Sun 4 Mar 2007
Conservapedia
Posted by anaglyph under Creepy, Kooky, Laughs, Religion, Sad, Scary, Silly, Stupidity, Tragedy, Words
[51] Comments
Hahahahahahaha! Hahahahahahahahhahahahahaha!
Oh shit, let me just catch my breath.
Hahahahaha! Hahahahaahahhaha!
Allow me to present you with two sentences from abovementioned ‘source’:
A conservative encyclopedia you can trust.
And in the entry on Evolution:
Creationists can cite material showing that there is no real fossil evidence for the macroevolutionary position and that the fossil record supports creationism.
Conservapedia’s front page trumpets:
You will much prefer using Conservapedia compared to Wikipedia if you want concise answers free of “political correctness”.
… to which I would add ‘… or any actual basis in reality’
I propose that the editors should re-think the name of their site and maybe retitle it as ‘Put-Your-Head-In-A-Bag-opedia’
Hahahahahahaha! Hahahahaahaahahaa! Oh look – a handy sandstone block! I think I’ll smash my head against it a few times.
___________________________________________________________________________
Special Universal Head Advisory: Pete, don’t go there. It will ruin your day.
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My eyes!!! My eyes are bleeding!
Stigmata! EVIDENCE of stigmata! Quick, where’s my link to Conservapedia…
Don’t you mean PROOF?
Dammit! If only I’d listened to you. Now I have to kill someone stupid and annoying to make myself feel better.
PS My day is ruined.
I think I’ll stick with Uncyclopedia for all my non-PC wiki bits.
And to think that everyone spends so much time worrying about Conservative Islam.
“the fossil record supports creationism.”
But, according to Creationism, the fossil record is a bunch of Hooey. So, a bunch of Hooey supports Creationism?
That’s Ok with me…
“Conservapedia” must mean they are conserving their common sense, in case they need to use it later.
Either that or (as usual) they just can’t spell, and it should have been “Constipedia”.
From the “Examples of Bias in Wikipedia” entry:
Polls show that about twice as many Americans identify themselves as “conservative” compared with “liberal”, and that ratio has been increasing for two decades.[1] But on Wikipedia, about three times as many editors identify themselves as “liberal” compared with “conservative”.[2] That suggests Wikipedia is six times more liberal than the American public.
Basic math obviously has a liberal bias.
Since I aint a conservative, does that make me a Wikipedal?
Colonel: ‘Constipedia’ I like! It has a ring to it.
Phoebe Fay: Mathematics is a Politically Correct scourge laid upon us by unfeeling and soulless scientists to encourage a belief in logic and rationalism. Obviously the work of Satan.
Joey: The correct term is Wikipedant.
I thought it made you a Wikipediphile
Constipedia has some interesting interpretations of what constitutes ‘bias’.
Wikipedia users will know that it uses the abbreviation ‘CE’ (Common Era) to denote the widely used Western dating system; they have eschewed the ecumenical Anno Domini in favour of a more universally acceptable term.
In the peanut-sized brains of Constipedia’s architects, this somehow makes Wikipedia more biased rather than more fair.
This is because these people are so far entrenched in their own small-minded self-righteousness that they have no respect for the vast numbers of people who don’t support their point of view.
Oh, what am I saying? They don’t even know that there exists a world outside the United States. I’m sure that they have ‘facts’ to prove it, and anyone who thinks there is is just being Politically Correct.
I guess you have to take what you read from both sides and make the decisions from that. Of course saying that you have proof and showing it are two different things.
Everyone is entitled to their opinions…right or wrong. But yes, bias is always there for pretty much any side of a story. It is hard to tell the truth from the fiction when bias is involved.
But you see, Sirdar, Wikipedia tries strenuously not to provide information that is just ‘a matter of opinion’. That’s why the editorial process is so rigorous. That’s why the Conservapedia people have their knickers in a knot. Every time they try and post some spurious amendment to the Wiki entry on ‘Evolution’ it is, quite justifiably, disallowed. Why? Because Wikipedia is meant to be a repository of fact, not a swirling mass of prejudiced opinion.
Evolution isn’t someone’s opinion any more than the reason a 747 can fly is someone’s opinion. It is a scientifically verifiable hypothesis bolstered by overwhelming evidence.
Science doesn’t deal in ‘absolute’ truths handed down from the unknowable mind of a deity, like religion, but instead attempts to allow a better understanding of the world through progressive accumulation of human knowledge.
A wiki based on opinion is about as useful as a reference source as the Uncyclopedia. Only the Conservapedia is not as entertaining.
