lucaspa

As I read history, the idea that the media is supposed to be "non-partisan" is a relatively new one in our history. If you read the newspapers of the 19th century, they were openly allied with one political party or another and presented biased views. The only way people got "both views" was to read newspapers from opposite sides. The interviewer is upset because Murdoch says he manufactures concern and panic over shortages. Compare to Hearst and his boast that he caused the Spanish-American War in 1898. Now, I agree that conservatives have gotten VERY good at manipulating the news and getting their viewpoint across. (which is one reason I get most of my news from NPR) And these guys are talking about a real danger. Remember, Hitler was elected to office. The Nazis were also VERY good at manipulating the media. But a lot of the responsibility is to the people. If people will not engage in critical thinking and demand impartial news coverage and are content to be "depoliticized", then they get the government they deserve. I think you are looking too much at Enron. What set off alarm bells in my head in 2000 was a story that told how much money GW had before he officially declared as a presidential candidate. The story said that he had $68 million. At that time, it was unheard of. And Bush had done no public fundraising. So I asked myself, how does a "candidate" get that much money before he has even started running for the Presidency and before he has done any public fundraising. I concluded that he had huge private and corporate donations. And the "private" donations were from the wealthy individuals running the corporations. Later I watched a PBS documentary on the politicization of evangelical Christians, along with the observation that, if evangelicals voted in a block, they were all that was required to win a presidential election. You didn't need another voting block. It seems to me that a group of wealthy conservatives found a way to "buy" an election. Pick a not-too-strong stooge that was also an evangelical, and then dupe the evangelicals into thinking that the Republicans represented their interests -- by running one of their own and advocating a social agenda for them. But the economic agenda would be for the wealthy donors who bought the election to begin with. And I think it worked. My puzzlement is this election. I would have expected those wealthy donors to pick another evangelical stooge and groom him for the Republican primaries. However, I'm thinking they may have switched parties and are now backing Clinton and Obama. Same goal: protect their priviledges but use the other party. It's not that it was "out of hand", but rather that it became more visible, open, and too greedy.

One of the most powerful arguments that sexual orientation is NOT a consciuos choice comes from taking to gays. Every gay person I know has said: Why would I want to choose a lifestyle where I am reviled, threatened, physically assaulted, discriminated against, etc? Just look at how many gays try their best to pretend to be heterosexual. So, IF sexual orientation can be chemically/genetically adjusted (and I am not convinced it can be), then I suspect a lot of gays are going to volunteer for treatment. Not those who have already found love and happiness with a same sex partner (and I wouldn't either if I were them; if they already have happiness, then don't throw it away), but those who feel attracted to the same sex but have never engaged in homosexual activity. However, echoing your later statements about "expect", this is just a prediction in the scientific sense: "I expect this to happen because it is a logical deduction from data and theory." I personally do not "expect" gays to be treated as in "they should get treated". It's completely their choice and no harm done if they keep their sexual orientation. I agree. Comparing treatment of homosexuality to getting vaccinated for the flu is invalid. If there is gene therapy for achondroplasia (dwarfism), would we "expect" and require every person to get that treatment? No. It would be their choice. Yes, we do reject this approach. And you have hit upon the very emotional rejection by the gay community of the possibility of a "cure" for homosexuality. They are very explicit about saying they look upon the issue as diminishing them as people. I can understand why they would take this position.

