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Author Topic:   On The Limits of Human Talent
PaulK
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Posts: 17822
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 2.3


(1)
Message 21 of 126 (711640)
11-21-2013 2:03 AM
Reply to: Message 16 by marc9000
11-20-2013 7:34 PM


quote:
I agree. The point of this thread is that we should be able to distinguish between useful science and wasteful science, or science that's only intent is to promote the destruction of Christianity.
Obviously not. The point is - as usual with you - to demand a far-right pseudo-Christianity founded upon lies.
quote:
We should recognize the importance of leaving alone mysteries that belong only to God.
By which you mean that the dogmas of your sect should not be questioned.
quote:
I"m not saying that atheists shouldn't be permitted to study their secular curiousities all they want. They should just do on their own time with their own money, and not teach it as fact in public science classes.
By which you mean that teaching should be censored to remove facts contrary to the dogmas of your sect.
quote:
That's what they demand from Christians, but they don't apply it to themselves.
No. Atheists in general have no problem with real science being taught as science.
quote:
And questioning public searches for atheist support.
It obviously doesn't say anything about that. Nor does it endorse the worship of lies.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 16 by marc9000, posted 11-20-2013 7:34 PM marc9000 has not replied

  
PaulK
Member
Posts: 17822
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 2.3


Message 35 of 126 (711758)
11-22-2013 1:18 AM
Reply to: Message 33 by jar
11-21-2013 2:54 PM


Re: How funny is it?
quote:
[quoting Shalamabobbi]
"So let me guess, the borderline between the two is any knowledge that challenges your personal understanding of the biblical narrative?
I've thought about this some more and to be fair I am sure that he includes findings that are politically unacceptable to him, too.
Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 33 by jar, posted 11-21-2013 2:54 PM jar has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 36 by jar, posted 11-22-2013 8:44 AM PaulK has not replied

  
PaulK
Member
Posts: 17822
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 2.3


Message 60 of 126 (711908)
11-24-2013 7:05 AM
Reply to: Message 49 by marc9000
11-23-2013 9:30 PM


Re: I guess I need to chip in here.
quote:
It's true that global warming hysteria would have been the dream of every brutal dictator that's ever existed in the past, as an easy way to gain control over the masses, that still doesn't change the fact that it's nothing but a big government farce.
No Marc, people LIKE YOU are the dream of every brutal dictator. Global warming may be against the political correctness of the Far Right. But it's a reality. Spewing hate and lies won't change that.
And if you want to avoid tyranny, wouldn't it be better to take strong action NOW to avert a potential crisis rather than just go on letting things get worse and worse until even more extreme measures are needed? The more extreme the crisis the greater the appeal of tyranny.
Alerting people to dangers, trying to encourage action to avert it is not tyranny, even if you personally - or the people who pay your politicians - don't like it.

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 Message 49 by marc9000, posted 11-23-2013 9:30 PM marc9000 has not replied

  
PaulK
Member
Posts: 17822
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 2.3


Message 73 of 126 (711968)
11-25-2013 1:36 AM
Reply to: Message 66 by marc9000
11-24-2013 9:00 PM


Re: I guess I need to chip in here.
quote:
Read through this thread, and you'll find that multiple participants brought up multiple topics. Message 6 referred to ICR, message 21 to "far-right pseudo-Christianity", and the "dogmas of my sect", message 23, "kilograms, thermometers, Episcopalian scientists", etc. the next message, "4.5 billion years, it all goes on and on. I can't discuss those things without referring to politics and business.
Of course you could. What does the age of the earth have to do with politics or business ? Why do you need to drag up other issues from politics and business to explain why you place your alleged limits of human ability to conveniently protect certain of your beliefs from falsification ?
quote:
But science isn't the only source of knowledge. Someone with a 6th grade education could look at the model I referenced and get an ideal of how far away a light year is, and wonder how precise scientific proclamations could possibly be concerning black holes in galaxies that are 250 million light years from earth. If he's a taxpayer in a free society, he has a right to question it.
Sure. But that doesn't mean that it's wrong. Or that you'll understand the answer. Or that you have a right to dictate to others what is and is not true (you can certainly TRY to, but nobody has to believe you).
quote:
That's right, that's why religion must be programed out of science students at the perfect age, usually the early teen years.
This is a lie. What you mean is that science education isn't censored to cover up the fact that your sect is in conflict with science.
quote:
Depends on how far you expect me to change my viewpoint. If you expect me to reject the book of Genesis, you'd better stop at this point.
How about your literalist interpretations ? Or do you declare that Genesis MUST be interpreted literally ? On what grounds ?
quote:
What evidence are you talking about, scientific evidence only, or evidence of the scientific community's political motives? I've examined a lot of evidence concerning the latter.
Actually you haven't. But really you should start by looking at the internal consistency of your beliefs, and the reasoning behind them.
Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 66 by marc9000, posted 11-24-2013 9:00 PM marc9000 has not replied