I aint botherd nearly as much by th biases of th Wikipedia editors as I am by th fact that theyr all clearly goin t hell.
What a swell party this is!
Did you happen to notice Commandment No. 5 and its footnote? Seems proper “American” spelling is one of their favourite things. I guess The Reverend and his ilk would be considered unsavoury characters. Probably Joey too.
I think I’ll start using unAmerican spelling in my posts and comments. Use words like petrol, liter – oops I mean ‘litre’ – and metric.
Yeah. That’ll show ’em.
I am not supporting these guys in any way. Just to make that clear.
They are filling a niche, and much like vegitarians, they don’t care if I think they’re an idiot, they just want an item on the menu here and there. Wikipedia is a fairly disreputable place for true research, and honestly, while I think they are dumb, I’m glad the conservapedia people now have their own hole to bury themselves in.
I thought about this and I have some queries that I think the readers here may have a short answer to:
The bias they decry could be considered present in the form of non-representation. This isn’t a big deal, you could say the same thing about any library. So, if the scientifically motivated individuals, of which I am one, are so far out of mainstream thought, are the sources out there truly biased? And how much respect should be paid to others, usually the majority’s, beliefs? I have knee-jerk reactions to this kind of crap, so this is not a rhetorical question. To have a viewpoint (founded in consensual scienctific fact, plastic as that may be) respect by their side, do we have to reciprocate? When can we just call idiotic bullshit what it is?
Oops, that sounded biased. I would not be offended to find this deleted, reverend.
Jam: Yeah, when did Americans get to be the arbiters of English language spelling for godsakes?
I’d also draw everyone’s attention to Commandment No. 6:
6. Do not post personal opinion on an encyclopedia entry
These people do not consider their waffle to be opinions – they proffer things such as:
His (Jesus Christ) resurrection is the single greatest event in the history of the world.
… as a fact. Disregarding the highly debateable suggestion that the resurrection ever happened, even the hyperbolic tone is questionable. I think you’d be hard pressed to find any proper reference work that singled out one thing as ‘the greatest event in the history of the world’.
Casey: Wikipedia might not be where you’d go for your Master’s thesis, nevertheless it is a good and mostly accurate source of a wide variety of information. I would disagree that it is disreputable. As in most ventures on the net, you’d be wise not to have it as your only measuring stick, but it is a good and useful one nevertheless. You will have noticed that many of my footnotes or reference links here on The Cow go to Wikipedia. Why? Because for a quick precis of what I might be talking about, it is almost always a good bet. I think I have only once discarded a Wikipedia entry due to disputable factual content.
I’m really with you in respect of calling crap crap, but to be fair, the Wikipedia editors are catholic (in the greater sense) in accepting contributions. I’m sure they would, for instance, allow Conservapedia types to enter content on religious matters in which they were competent, as long as they didn’t proselytize (and if you scan Conservapedia, you will see exactly how much of a tendency they have to do that).
There is certainly content in Wikipedia that has a strong conservative bias. Consider this statement in the entry on ‘The Easter Bunny’:
Eggs were forbidden to Catholics during the fast of Lent, which was the reason for the abundance of eggs at Easter time.
This little factoid has been widely circulated now as the reason that people give Easter Eggs at Easter. It is simply not true. The egg, as a symbol of fertility, was appropriated by Christians from pagan customs – Easter occurring near the pagan May festivals of fertility as it did. Nevertheless, this must represent conservative bias in Wikipedia.
What the Conservapedia people are whingeing about really though is that they can’t get their kooky ideas about Evolution and Creationism accepted as fact. So if they can’t play with Wikipedia’s marbles they’re setting up their own game.
And I don’t often delete comments here on The Cow. Usually only for matters of etiquette. I am not afraid of opinions.
reading another blog about this, and they referred to this link
http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/wikipedia-foes-set-up-right-site/2007/03/02/1172338880787.html
Yep – that’s where I saw it.
So, would this be personal opinion?
Pierce Butler (1866-1939) was perhaps the finest Supreme Justice ever.
And is this bullshit?
To this day, most Protestant countries reject the Copernican theory.
I mean, if the English and all those other protestant countries haven’t figured out the Copernican theory shouldn’t we tell them?
Conservapedia is full of such dross. Which is why it will never be used as reference by anyone except those with no brains in the first place.
Also:
To this day, most Protestant countries reject the Copernican theory.
News for them – it’s pretty much only American loonies who still think the world is flat…
I would say that a lot of scientific theories are just that….theories. More and more theories that were taught in schools are now being debunked. It wasn’t that the scientists were trying to spoof everyone…it is just the knowledge of certain “things” are better now. Look at food. Everyday you hear what was bad for you actually wasn’t that bad and in fact is good….like some fats for example.