Physia, al-Qaeda hates so many things about us that you will not give up that hating us for gay marriage isn't going to make a difference. They hate us because we have our daughters go to college! Are you going to tell your daughters they can't go to college just to keep our enemies happy? They are being killed because the civilian leadership put them into a meat grinder. They are being killed by some of the opposition because they are an occupying force. How do you define "enough"? And who gets to decide what is "enough" freedom? If that is the case, then we have failed. All the NIEs say that our presence is increasing the memmbership of radical Islamic groups. You are ignoring that they are growing stronger because of HOW we have acted. There are actions and then there are actions. The war in Iraq was/is the wrong action. But isn't forbidding gay marriage forcing us to believe in what you believe in: that gay marriage is wrong? If gay marriage is really a bad idea, won't it disappear on its own as people just decide not to do it? What I find SO ironic about your post is that you are doing what our enemy is doing: trying to use force (the physical force of police, courts, and prisons) to force your beliefs on others. Tell me, how does 2 gay people getting married hurt you? How does it change your life? Does it prevent you from having a happy heterosexual marriage? If so, how? Does it mean you can't get married to a person of the opposite sex? If so, why? Having gay marriage certainly doesn't mean YOU have to have a gay marriage, does it? Just as having heterosexual marriage means you have get married. So why are you arguing that we, as a society, should forcibly stop gays from getting married? It's because of your beliefs, isn't it?

"Perhaps". You use the "perhaps" because you recognize, like I do, that you can legitimately use morality to ignore or disobey a law. Think back to the Fugitive Slave Act and the disobedience of the people who ran the Underground Railroad to help escaping slaves. Think now of the debate over immigration. Some of us -- me included -- are arguing that the immigration laws are immoral and we don't see anything wrong with people disobeying and entering the USA illegally. So, if Paul thinks that it is immoral to order troops into action without a declaration of war, how can we be sure he won't follow his morality and ignore the treaty? Yes, the mutual defense treaties are worded such that the US MUST militarily come to the aid of another country. You could look on it that the Senate, by approving the treaty, has already said it has declared war. That may be a way for Paul to reconcile his morals and the treaty. Of course, I would require him to specifically say that before I voted for him. My point was that undeclared war has served us well in keeping the wars limited. It never said anything about whether the wars should have been fought in the first place: "Since it wasn't a declared war, we were not required to take official notice of Soviet military personnel and materiel in North Vietnam. It kept the war limited. So yes, on that level having undeclared wars has served us well." So yes, we can argue whether Korea, Vietnam, Kosovo, etc. were "just" wars. I personally think some were, some weren't. You don't like invoking the United Nations? I think it works out rather well. Because of the checks and balances within the UN, the UN doesn't sanction violence except in the most egregious cases. IMO, Korea and Kuwait were actions that simply had to be reversed -- with force. The consequences of not doing so would be catastrophic down the road. I personally would like to see the UN sanction the use of force in Darfour and sanction it in Kosovo. But the UN did not/has not. As I recall, Bush Jr, never really got an UN mandate for Iraq II. Instead, they interpreted earlier resolutions as being sufficient justification. You notice how many UN countries did NOT agree. Bush Sr. had a broad coalition. Bush Jr had a coalition of 4, and that's only if you count England, Scotland, and Wales.

WOW. What twisted logic. You can do whatever you want as long as you don't reduce their freedom to do what they want? But pursuit of happiness is moral and sex in pursuit of happiness is moral. I take it you rule out human rape only because forced sex limits the victims freedom in avoiding forced sex. You would have no moral objections to rape. But you justify rape of animals because rape is less unpleasant than being killed? You are trying to justify bestiality based on a comparison of what is less hurtful? By your logic, then a sadist can torture you because you are more likely to enjoy torture than being killed! So you decide what SOME people say and then use that single argument to arrive at the conclusion "sex with animals is good".? Have you ever heard of "synedoche"? That is improperly letting a part stand for the whole. In this case, you are letting your own strawman version of one argument be ALL arguments against bestiality. Is it done ONLY for pleasure? Or is nutrition also involved? Sex with animals is done ONLY for the pleasure of the human. So you have compared apples and oranges. But you have already said that pleasure is NOT the basis for morality! Look above at your own post. By the Libertarian statement, not restricting the freedom of another is the basis for morality. Pleasure can only be countenanced as long as it does not violate that morality. So, since you have shown that your idea of morality is wrong, your conclusion cannot follow from a false premise. You are going to have to find some other way to justify bestiality.