  
PaulK
Member
Posts: 17822
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 2.3


Message 84 of 126 (712031)
11-26-2013 1:45 AM
Reply to: Message 78 by marc9000
11-25-2013 8:38 PM


Re: Getting back on topic...
quote:
That's true for here-and-now, nuts-and-bolts science. But it's not true for controversial "sciences", like thousands-of-lightyears astronomy, or global-warming-is-man-made sciences. The purpose of this paragraph from my O/P;
Of course this is untrue. All science is subject to verification and falsification - even the parts which contradict your dogmas.
quote:
is to propose some sort of distinction between useful science, and wasteful science, or science that is philosophical. (intent on weakening the hold of religion.) The scientific community alone is never going to do it, it will continue to try to seamlessly blend them
In other words, science must be prohibited from finding out that your dogmas are false.
quote:
I don't hate science, I just have a really justified mistrust for its leadership. Spending most of the last 12 years watching its incredible dishonesty concerning Intelligent Design.
The only "incredible dishonesty"? I've seen comes FROM the supporters of Intelligent Design.
quote:
I don't have a problem with most scientific data concerning useful science. When the scientific community says "The globe is warming" - that part I'm okay with. When they say "unrestricted free markets are causing it" and "we must do something about it", that's when I'd like to see these declarations disconnected, not all blended together as the scientific community is masterful at doing.
I don't think that anybody says that "unrestricted free markets" are causing Global Warming. "Carbon credits' are even an attempt to harness a free market.
But any economist will recognise that the free market as it exists doesn't have adequate controls for externalities, such as the effects of emissions. Some companies may choose to try and reduce them for the sake of good PR (or even out of moral conviction) but others will go on polluting and try to compete on price.
quote:
They've been verified in many ways. No matter how much the scientific community hates to admit it, it's a fact that the U.S. founders referred to the Bible as they were forming the constitution.
There's a massive non-sequitur. But the Bible has been found to be unreliable in many ways. And in fact it's really hard to understand why you'd want research that might challenge it suppressed unless you fear that it won't pass that test.
Now maybe some of the founders of the U.S. referred to the Bible in some way while writing the Constitution but it's also a fact that no specifically Biblical principles found their way into it and that the Constitution never invokes the Bible as a justification.
quote:
In the U.S. all those differing religions around the world mean little. None of them are permitted to control the government.
Of course it matters if you want to be FAIR - and follow the Constitution of the United States. If you want to be fair, you have to take the concerns of every religion into consideration. If you want your religion protected from scientific challenge then the same applies to the phoney history of The Book of Mormon, or the nonsense of Scientology.
quote:
The scientific community does have at least some control of the U.S. government. The activities of the EPA for example, are often based on far more than just data.
You mean that the EPA takes scientific findings into account ? Isn't that exactly what it should be doing ?
quote:
This is just an unevidenced, emotional cry from the scientific community with no data to back it up. Most religions aren't interested in science, unless science tries some intrusive things to weaken it's hold.
Let us note that your second sentence - and your posts in this thread - confirm that there ARE religionists who want to suppress scientific findings that contradict their religion. The evidence is there. Again this thread cones down not to the limits of human talent but the limits you want to place on human knowledge.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 78 by marc9000, posted 11-25-2013 8:38 PM marc9000 has not replied

  
PaulK
Member
Posts: 17822
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 2.3


Message 100 of 126 (712094)
11-27-2013 1:42 AM
Reply to: Message 91 by marc9000
11-26-2013 8:41 PM