If one scientific study says one thing, another will come along and say the opposite.
We’ve built an awful lot of the world on theories my friend.
Powered flight. Electricity. Surgery. Computers. Electric light. The piano. Vaccination. Modern communication. CDs. Pacemakers. Blood transfusions. Hot air balloons. Photography. Weather forecasting.
All these things are the result of scientific reasoning. Theories, if you like. Debunk Bernoulli’s principle if you can – you surrender yourself to it every time you get on an aeroplane. Debunk the genius behind the eradication of smallpox – it used to kill millions. It has killed no-one on the planet since 1977.
Again, you seem to think that science is a whole lot of opinions – science doesn’t work like that.
There are, indeed, contradictions in science. That’s because it is not a rigid doctrine, like most religious doctrine, but is in a constant state of self-correction.
That being said, there comes a point with most scientific pursuits where the amount of evidence strongly suggests that the truth of the matter is somewhere in the vicinity.
Your life is completely suffused with the successful endeavours of science. You’re sitting at a computer writing to someone on the other side of the planet. That’s not the result of some arbitrary religious opinion. You will most likely live to at least twice the age of your ancestors of a couple of hundred years ago. That’s because, generally, the lifestyle you lead, including the kinds of foods you eat, are improved by scientific knowledge.
You are completely wrong in saying “more and more theories that were taught in schools are now being debunked”. Where is the evidence for that? What theories? Who has debunked them? Things that I was taught in science thirty-five years ago hold up pretty well. They have been modified a bit, perhaps, but then you would expect that of a dynamically changing self-correcting system.
The Creationists think they have debunked the theories of evolution. But they are the only ones that think that. Normal, educated, rational people don’t believe that the world was created a few thousand years ago in seven days.
We know that dinosaurs are millions of years old. It’s not a flight of fancy – it can be proved beyond a shadow of a doubt. It’s not something you can ‘debunk’. You can disagree with it, alright, but that is a matter of opinion not fact.
You know, not to pick bones, but the deeper I get into science, the more I am reminded of a former life mired in religion. A lot of those theories change in small amounts, and often much to the dismay of whatever scientist through his name on the theory. I find more and more that once you step outside hard mineralogy, not to pander to my own bias, no one really knows shit. the problem is that science is treated as a collection of facts instead of a steady process. Do I think science is full of shit? No. Do I think scientists are full of shit? Most of them.
“More and more theories that were taught in schools are now being debunked.”
The problem, in my mind, is not that we don’t teach evolution or random unintelligent design or intelligent design or that wooly mammoths had vascular tusks; the problem is that we do not teach the scientific method. I think that if we bothered teaching the method, which I have to say is damn near infallible, all the issues (i.e. paranthropus bosei vs. Lucy) matter very little.
Honestly, the only theory I can think of that can never be proven wrong is Thermos Nos. 1&2.
One more minute on the soap box:
Scientists often resort to tactics that make them look dumb. Yes, a creationist will be able to poke the evolutionary record full of holes, shit a three year old that can read can blow closely held fossil dogma to shit, it’s happened before. Everytime a person of the science cloth comes out and says, “They are dumb because we know this absolutely,” they are setting the method up for a fall.
The more of them I meet, the more I find myself thinking that the typical scientist follows the tenants of their philosophy about as well as a typical Christian represents Christ.
Well I agree pretty much with everything you’ve written. Science isn’t perfect as a practice but in my opinion is the best thing we have as an approach. Also, it’s a damn sight more productive way of dealing with the realities of the world than religion’s ‘bury-your-head-in-the-sand’ approach.
I think you’re right that many scientists (arguably the more vocal ones) are the biggest liability that Science as a discipline has. The same could be said of Religion.
What we really need to teach in schools is critical thinking. Scientific process would follow.
Honestly, the only theory I can think of that can never be proven wrong is Thermos Nos. 1&2
Well, there are a lot more than that. In any case, ‘never be proven wrong’ is possibly not the right way to look at it. Something like ‘functional and likely’ is better. We all know how useful Newton’s laws were for a few hundred years (and continue to be even now) until they were dissected and modified by quantum effects. It doesn’t mean they were wrong – they were very right, given the tools at hand. But further thinking, further knowledge and the willingness to re-examine them has shown that they can be sharpened even further. Newton’s laws are far from useless, even so.
shit a three year old that can read can blow closely held fossil dogma to shit,
Now, you see, that’s not true. Yes, it is so that the fossil record is full of ambiguities and strangeness and contradictions. And so it will be always, because to formulate good hypotheses we rely exclusively on data, and in this case the data is thin.