So? It looks to me like a double hand mixer. Before the days when there were electric hand held kitchen mixers, there were machines where you turned a crank, and the gears transferred the motion to turning the paddles on the mixer. Try going to an antique store to find one. This simply looks like two of those placed back to back. What's the big deal?

Exactly! Second Law of Thermodynamics. He is using electricity from the power grid to make the radio waves. So, in order to actually decrease the use of fossil fuels, the electricity must be made by wind, solar, tidal, or nuclear power. Also, the energy density of hydrogen is much less than gasoline. The saltwater + microwave generator is going to weigh more than the gasoline + engine in cars now. That decreases the efficiency. yeah. The problem is finding something that will locate only the cancer cells but not normal cells. Putting something with the targeting chemical is the easy part. So the guy basically skipped right over the hard part. In using radiotherapy to treat cancer, the problem is that the x-rays kill all the cells in the path, both before and after they pass thru the tumor. Also, radiotherapy is only good on very localized cancers. Any widely spread cancer -- as in metastasis -- has too many locations for radiotherapy. I haven't found anything clinically except for treatment of melanomas -- which are skin cancers. However, I did find the following paper. It is on cells in culture, not in the patient. 1: Int. J. Radiat. Biol. 2007 May;83(5):289-99. Reproductive death of cancer cells induced by femtosecond laser pulses. Thøgersen J, Knudsen CS, Maetzke A, Jensen SJ, Keiding SR, Alsner J, Overgaard J. Department of Chemistry, University of Aarhus, Denmark. thogersen@chem.au.dk PURPOSE: High intensity femtosecond (1 fs = 10(-15) s) laser pulses may, via multi-photon processes, cause reproductive cell death at wavelengths that otherwise are harmless. We study the efficacy of inducing reproductive death of cancer cells by ultraviolet (UV), visible (VIS) and near infrared (IR) femtosecond laser pulses. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Human squamous carcinoma cervical cancer cells are irradiated by femtosecond laser pulses at 800 nanometers (nm), 400 nm, 266 nm and 200 nm. The reproductive death is assessed by colony forming assay. The contribution from multi-photon processes is evaluated by comparing the cell reproduction subsequent to irradiation by collimated (low intensity) and focused (high intensity), pulsed laser beams with identical fluences. RESULTS: Suitable femtosecond pulses are capable of arresting cell reproduction at all the tested wavelengths. Irradiation at 266 nm is far more efficient than the other wavelengths, both in terms of the fluence and the absorbed dose needed to induce reproductive cell death. The collimated 800 nm beam is unable to induce reproductive cell death even at a fluence of 230 Joule/square centimeters (J/cm2). However, focused 800 nm pulses with much higher intensities, but lower fluences efficiently arrest cell reproduction, thus highlighting the dramatic effect of multi-photon processes. At the intensities used in the present work focusing the 400 nm beam improves its efficacy by an order of magnitude, whereas focusing the 266 nm beam does not improve its efficacy. CONCLUSION: Femtosecond pulses at 200, 266, 400 and 800 nm induce reproductive cell death if the intensity is sufficiently high. Multi-photon processes can improve the efficacy substantially and even result in reproductive cell death at wavelengths, where single-photon processes are harmless.

