians in Europe, and so on. You know - getting rid of the competition. What was promoted before 1947 continues to be promoted - freedom of religion for all, and a government inherently secular and therefore religion-blind. Secular government protects freedom of religion. Some of your religious peers understand that. It's a shame they haven't done more to convince you. I did, and when I looked up Romans 13 I found that it was entirely bogus. Not a single thing said in your link actually reflected the Bible verse:

quote:

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St. Paul’s command in Romans 13 for Christians to be obedient to government applied only to those that are orderly and lawfully instituted by God.

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But that's untrue. There's nothing in Romans 13 that says Christians only have to be obedient to governments that are lawfully instituted by God; Romans 13 says that all governments are lawfully instituted by God. Otherwise, God would not allow them to govern!When your link can't even get the plain meaning of the Bible right, why should I trust it on anything else? When you're willing to just make up your own personal scripture, Marc, why should I trust you on anything? Doesn't mean they were right back then. One thing that never changes, after all, is that humans are inherently flawed, isn't that right? Why would we expect the humans of the past to be less flawed? Feel free to, or to stand up against any other use of public money you object to. I wish you luck with that, I honestly do - everybody has the right to petition the government for the redress of grievances, everybody has the right to representation in democracy.I think the public benefit of scientific research - benefits like the computers and networks that allow you and I to have this conversation - outweigh the costs, even the cost of making somebody a little rich. I don't expect you to immediately agree, and you don't have to. You and I have the same right to try to influence the government with our speech and with our votes, and I hope you continue to take advantage of that.

It is another thread. We have a thread on the Hadley-CRU accusations in particular, maybe in that thread you could explain what your link is supposed to prove? I don't see anything that refutes any of the investigations; in fact, I don't even see any indication on that page that they even took place.Clearly, global warming denialism is simply another cult where disconfirming evidence is completely ignored. Well, I knew that already. By definition, yes, that's true. You say this a couple of times throughout, and I'm not sure I understand it. Is this perhaps "Morissettian" irony, that is, ironic because it's been mistaken as an example of irony, but really isn't? (You know, like "raaaaiiiiinn, on your wedding day"?) Wasn't Jesus crucified next to a thief? That's generally what it said. Did you miss that I asked specifically what it said?You do understand the difference between those two words, right? "General" and "specific"? But nobody on this forum wrote your biology textbook, so why would our use of the term matter?Again - given that the context is "fantastic creatures", and that there are no fantastic creatures in the Bible, why do you immediately interpret a mention of fantastic creatures from mythology as a veiled slight against the Bible?Isn't that just a little paranoid? Again - aren't you just taking any mention of science's program of discovery about the natural world to be some kind of attack on Christianity? Surely Christianity isn't completely opposed to learning about the natural world? How do scientists who are Christians make that work, if any intellectual endeavor whatsoever is of the devil, in your view? Who is "Victor Stenger"? It was a way of life that many of the Founding Fathers were a part of. They were slaveowners! Don't they have that in your revisionist history? Well, that's simply not true at all. You brought up creationists in message 246, where you made the deluded claim that "the name of the game at these types of forums seems to be to discourage/stop a creationist from posting." You have a bit of an honesty problem, Marc, and in a really ridiculous way, too, since we can always go back and see exactly who said what. What? Why would we try to stop creationists before they embarrass themselves? If we're so nefarious isn't that exactly what we want them to do? No, Marc, I didn't create the "Great Debate" format. It's been offered here long before I ever showed up at EvC, I can assure you. I have to say, I'm pretty good at detecting "damned if you do, damned if you don't" kind of things. My suspicion is that if there were only one or two of us instead of the rotating six, you'd use that as evidence that we had so little confidence in ourselves that most of us wouldn't go "on the record", or something.I think it's a lot more fruitful for you to concentrate on the strength of your own arguments and on making a lot less elementary errors of fact than to wonder about who has confidence in whom. For what it's worth every person on this thread who isn't you has the utmost confidence that you're completely wrong, mostly because you're so frequently wrong about really simple little things, how could you possibly be right about anything else? Well, so which is it, Marc? Are you going to not cite sources because you think that's against the forum rules (quite the opposite is true), or are you going to not cite sources because you don't think we cite enough of our own? Please pick a story and stick with it. Your errors have already been corrected, many in this message. It's not really making an impression on you, so why on Earth would I go back and repeat the process? I mean, come on. If you were someone who was capable of admitting error, that would be one thing, but I'm still chasing you about how "states" means "countries" and you've still not admitted that you got that wrong.Sorry, but no. It would really just be more effective if you stopped making mistakes and then blaming others when you get caught. Just a good thermometer. Informed by who? Be specific.This is where the accusations of paranoia are coming from, by the way; first it was your suggestion that there's a conspiracy of scientists that murders prominent creationists, even though you couldn't point to a single prominent creationist who had actually been murdered or even died under mysterious circumstances; now, an assertion of a wide-ranging conspiracy that "financially ruins" (how?) individual Christians who don't... say that there's a separation between church and state. Wait, what? That's an awful big gun to bear on nothing more than a civil ideology. And if that's true why are Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter so rich? Why aren't they "financially ruined"? Financially they seem to be doing pretty well for themselves. So are we talking about the Word of God or the words of Calvin? And if you don't trust Calvin on other doctrinal matters - after all, you're no Calvinist - then why do you trust him to get this right? Especially when the plain reading of the Bible stands in stark contradiction? There's just no way to square the circle - Romans 13 says obey your government, it gives no support to rebellion. In fact it says rebellion is a sin against God. But only as a spiritual freedom from spiritual bondage. The Bible isn't opposed to actual bondage, in fact it details the circumstances under which one is permitted to enslave others, and it certainly says that rebellion against the government is a sin against the God who ordains all governments. Romans 13, specifically, is one of the places where it says that. You're simply proving the old canard that it's only secularists who ever actually read their Bibles. This is an incredible litany of things that are completely false: the US doesn't own any car companies, just stock in a few; Alexander Hamilton created the first government bank, the Federal Reserve Bank, which operates to this day; government-run health care has been a feature of the US since 1778; and nobody's "re-written the Declaration of Independence", how could they and why, given that the declaration is a document with only historical interest within the United States, and no force of law whatsoever? Republicans are likely to take the smallest possible majority in the Senate, but not the House; that wouldn't be any different than any other mid-term election. Smile if you like but I'm not sure what agenda your side plants to advance given control of only one-half of one branch of government, which they'll lose in 2012.

Yeah, they're buying research.You realize that the Federal government buys things, right?

These are examples of the paranoid delusions you hold to which I have previously alluded. Please don't blame me for the inability to defend your claims that sends you spiraling out into new ones. We call it the "Gish Gallop", by the way. He wasn't the first but he's a lot better at it than you.

Who do you think that "Victor Stenger" is, that whatever he says must be our Holy Writ?Did you read the book? Just curious.