Nevertheless, we know some things for certain. As fact. We know that there were damn big animals in abundance that walked around the earth many millions of years ago, and that nothing like them exists anymore. No-one except Creationists dispute this. We know that the Earth is some degrees of magnitude older than 6000 years. We know that we are closely related to the other primates.
Science might not always be right, but it hones our view of the world to such a point that we can make productive use of the things we find out.
Creationists don’t dispute the science behind flight – they don’t think we fly around in aeroplanes because God keeps them in the sky. Why? Because the evidence is unequivocal. They are upset about dinosaurs and evolution and the idea that we might just be animals because they don’t fit in with their dogmatic worldview, and the evidence is sketchy enough for them to poke holes in it.
I would also proffer that there are many, many good scientists out there doing good science. Like all human endeavours, though, there’s always enough shit heads to ruin things for everyone else.
I didn’t mean the stumbling three year old can destroy an entire swath of evidence, but it happens often that large chunks of paleontolgy, particularly paleoanthropology, are turned on their head by a nice little chucnk of bone in the wrong place. Finding bones that you’re not expecting wouldn’t bother a true scientist, since most admit when it comes to details, we don’t know shit.
I’ve been thinking about this pretty heavy for weeks, now, so your catching a philosophical tidepool in my head. Anyway, I didn’t mean “proven wrong’ quite the way it came out. Newton’s theories work great at any speed I will ever have oppurtunity to travel, so I don’t think he was wrong, just not right in every circumstance.
By the way, make sure you spell it AIRplane or the conservapedia will think you’re dumb.
but it happens often that large chunks of paleontolgy, particularly paleoanthropology, are turned on their head by a nice little chucnk of bone in the wrong place
And the flexibility of science is that it can be turned on its head. Religious dogma is quite markedly not like that. The Word of God is immutable. This presents very real and difficult problems for those who live their lives by dogma, namely that as soon as something turns up that is in conflict with your unchangeable rules, you have no choice but to refuse to see it as it is, and must instead attempt to somehow fit it into your already existing rule system.
The Bible says that the world is 6000 years old? Then dinosaur fossils of 65 million years old must be fakes. God says he created humans directly from clay? Then evolution must be nonsense. The Bible has it that the world was created in six days? Then geologists must be on crack.
Comes a point when if you argue this way, you just appear to be stupid, possibly even wrong to your own followers. If you mean to persist in this manner of thinking, then you must, by necessity, start to cloister yourself and your followers away from the facts in some manner. I suggest that this is exactly what the Conservapedia extremists are doing. Can’t face the truth? Bury your head in the sand.
By contrast, science makes all its discoveries available to everyone (I’m talking principles here – I am aware that greedy little humans can interfere with this high ideal). If you disagree with something you encounter, you can take appropriate steps to become familiar with it and perhaps even change it. And there are many examples of exactly this happening.
For people who adhere to dogmatic ways of thinking, this is a very frightening concept. Mostly because it isn’t simple. It requires thought and work and difficulty. So much easier just to follow rules.
No thinking required.
Oh, and I suspect that controversial spelling would come a long way down the list of my sins with the Conservapedia people.
We’ve built an awful lot of the world on theories my friend.
Totally agree.
I am not a bible thumper but I am not a evolutionist either. The Big Bang theory comes to mind as just that…a theory that was taught in schools when I went to school. The dinosaurs? Carbon dating isn’t an exact science. Carbon decomposes as different rates in different atmospheres. It does give an idea, but can be misleading depending on many factors.
Global Warming? Can’t get away from that these days. In the 1600’s it was apparently hotter than it is now. I wonder what the scientists said back then? We used to have alligators up here in Alberta Canada. Trust me….no alligator would be caught dead up here in winter. We used to have the climate of Florida. As the temperature is -7℃ right now…I could handle that. I know in Australia you are going through drought. I feel for you…believe me. However I wouldn’t mind splitting temps for a while :-)
I personally am not a strong believer of the bible and I can tell that you are definitely not. But there are arguments on both sides that show promise. Now if everyone could meet in the middle I bet there would be some interesting discoveries for both creationists and evolutionists.
PS: there were big beasts in the bible too ;-) and it wasn’t clay…it was dust.
Thanks to my buddy Sirdar for sending me over here.
I think the point anaglyph made about dogmatic scientists being in as much trouble in some ways as dogmatic believers is one I’ve also been thinking about lately. So the problem might not be religion, it might be dogmatism. A bit more fluidity would come in handy…
But, as an example, I just saw the screenshot from Fox today saying ‘Libby found not guilty of lying to FBI investigators’. Now, Libby may have been found not guilty of that but he was found guilty of a lot of other stuff. But Fox viewers take away the ‘reality’ that he was vindicated. There really are two realities in America now, and Conservapedia is a reasonably minor example of this.