I would say "greater reliability". But now to ask you: why? Oh, do NOT go here! Now you are into the Demarcation Problem -- how to distinguish science from non-science. And no, science is NOT "a process" or "the method". You've got 2 problems: 1. There is no "THE method" of science. Different disciplines within science use different methods. 2. What is usually considered "the method" of science -- the hypothetico-deductive method -- is used by lots of disciplines that you would never admit to science. Read further for testing and support of this. You have made the mistake of switching from the discipline to the people. Now you are talking about "scientists". So, since I have been a working research scientist for 30 years, please tell me what method I have been using? Sorry, but this is wrong. This is not the method that scientists usually use. The rest of your description is the standard Popperian hypothetico-deductive method. But this is what Popper concluded after studying the history of science: "I thought that scientific theories were not the digest of observations, but that they were inventions -- conjectures boldly put forward for trial, to be eliminated if they clashed with observations, with observations which were rarely accidental but as a rule undertaken with the definite intention of testing a theory by obtaining, if possible, a decisive refutation." Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations, 1963 p 38. However, consider other disciplines than astrology. Let's look at the hypothesis: "onside kicks are usually fumbled" Can you seriously contend that football coaches have not properly tested that hypothesis? And actually obtained a refutation? Or take another hypothesis: Moses was the author of the Pentateuch (Torah). I suggest you do some reading on the Documentary Hypothesis and realize that Biblical scholars (religion) has thoroughly tested that hypothesis and obtained a refutation. Well, 2/3 of the way into the post, you finally explained what you meant by "facts are a product of science". There are some problems with this: 1. You contradicted this when you talked about testing the hypothesis: "The prediction is tested by novel experiment or observation," What are those "observations"? Aren't they facts? 2. The National Academy of Science has defined "fact" as "repeated observation". What you are saying here is that "facts" are supported hypotheses/theories. However, aren't all the falsified hypotheses also products of science? So, let's change this: hypotheses/theories are the product of science. These hypotheses/theories can either be falsified or supported. 2. What you are stating is actually something stated by William Whewell in the late 1800s. Whewell noted that "fact" is anything which is used as the basis of a theory. His (classic) example was Kepler's theories of planetary motion were used as "facts" in Newton's theory of gravity. But that doesn't change that what you call "fact" is actually a supported hypothesis/theory. I will also note here that Whewell demonstrated that all observations involved theories. If you say "the year is 365 days long", that involves theories of time and consecutive numbers. I agree that science generally works by Popperian hypothetico-deductive method. However, that method is not limited to science. Nor do scientists form hypotheses by digesting observations. As you noted in your example, the peasant is using imagination to generate a hypothesis. BTW, the peasant's hypothesis can avoid falsification by simply adding an ad hoc hypothesis that the rainbow is too far away to reach. However, the scientific method can be used in ANY situation where people agree on what is "data". Science agrees that 1) the physical universe is data and 2) the data has to be the same for everyone under approximately the same circumstances. It is that last one that really means science cannot study "everything". Thus your definition of science -- "Thus, science is the study of everything using the scientific method." -- is wrong. Science cannot study anything where the data is not intersubjective. And that is most of human existence. Science is a very limited form of knowing and, altho it looks like it can cover everything, actually covers only a very small part of our lives. But aren't falsified theories also "scientific fact"? Which statement are we more sure of in science: 1. The earth is round. 2. The earth is not flat.

This was stated by Christians over 170 years ago: "If sound science appears to contradict the Bible, we may be sure that it is our interpretation of the Bible that is at fault." Christian Observer, 1832, pg. 437; quoted by Stephen Neill in Anglicanism, Penguin Books, 1960, pg. 240. I would say that the professional creationists are criminal. They know differently and deliberately mislead the rank and file. Why? Because Fundamentalism is one religion where the religion is geared to the power of the priests or ministers. It's about them having power: theological and political. I would say that the rank and file creationists are tragic. They have been fed, and believed, a tragic logical error: if God did not create the way creationism says, then God did not create and does not exist. They are also tragic for being duped by people who use them for money and political power.