Re: Getting back on topic...
quote:
Yes, I'm still going to defend it. Not necessarily God's word as I understand it, but any (western world) god. Secular science is masterful at not necessarily confronting, but driving by and ignoring the possibility of any god, thereby eventually arriving at atheistic explanations for some things, explanations which have no practical value, other than promote the atheist worldview.
That isn't a defence. In fact it strongly suggests that the claim is a lie.
quote:
Well, I did a little sleuthing around the internet as you suggested, and here's the summary of the uselessness of Intelligent Design at a link that I quickly found, which goes along perfectly with what I remember seeing in discussions many times before in the past 8 or 9 years;
In other words "uselessness" means "useless as a scientific theory" rather than referring merely to practical uselessness. THat's an important distinction that you forgot to mention,
quote:
So when I say that the topic of this thread is to question the wisdom of allowing unlimited, untestable, unfalsifiable, useless and impractical exploration to go on just to satisfy a special interest, can't some areas of exploration that are going on today be held up to the same standards that ID clearly is/was?
The standard of "usefulness" you are talking about is "usefulness as a scientific theory" which is clearly only applicable to things which either are or purport to be scientific theories. So the reason for not applying THAT standard is obvious to anybody with an ounce of sense.
Indeed, one of the purposes of exploration is to test theories. It seems rather silly to say that theories must be testable and then decry testing them as "useless".
quote:
I don't think deep space exploration tells us anything about this natural world, because it's not testable, and not falsifiable, and is not part of this world.
"The natural world" is intended to cover the entirety of nature, so rather obviously the observations made by exploration WOULD tell us something about the natural world.
quote:
I think global warming is like a lot of things in science, a conclusion is first reached, then evidence is worked through backwards to come to that conclusion. The motivation is there, power and money. It only makes sense that, in a free society, a source of knowledge other than science should contribute to determinations of just what IS science, what should be explored using public funds.
You seem to be confusing science with creationism.
quote:
Scientific research leads to political decisions, which involve other sources of knowledge. As in questions like, how will the public and free markets react to those political decisions that scientific research led to, research that wasn't necessarily requested by anyone other than the scientific community (and their friends in one certain political party.)
It is the job of scientists to convey the best and most accurate information they can. Setting policy is the job of the politicians. Human reactions to policies is obviously outside the scope of climate science, and can't be blamed on climate scientists by any reasonable person.
quote:
Ignore the scientific community would be more accurate. To pay attention to constituents who have the ability to look at the sky, feel the temperature with their bodies, and concern themselves with their society's finances.
Why would uncontrolled, imprecise and local observations give a more accurate view of conditions then the better controlled, more precise and wider ranger observations made by climate science ? Why would the state of societies' finances make any difference to whether the Earth is warming or not ?
What you mean is that politicians should be guided by your selfishness, not by what is best for the society that they govern. That is a reprehensible view but I guess, all too typical of the American Right.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 91 by marc9000, posted 11-26-2013 8:41 PM marc9000 has not replied

  
PaulK
Member
Posts: 17822
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 2.3


Message 120 of 126 (712156)
11-28-2013 1:22 AM
Reply to: Message 116 by marc9000
11-27-2013 8:49 PM


Re: summary
The simple one line summary: Marc hates the truth.
Spewing off-topic hate and lies is apparently fine. Catching him at it is a sign of "rage" that "spoils" the thread.
Engaging in obvious misrepresentations is fine. Seeing through those misrepresentations is "dancing". Sorry Marc, you may think that you're so great at lying that nobody can see through your deceptions. If you rely on pulling words out of context to make your points you're the one engaging in "dancing" and we can all see that.
Investigating issues that MIGHT conflict with his beliefs should be banned on the grounds that he counts it as "testing God". I'm not sure where the fact that we shouldn't be allowed to know that the Earth is warming comes in here, but he's pretty adamant on that. Clearly Marc means that there are truths that must be kept from humanity.
Marc even characterises knowledge of truths contrary to the dogma of the "Christian" Right as "lack of knowledge". Amazingly on subjects where he's been shown to be badly wrong in the past, by some of the very people he's been arguing against.
let's leave with this quote:
quote:
It's been fun, most of the atheist rage on this thread has come from the perpetual nervousness about the clear double standards the scientific community has. It set up entrance requirements just out of the reach of Intelligent Design, then doesn't apply them to anything else it wants to study. It gets by with it to a large extent, but the questioning of it isn't going to go away, and as time goes by, it may become harder and harder for them to dance their way out of.
Of course an honest appraisal of the evidence is that Marc took the personal opinions of people who are nowhere near central to the debate and engaged in an obvious misrepresentation even of those. People pointed that out - and this is Marc's response.
Like I said. Marc can't stand people telling the truth.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 116 by marc9000, posted 11-27-2013 8:49 PM marc9000 has not replied

  
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