(My personal favourite theory is that Paul Verhoeven broke the space-time continuum and our world is gradually being replaced by the world of Robocop and Starship Troopers.)
Actually very little of the science that you learned in school has been changed since, Sirdar. We could probably count on one hand the changes – in fact I’m struggling to think of one good example. Science does and can change, but usually at the level of refinement rather than replacement (e.g. Einstein’s theory of gravity extends Newton’s, but they yield the same predictions for most of our experience).
Bottom line is that science does not give answers that are certain, but it gives good answers based on the preponderance of evidence. On that basis there’s not even any debate any more: climate change is occurring, and human activities are the major (though not the only) cause. That is the overwhelming consensus of all the published science. Just as there were for a long time, and still are, people who will tell you that smoking doesn’t cause lung cancer, there are people who will tell you that’s not the case, but they generally have an agenda other than science.
Any encyclopedia-like entry that is established specifically to have a certain bias is going to be less useful as a general reference than one that seeks to be a source of information. It’s true that there’s no pure, unbiased perspective on anything, but that’s an ideal we should hang onto and keep working toward.
And Sirdar, there sure as hell weren’t alligators in Alberta in the 1600s. There were major dinosaurs there, but that was over 65 million years ago… and we know very well that the earth has gone through major heating and cooling phases in its long history. So those examples really don’t tell us much at all about the current climate changes, which are different because they’re human-caused.
Anyway, fun talking atcha!
Sirdar: Whoa there – like I said, science is in constant state of revision. Your use of the word ‘theory’ is in the degraded literary sense, not the scientific one. Scientifically,
“a theory is a logically self-consistent model or framework for describing the behavior of a related set of natural or social phenomena.”
Which is exactly what the Big Bang Theory is. And like the best of science, it is under revision as more data comes to hand. You seem to think that the Big Bang Theory has been entirely discredited as a concept, when in fact, it is just one of a number of hypotheses that are now under consideration as a possibility. Your dismissive use of the term is interesting because the alternative hypotheses are MUCH more conceptually confronting than the Big Bang.
Dinosaurs are not usually dated by carbon isotope decay. The age of the dinosaurs is for the most part determined geologically. It might not be exact, but heck, what are you saying? That because we have a few thousand years of error, the Bible’s reckoning is better??? I don’t understand these kinds of arguments.
Global warming? Are you sure you want to use that as an example of faulty science? Scientists have been campaigning hard about that for the best part of three decades. I think you’ve got the wrong bad guys here.
>>But there are arguments on both sides that show promise
No there aren’t. There is an argument with fact on one side, and a process of magickal thinking on the other. There are no arguments for the Bible being a factually correct account of a supreme being that created everything and sent an emissary to Earth to teach people to be good. If that’s the case then the Koran or the Bhagavad Gita or The Grandmother Spider Steals Fire or the Dreaming are equal contenders.
And I disagree most strongly that Creationists will have any interesting wisdom to depart. Creationists are badly educated Christian fundamentalists with an agenda.
>>PS: there were big beasts in the bible too
Oh yes. Bears. Bulls. Lions. No dinosaurs. Not even big lizards. Oh, what’s that you say? They might be allegorical? So then the Bible is not the literal Word of God… do you see at all how flimsy this becomes?
>>and it wasn’t clay…it was dust.
Clay, dust, silly putty. It is an irrelevancy, and typical of the kinds of nit-picking deflections put forward when religious thinkers get backed into a corner. Here’s the point: An all powerful being is said to have created a human being in one complete package, in an instant, directly out of inanimate matter. Do you believe that?
Yes? Then we can stop the discussion. That’s magickal thinking, and I have no defense of that assertion under those rules.
No? Then you are in direct opposition to the Bible which says that’s how it happened. If the Bible has gotten that bit wrong, why do you think other bits are right? How do you decide?
Hey Bravus, just caught your comment as I was posting that last answer. Welcome to The Cow, and thanks for those thoughts.
Sirdar: The discussion is lively, and I don’t mean to offend you, but I feel very strongly that the point of view you put forward is very much along the lines of the kinds of things that uninformed people think about science – that it is a lot of people’s opinions bandied around by loud-voiced men in white coats who are constantly getting it wrong. Or that it is just another kind of ‘religion’.