I'm not sure, either, considering both you and Wikipedia got it wrong. Ockham's Razor simply does not work for evaluating theories and deciding which is the correct one. How do you know that the association was "irrational"? Remember, at least half of all scientists are/have been theists and many of them report personal experience. Now, these people are not "irrational" in their professional life. After all, they are the ones providing data that counter the Argument from Design. So to say that they are "irrational" here is Special Pleading. You have decided it is "irrational" because you have already decided deity does not exist. Dismissing evidence simply because it is evidence is intellectual dishonesty. "Where have we arrived at the end of seven chapters? Joseph Ford has said: 'More than most, [scientists] are content to live with unanswered questions.' (3). One of the questions science hasn't answered and may never be able to answer - let none of us assume otherwise - is whether there is a God. We have not been able to say that it requires double-think or other intellectual dishonesty to have great faith in science as we know it at the end of the twentieth century and also to believe in God - even a personal and intervening God. But why should anyone think such a combination of faiths might be necessary, or indispensable on a quest for fundamental truth? There are two reasons for thinking it might be. One would be to have first-hand, experiential evidence of God which was personally convincing. The second is because to dismiss belief in God summarily is to pass premature and unwarranted judgement on the sanity, honesty, and intelligence of a vast number of our fellow human beings who claim to have such experiential evidence, many of them the same persons we do trust implicitly when it comes to other matters. It ill becomes any of us to take the attitude that all evidence for God is false evidence, beneath consideration, simply by virtue of its being evidence for God, or even by virtue of its being outside the purview of science. Such attitudes are taken, sometimes in the name of science, but in truth this sort of attitude is intellectual dishonesty. Our most reputable scientists, whatever sins of arrogance that may occasionally commit, do not really declare that what they don't know isn't knowledge or that what they haven't experienced isn't experience." Kitty Ferguson, The Fire in the Equations, pp. 281-282.

