Cap'n Refsmmat

I love how someone has to make that point in every thread like this regardless of whether they have something substantive to say about the hypothesis itself. (For future reference: can we avoid another argument on whether something is a hypothesis or a theory? What matters to me, and likely most other people, is whether it makes sense and can be shown to be correct, regardless of what we call it.)

The advice I received from the head of my honors program is that everyone takes preparation courses for the MCAT, but he's never heard of anyone bothering to do so for the GRE.

I am guessing that particle accelerators have a large role in figuring things like this.

Watch out for the corollary.

Oh, please. There have been many valid questions raised that you have not answered.

This is unfortunately very, very true. I wish we were able to have discussions like this one without these tactics, and I will always try to stop the use of such tactics when I see them. Unfortunately I was too late here, it seems. Seeing that this thread will likely continue to run around in circles until the end of time (or 2012, whichever comes sooner), I'm closing it now. It could go for another 400 pages and still nobody would be convinced. (As a side note, I hereby propose Alex's Law of Arguments: As soon as an argument becomes mildly personal, the participants have such a vested interest in their position that they will never admit they are wrong, no matter how strong the evidence against them.) (Also, the Corollary, for those who read the above paragraph and said "that's exactly what my opponents are doing!": Anyone who applies Alex's Law in an argument to say "see, you're wrong and refuse to admit it" is, in fact, a victim of Alex's Law as well. You may never use Alex's Law to attack your enemies because it can just as easily be used against you.)

There's nothing non-secular about a law saying "No gay marriage." It'd be a violation of the separation if it said "No gay marriage, because it says so in Leviticus. Blasphemers will be stoned."

Hurk. There appears to be some trouble with the WordPress integration then. Can you still tag posts with tags you make up? And where is this download link you speak of? That worries me a little.

Danth's law?

bja2ttzGOFM

What about gay women? Everyone brings up anal sex when talking about homosexuality, but there are lesbians too.

I am fairly certain this is a comma splice.

You did split an infinitive though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowflake#Uniqueness Wikipedia can!

Imagine spinning around in a circle while holding a gun. You shoot. Does the bullet keep going around in a circle with you (getting farther and farther away, of course), or does it just shoot straight out and hit whatever it was pointed at when you fired? To get an object to move in a curved trajectory requires a force. Trace out the path of a satellite going to geosynchronous orbit as the earth rotates; it's curved.

Neither of us is a neuroscientist, so I'll leave the conclusions about neural architecture alone. But you said you worked with people who were made stupid by their religion. What of them specifically? Does their extinguished critical thinking extend to things beyond their religion?

It would be interesting to study the psychology of this. Religion implanted in you in childhood is likely very, very deep-rooted, and it takes extraordinary circumstances to cause you to just give it up. As for "safe havens", well, possibly. But if you're crazy, you're going to fabricate any sort of crazy belief system. Exhibit A: that cult that believed the mothership was going to come to earth and take them away. The founder of that was likely just schizophrenic, in my opinion, and she fabricated what basically constitutes a "religion" to substantiate it, rather than jumping in to an existing religion. So instead of attacking religion and implicitly attacking believers who haven't done anything wrong, I think the better approach is to throw the "I'm entitled to my opinions! I can believe whatever I want and you can't stop me" argument out the window and just ignore the person's personal beliefs when they're doing something horrible like neglecting their child's welfare. Fair enough? But does this extinguished critical thinking extend to matters beyond religion? Do these people have a hard time doing mathematics or fixing bugs in software or something? Or are you basing your accusations of "stupid" off the fact that they deny evolution and have a host of religious (faith-based) beliefs? Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged You admitted it was a "forceful response" in the post swansont quoted. It has nothing to do with sacred cows, as the post in question had nothing to do with sacred cows. And then you attacked me for disagreeing with your "forceful attack." This behavior looks more like "Hey! Stop lookin' at me funny!" <punch> rather than "Hey! You just hit me!" <punch>. Now, remember, if you really want to argue about this, don't. Your behavior is disruptive regardless of how well you can justify it.

What do you mean "attract"? Most people are either raised religious or not. There's not much choice involved. As for making people stupid... what do you mean? Is this "evolution is wrong, God speaks to me at night" sort of stuff or "Where's the 'any key'?" stupid? Or, in other words, is it a total lack of critical thinking ability or merely the bypass of that ability for certain core beliefs installed by religion?

But was that "religion leading to neglect" or "religion providing a means for idiocy to manifest itself"? I mean, consider the parents. There are two options (at least): They were intelligent, normal folks who were so caught up in their religion they thought it was best not to treat their daughter, because God would handle it. They were already the sort of people who would not give their kids vaccinations because they "cause autism", withdraw them from public school because of the evils of teaching evolution, and so on, and this religious belief was a natural extension from that. In other words: does religion make stupid, or does religion + pre-existing stupid = bad things?

Regardless of its accuracy, it is still pointless and disruptive. You might be right, in which case you just helped derail the thread further; you might be wrong, in which case you insulted someone and helped derail the thread further. But anyway... are there any good examples of parents justifying their terrible child care through reasons other than religion? Or do parents who treat kids terribly and don't use religion as their excuse just use no excuse at all? I mean, look how many people there are who abuse their children just, well, because. Can we establish religion leads people to neglect their kids' safety, or do they pick it up as an excuse for a pre-existing behavior?

Further proof that assuming you know exactly what motivates someone to post something merely leads to in-thread conflict, personal attacks, and argument. It has never actually contributed to an argument or convinced the other party in a debate. I refer you to this post, section "Nobody is evil", and Hanlon's Razor. And if you really want to argue about this, well, don't. Now, could this thread get back on topic, please?

Why should trip have to "get a grip" because he didn't know why your post apparently consisted of only an ellipsis? Despite your best efforts, you have still made this too personal for reasonable argument to survive.

It's possible for anthropogenic climate change to be real but climate scientists to still be engaging in groupthink and bad practices.

Not if raised by the kind of parents in question here.

Antioxidants?