There is bad science, for sure, but mostly science is a reliable and usually useful way to view the world. All those things I mentioned above like modern medicine and communication are the product of science, not religion. Some religion is arguably a good thing too, for some people, but it is not in any way rational. That’s the biggest problem I have with these nutcases who started up Conservapedia – it’s not fact. It’s not science. It’s MAGIC. But they won’t admit that, and they try to scrabble around for supportive facts for their beliefs because… why? Yes! Because otherwise it’s IMPLAUSIBLE.
Glad you fullahs aint got heated about all that god flavoured conservatism.Methinks that would be just tiring and tedious.There is more with the same taint hereabouts (maybe)…
http://www.publicaddress.net/hardnews
Remember;Jesus loves you.Even when you mis-spell IMPLAUSIBUBBLE and ANALGLYPH.
Giddy up!
All together now: hhahahahahah!
‘Wikipedant.’ *snickers* Do I detect a pun?
I realised later what really bothers me about Conservapedia: it just adds to the bubble of alternative reality that these people can wrap themselves in. If they watch only Fox News, listen only to Rush Limbaugh, read only Hard News (thanx Wolfman) and get their info only from Conservapedia, they can live in this little bubble where they’ll be continually reassured that: (a) Saddam was behind 9/11, (b) WMDs *were* found in Iraq, (c) the war in Iraq is a massive success and the Iraqi people are very grateful, it’s just that (d) the mainstream media has a massive liberal bias and only reports the bad stuff and (e) the American economy is just booming along and (f) liberals hate America, spit on the Bible, sacrifice babies and want to make gay marriage compulsory for everyone and (g) … you get the point. They’re building an alternative reality that makes their warmongering and theft the only reasonable course of action.
Oh crap, I thought from context that Hard News was a conservative site and didn’t fact-check. Sorry peeps… insert a conservative blog or ‘newspaper’ in there…
Anaglyph and Bravus:
You know what guys…I’ll settle it here. You guys are right, I am wrong. You have the answers, I don’t. Your throries are correct, other theories are wrong. There…that feels better!! Now I can get on with life!!
Quite frankly I don’t care as much about it as you guys do. I was just playing “Devils Advocate”. The story is one sided and you are looking for an argument as to why anyone would consider your thoughts wrong. I am not going to be that guy. Sorry. I don’t have all the answers.
Lets all get along now and just agree to disagree..OK? (peace?) :-)
I agree with a lot of what you are saying, just not all of it….and I have my own reasons but they do not agree with your reasons and may not even be researched reasons like you obviously did to come up with your thoughts on the matter.
Bravus: Y2K…and there were Alligators in Alberta…maybe not in the 1600’s but the fossils are sitting in the Tyrell Museum. Next time you are in Alberta for a visit I’ll take you there :-)
Bravus:I rilly rilly liked that you jumped to conclusions.God bless you.
Look. I am not as angry as that post may have sounded. Unfortuneatly, most words on paper miss the facial and voice nuances.
All I am saying is there are three sides to every story, hypothosis and theory. Your side, thier side, the truth. ALL sides need to be considered.
Sirdar:don’t you have those nifty emoticons for the facial nuances? I though your smile had said it all.
Siradr, couple of things:
1. Oh, I totally believe there were alligators in Alberta. There were some quite large dinosaurs there too, including one called the Albertasaurus. But you just seemed to have pulled together ‘it was warmer in the 1600s’ and ‘there were alligators in Alberta’ in a way that suggested that there were alligators in Alberta in the 1600s. Apologies if that’s not what you meant to imply. The warm period in the 1600s was something like 4 degrees warmer… so your -7 from yesterday would be -3… still a little chillier than Florida’s climate.
2. There are a million opinions on everything, and everyone is entitled to theirs, that’s not at issue. What does tend to get me a bit exercised is when people are willing to claim that the science says something it doesn’t (or doesn’t say something it does) in support of their opinion. Science is not a matter of opinion. What we do with it and its implications for social policy is. So even if we concede that the science says that there definitely is climate change going on and that it’s extremely probable though not certain that we’re causing it… where to from there? Everything from that one guy who says climate change is a Good Thing to Bush’s loony ‘orbiting umbrellas’ proposal to some sort of sensible process of moving over to more sustainable fuels (which we’ll have to do soon anyway as the oil runs out).
3. Sorry if it felt a bit like we ganged up on you! You know I like and respect you very much and respect your ideas and thinking. That will always be the case.
Wolfman: Yes the smiley said it all…but not as smiley as I wanted
Bravus and anaglyph: It was a lively discussion. I don’t have facts to back me up…only memories of some things that I call facts. ;-) I know Bravus is up on this sort of stuff so that is why I directed him here. His answers weren’t quite what I expected, however that wouldn’t be the first time that the answer I got wasn’t the expected one. Obviously anaglyph is up on this stuff too. In my job I look for facts. None of which have anything to do with this discussion. But, I hear so much hearsay that I take a sceptical view sometimes. This may have been one of those times.