Now you have just made circular reasoning. You have just said that ANY explanation is the simplest no matter how complicated it is. No, in order for you to use it, the simplest explanation must be the correct one BEFORE it is tested. And yes, I do have an example from my own experience. However, all you have to do is look at the scientific literature on signal transduction to see that the simplest explanation is not always the correct one. In 1965 Marshall Urist published a paper in Science describing the phenomena of ectopic bone induction. Urist took bone from one rabbit and demineralized it and then put the deminernalized bone (organic matrix) back under the skin of another rabbit. A new nodule of bone formed at the site. Obviously bone never forms normally under the skin. This is bone induction. Subsequent papers by Urist and others demonstrated the phenomena across several mammalian species and demonstrated that a protein was responsible for the effect. Urist named the as-yet-unpurified protein bone morphogenetic protein (BMP). Ockham's Razor said that there was one protein, and also reasoning based on evolution, since it would be "confusing" to have more than one protein direct such a critical biological phenomena. At least 8 labs were working on the problem simultaneously, and the job took from 1965 until 1990. Everyone could get a partially purified preparation having 3 major bands on gel electrophoresis, but could get no further. Eventually Wozney and Wang's group at Genetics Institute used a brute force approach and got partial amino acid sequences from the 3 bands, got the cDNA sequences, and cloned every possible protein with those sequences. It turns out there are at least 10 BMPs. All of which induce ectopic bone formation. The natural product is actually a heterodimer (one peptide chain from 2 genes) of BMP-2 and BMP-7. when presenting crackpot theories about a magic man in the sky who created everything out of his sheer will, the burden of proof is left on the one doing the presenting. Now, I suppose you are going to say that "one BMP" did not "fully explain" the situation. That is a copout. Because, in fact, single BMPs WILL cause the phenomenon. show me something in this universe that requires the existence of a deity to be the way it is. Show me something that you know does not require the existence of a deity to be the way it is. This is the limitation of science that I talked about before: methodological materialism. Now you are engaging in the Shifting the Burden of Proof fallacy. And also turned science on its head. I showed above that science DISPROVES hypotheses. The burden, in science, is to disprove. Darwin had this in the Fontispiece of Origin of Species. It is stated as "fact" but in reality it is a hypothesis. Can you show, by science, that it is wrong? "The only distinct meaning of the word 'natural' is stated, fixed, or settled; since what is natural as much requires and presupposes an intelligent agent to render it so, i.e., to effect it continually or at stated times, as what is supernatural or miraculous does to effect it for once." Butler: Analogy of Revealed Religion. So, now you use Special Pleading. We can have "not simple" explanations, as long as we don't use entities you have decided don't exist. BTW, you realize that Big Bang has the universe appearing "out of thin air". So, when we hypothesize things like quantum fluctuations or God to explain the BB, should we not do that? As it turns out, you have misunderstood Ockham's Razor. Bad history and philosophy of science. The idea that the "simplest explanation is correct" actually comes from Newton. Ockham's Razor is often stated: "the simplest explanation is the correct one" Poor William of Ockham. This is actually the position he argued against. Others argued that nature always takes the simplest path. Thus, since the angle of reflection = angle of incidence, it was thought that the angle of refraction must = 1/2 the angle of incidence, because this was the next "simplest" equation. What William of Ockham actually said was that, indescribing a phenomenon, do not use unnecessary entities. His example was a typical statement of his time: “A body moves because of an acquired impetus” vs “a body moves”. The "acquired impetus" was a force that was thought to be imparted to a body and kept it moving. But Ockham noted that "move" was simply a change in position over time. Therefore, the correct way to describe the phenomenon was "a body moves". Leave out "impetus" or any other cause entirely. Now look at a modern example supposedly explaining the Razor: “Consider for example the following two theories aimed at describing the motion of the planets around the sun: The planets move around the sun in ellipses because there is a force between any of them and the sun which decreases as the square of the distance.* The planets move around the sun in ellipses because there is a force between any of them and the sun which decreases as the square of the distance. This force is generated by the will of some powerful aliens.”******* http://phyun5.ucr.edu/~wudka/Physics7/Notes_www/node10.html You would say that the last is not the simplest. HOWEVER, the first one also violates Ockham's Razor because it is not the simplest way to describe the phenomenon of planetary orbits. The correct Ockham statement is "The planets move around the sun in ellipses." No need to add ANY "force". In the second edition of Principia, Newton listed 4 "rules of reasoning in philosophy" Look at #1: "We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearance". This, to me, sounds more like parsimony than what William of Ockham stated. I will now quote from John Losee's A Historical Introduction to the Philosophy of Science, 4th edition, pg 83-84. "In support of Rule 1, Newton appealed to a principle of parsimony, declaing that nature "affects not the pomp of superfluous causes". But exactly what Newton meant, or should have meant, by a "true cause" has beena subject of some debate. For instance, both William Whewell and John Stuart Mill criticized Newton for failing to specify criteria for the indentification of true causes. Whewell remarked that if Newton meant to restrict teh "true cause" of a type of phenomnea to causes already known to be effective in producing other types of phenomena, then Rule 1 would be overly restrictive. It would preclude the introduction of new causes. However, Whewell was not certain that this was Newton's intended meaning. He noted that Newton may have meant only to restrict the introduction of causes to those of "similar in kind" to causes that previously have been established. Whewell observed that, thus interpreted, Rule 1 would be too vague to guide scientific inquiry. Any hypothetical cause could be claimed to display some similarity to previously established causes. Having dismissed these inadequate alternatives, Whewell suggested that what Newton should have meant by "true cause" is a cause represented in a theory, which theory is supported by inductive evidence acquired from analysis of diverse types of phenomenon. Mill likewise interpreted "true cause" so as to reflect his own philosophical position. Consistent with his view of induction as a theory of proof of causal connection, Mill maintained that what disntinguishes a "true cause" is that its connection with teh effect ascribed to it be susceptible to proof by independent evidence." I would note that the term "sufficient" is being ignored by Losee. What generally accepted criteria do we have that a cause is "sufficient"? Within the limited area of being a material cause, we may have such criteria. But extended to a general idea of "sufficiency", there is a failure of consensus on criteria. All in all, Rule 1 does not work as a means of theory evaluation. I would note that science has discarded Rule 3: "In experimental philosophy we are to look upon propositions inferred by general induction from phenomena as accuarately or very nearly true, notwithstanding any contrary hypothesis that may be imagined, till such time as other phenomena occur, by which they may either be made more accurate, or liable to exceptions." IOW, by Newton's rules, we can't falsify theories! Instead, data that contradicts them simply is viewed as exceptions to the theory.

I suggest you read Chapter 6 of Miller's Finding Darwin's God. I will try to summarize. Free will requires that the future not be "fixed" or strictly determined by cause and effect. Under pre-quantum mechanics physics, free will was not possible because the universe was thought to be strictly deterministic. However, QM changed all that. It turns out that events in the quantum world are regular, but uncaused in a traditional sense. That is, C14 always decays with a half life of ~5,280 years. That is, take any number of C14 atoms, and half of them will always decay in a half life. However, look at the individual C14 atoms, there is no cause that the particular atom decayed when it did. So the future is not "fixed". It is open. So I believe in free will. The actions we take now are not strictly determined by the past, and those actions will have real consequences in the future. This argument, BTW, applies to theist, agnostics, and atheists. Miller, being theist, argues that having free will allows our lives to have meaning. And this, in turn, is consistent with the Judeo-Christian belief of a loving God.

Someone that has faith faeries does not exist in the absence of falsification of fairies. How do you know deity does not exist? That's the issue that we are trying to decide: does deity exist? You are saying that deity does not exist -- as a fact -- but never provide the evidence for it. Your (and my) belief that fairies don't exist is also faith. We just happen to share this particular faith. No, it doesn't. Let's take this out of religion. Last November I walked into a voting booth and voted for the candidates I believed would do the best job in office. Now, did my vote make "sense"? Yes. I could give you reasons for all my votes. But, did I have "proof"? Of course not! In order to have proof, I would have had to have looked into 2 futures -- where each candidate held office -- and then seen which did better. Now, atheism makes the most sense to you. To those who have direct, personal, experiential evidence of deity, then being theist makes the most sense to them. The difficulty is that you have different evidence than theists. The idea that faith is associated with "makes you feel better" shows that you have assigned a lesser knowledge or truth value to "faith". In your view, "faith" is always associated with "not true". Therefore, when we say "atheism is a faith" you are hearing that as "atheism is not true". The problem doesn't lie with the word "faith", but with the desire by some atheists to give atheism a truth value it doesn't have.

This doesn't make the word meaningless. It simply points out that more of our existence is based on faith than we like to admit. Science is a very limited form of knowing and most of our lives are done outside it. Also, we share faith in a lot of things. Now, for you personally, you do have overwhelming evidence that all these things exist, don't you? So why do you call them "faith"? I submit it's simply because the rest of us aren't experiencing what you do. Technically, yes. In ANY search for truth, there are some statements we must take as true without the ability to prove that they are true. The two basic statements are: 1. I exist 2. I am sane. However, we ALL share those statements of faith. So we assume they are true. Now we can look at some other statements: 1. The earth is not flat. 2. Proteins are not the hereditary material. We can prove those. So they aren't faith. There are other statements that we accept as (provisionally) true because they have overwhelming supporting evidence: 1. The earth is round. 2. Humans have 46 chromosomes. 3. All matter is made of atoms. Those also aren't faith. Then we come to some other statements that we do make on faith: 1. Tachyons exist. 2. Deity exists. 3. Deity does not exist. These statements can be either correct or incorrect, but we simply don't have the evidence to say so. Sorry, but your "logic" is wrong. By data. The simplest answer is NOT always the correct one. So you have shown that it is atheism that is the irrational faith, becasue you believe in a statement -- the simplest answer is always the correct one -- when you have empirical evidence against it. How do you know that? Where's your data? Point to a universe that you KNOW doesn't have deity so we can see one that exists without deity! THIS is why atheism is so dangerous to science. 1. The idea that "the simplest answer is the correct one" would have us stop doing science because all we have to do is look for the "simplest" answer and never have to test it! 2. Saying as fact something that hasn't been tested ("the universe is perfectly capable of existing without [deity]") ignores how we do scientific experiments. It basically says we don't need the scientific method anymore; we can just make pronouncements of fact without data! If we go with your justification for atheism, then all of science is wrong and we don't do it anymore.