>>But, I hear so much hearsay that I take a sceptical view sometimes.:
I appreciate your desire to pour oil on the water Sirdar, but I must protest: you’re NOT taking a skeptical view! A skeptical view says that you should look at the facts behind the assertions. If you were being skeptical I wouldn’t have taken issue with what you’ve said.
I apologize if I appear argumentative. This is not an issue that I approach lightly (despite my flippant tone in the original post). I believe it is a fundamental and important part of modern civilization’s most serious problems. I believe that it will have disastrous consequences for humankind if it’s not addressed.
We face a crisis in rational thinking – in the United States the statistics are unequivocal: almost half the population believes the story of creation as it is told in the Bible. 46% believe in a literal Devil. 96% believe in God. Americans are among the most superstitious peoples on the planet* These statistics are uncannily echoed by people living in the Middle East and Asia.
In countries where the education is better, these statistics are reversed. The statistics are directly proportional to the level of education. Doesn’t this fact alone tell you something?
I cannot by my ethical charter ‘agree to disagree’. I feel that here, on this forum, I am obliged to put forward my best attempt at reversing the above trend. I am not engaging in the discussion with any level of animosity, but I will argue fiercely and with passion.
And like a good scientist, I will accept any proper data to modify my view. Not opinion, though, or hearsay or belief or intuition. Those things are far too malleable by human foibles.
Bring me the data and I will change my mind.
*Source (there are others).
Wolfman: For some, tiring and tedious it may be now, and will be always. But it is not a little subject.
…yes but you did seem to belittle it with all that “hardy ha ha” stuff way back at the beginning.Didja about face into reasoned argument give you whip lash?
All that Christian,Creationist,American Fundamentalist nonsense is defended through faith.Reason don’t get a look in and is a poor choice of tool when you wanna crack that nut.
This may be an interesting detour…
http://www.cslewisclassics.com/books/screwtape_letters-excerpt.html
You blog little leaps of faith yourself;consider the “wherever you are”bit in last year’s “Memories of New York.To belittle your writing here woulda been seen as insensitive rather than a bold move towards all things scientific.
Likewise the things you were having a tilt at,when upheld,are done so with such a personal fervour there aint no hope of an interchange that leads to an altered point of view.Everyone knows that;it’s in the Bible.
Now that’s more like it.
>>…yes but you did seem to belittle it with all that “hardy ha ha†stuff way back
True enough. Mea culpa. It was an instinctive reaction to extreme absurdity, particularly Conservapedia’s stance of having more truthful ‘facts’ than Wikipedia. But please don’t mistake my belittling of Creationists for a general belittling of religion. Creationists deserve belittling but serious religious thinkers do not. Creationists are not serious religious thinkers.
>>Reason don’t get a look in and is a poor choice of tool when you wanna crack that nut.
Exactly my point. My one and only point. Time and time again these people attempt to defend their faith through the use of bad science, pseudo truths and erroneous reasoning. As I have said on many occasions anyone can defeat my point of view by simply admitting that they are adopting magical thinking. Just say it’s magic. Or a miracle. Or unfathomable. Or that God Moves in Mysterious Ways. That we can’t comprehend His motives. Whatever.
But they are not content to do that. This has multiple implications, but surely the most significant one is that they need the proof themselves. Indeed, the track record of Creation ‘science’ is one of assuming the outcome and then hammering the facts out of shape to fit the speculations. It smacks of such desperation and need for affirmation of Faith that it must surely qualify as a sin.
In other discussions I have detailed this point of view, if you can be bothered reading them. The corollory of adopting this ‘magical’ point of view is that along with Christianity, Judaism, Islam and any other irrational belief system, we must as a society, be then prepared to allow belief in cults that worship extraterrestrial beings, fairies, unicorns and tree spirits.
Personally, in this respect I don’t care. Just don’t attempt to defend any of these things with rational process. If you come here and say ‘I saw magical beings populating my garden with my own eyes, and I believe it fully and unquestionably’ then I have no argument. I can’t have. But the moment you attempt to push that belief on to me with the use of bad reasoning then I will do my best to show you where your reasoning is wrong.
You are correct in one respect only – that I really shouldn’t laugh at these beliefs. But the Creationists are so belligerent, so erroneous and so unwilling to give their argument across to Faith that it is hard to take them seriously. In fact, I would say that they are a liability to the whole Christian church and a laughingstock to boot.
I have heard one, and only one argument for a belief in God that gave me pause to think, and it has not been raised once here. It was in a discussion with a very learned religious thinker, who, according to his own lifestyle and habits won’t ever make it up the Golden Stairs (he is gay – an abomination in the eyes of God). His argument was good, but relied heavily on a weak fulcrum and I know why, for me, it is ultimately not persuasive, as rational and persuasive as it was.
Yes, I’ve read The Screwtape Letters. CS Lewis is another great religious thinker, but ultimately Screwtape is a moral work rather than a strictly Christian one. If you think about it, then that will always be the case – Christianity has some good moral bases and I never have argued otherwise (so does Islam and Aetherianism – these things are not the exclusive domain of Christianity as it would seem to want to have everyone believe) Lewis is most interesting to me due to the fact that he was an educated athiest who converted to Christianity – a very rare phenomenon.
>>You blog little leaps of faith yourself;consider the “wherever you areâ€bit in last year’s “Memories of New York
Fair point, and I was completely aware of it as I penned it. But it’s not a ‘little leap of faith’ because I don’t believe that Kate is anywhere except as ‘dust about the doors of friends’ as I have indicated elsewhere.
A rational mind does not prohibit a poetic world view (another thing that religious thinkers seem to think must perforce follow). Losing one’s belief in God does not mean losing one’s humanity or romance or sense of wonder. Or even one’s tendency to speculation about things of which we have no knowledge. I would hope by now that all this is clear from my writing. I’m not a robot. Some people even think I am a decent human being, despite being a heathen.
I have more reason than anyone on this planet to want to believe that Kate is somewhere in some kind of Heaven and that I will see her again. But I don’t believe that, as much as I wish it. That’s a normal human response.
>>Likewise the things you were having a tilt at,when upheld,are done so with such a personal fervour there aint no hope of an interchange that leads to an altered point of view.
If you’re arguing on the platform of rationality, I will alter my point of view willingly if I am presented with intelligent discussion and reasoned thought, accompanied by persuasive data. I have said as much time and time again. Is that not a reasonable position?
But I cannot countenance nonsense like Creationist ‘facts’ that ‘prove’ that the Earth is only 6000 years old. This is surely a fair stance. Normal, rational people in possession of their wits know that this just ain’t so.
If you’re arguing on the platform of Faith, then the only way, surely, that I have even an icecube’s chance in hell of being saved is via epiphany, which, as I’ve also indicated elsewhere, can only happen by the whim of a capricious God. This is completely out of my hands.
Of course I argue with fervour and passion. Is there another way to argue on big topics like this? I can defend my point of view. I am confident of it. Throw anything at me and it will not frighten me. And I will listen carefully to good arguments fashioned thoughtfully, without resort to rhetoric, hearsay, bad ‘facts’ or Bible verses. I just don’t hear them very often.
And I expect that anyone who feels as strongly about their Faith as I feel about the marvels of the natural world would not leave the argument lightly. Indeed, isn’t that an imperative of Faith? Abandoning me to the Devil is an unChristian option according to the Bible.
>>Everyone knows that;it’s in the Bible.
Your attempt to draw an equivalence between a perceived intransigence on my part and the dogma of Biblical thought is interesting. I reiterate – if we are arguing via logical processes, I am more than willing to change my stance if given pause for thought. I got to where I am by a slow but constant modification of my belief systems and a great deal of thinking on this matter. I was raised a Christian, in a Christian household. I went to church every Sunday and prayed for better things. Later in life I threw I-Ching coins, read Tarot cards, meditated on mandalas, dropped acid and believed in UFOs. I am now confident that belief in things such as these is just a lazy illusion for a mind and soul that is facing an abyss that appears so dark that it is impossible to contemplate. I have changed much more than those who have adopted a dogma and stuck to it for their whole lives. I anticipate even further change. I even welcome the possibility. Find me just one Christian who thinks like that.
My ideals come at a cost. I have no crutch to lean on when things get grim. I must look on life in its coldest and most cruel light, and try and get through on my own strength and with the help of my friends. It means I must take responsibility for my own actions and make my own moral calls. It means I must think for myself.
I am constantly aware that it’s not the easiest option. I would like to believe that there is something else. But if I did that, it would be on a pretext, and I would be just fooling myself.
Persuade me I wouldn’t be.
I read somewheres “if you meet the Christ on the Road,kill him”.
You don’t need persuading about anything,you just need to kill more Christs.And leave the Christians alone,they know not what they do and anyhoo,they’ll evlove…
I’ll leave the Christians alone when they leave the rest of us alone…