I'm afraid your history is wrong. You can't disprove by a theory. The "aether" was disproved by the Michelson-Morely experiments. What Special Relativity did was provide an alternative mechanism for light to be waves. What actually happened was that Lorentz made an ad hoc hypothesis to account for the results of the Michelson-Morely experiments. Lorentz said that the earth contracted just the right amount to compensate for the movement thru the aether. You can always save a hypothesis from falsification by introducing an ad hoc hypothesis. In fact, we do this all the time in the lab when results don't come out as expected. However, the key is: ad hoc hypotheses must be tested independently of the hypothesis they are trying to save. That is, they must have some other consequences that we can look at. The Lorentz contractions had no other consequences so people ignored it. So, do tachyons not exist? They can't be detected. Also, you have to distinguish between "never be detected" and "unable to be detected by the methods we are using". You are confusing the two. Do the fairies have any effect on the physical universe? If not, then they are untestable. Basically, what you have done is add the ad hoc hypothesis "hide whenever and however I look for them" to the hypothesis of fairies. You have deliberately constructed a hypothesis that can't be tested. NO! We never said that. We simply said that using "absence of evidence" to say something did not exist was a fallacious argument. Sorry, but no. 1. Science fiction stories have explicit acknowledgments that they are writing fiction. Therefore that falsifies the monsters as real. 2. You can falsify the crop circle aliens by having alternative mechanisms for making crop circles. 3. The fairies are deliberately fabricated by you -- therefore you have said they are fiction. Deity is said to influence the physical universe and communicate with people. It's just that we are unable, by science, to support or refute those claims. No, you're an atheist. It's just that you don't want to acknowledge that your position is faith. In this regard, your denial of reality is like creationists denying science. Because George Lucas has an explict statement that Star Wars is fiction. If you pick another faith -- such as leprechauns don't exist -- then they share your faith and don't mention it as a faith. In a sense, yes. In the thread "Assumptions of science", we delineated that any search for truth depends on statements of faith: I exist. I am sane. Once you accept those, then within that system some statements are NOT faith. The earth is not flat is not a statement of faith. There are quite a few statements in science that are not statements of faith: all the falsified hypotheses. Your premise seems to be: the word "atheism" cannot involve faith. That's the premise we are arguing against. Atheism is a faith. You want to deny that, and will even stop using the word rather than admit that atheism is a faith. In the limit, to say you are an atheist you must have faith in the idea that the word "atheist" has a meaning, but that means you have faith so you aren't one. Which simply shows that you are still trying to deny that atheism is faith. Look, "faith" isn't a bad word. You seem to be equating "faith" with "wrong". Faiths can either be accurate or inaccurate. Atheism may be correct. Theism may be correct. It's just that, now, to be an atheist is to believe firmly (as you acknowledge) without evidence to prove.

LOL! No, you are trying to make a new term -- "weak atheism" -- and have it be agnosticism. Thank you for proving my point that "weak atheism", upon examination, becomes either agnosticism or "strong" atheism. We understand what atheism is. Some atheists are tying to disguise what atheism is in order to try to con us that it isn't a faith. Now, let's look at that "lack of belief". What is that, exactly. If it is the neutral position "I don't know if deity exists", then that is agnosticism. Agnositicism was defined long before you tried this shell game trick. I know that you are making a strawman. The strawman is yours. We are just calling it what it is. There can be advantages in building a strawman. In this case the advantage is psychological: it disguises that atheism is a faith so that some atheists can try to delude themselves, and us, as to the real nature of atheism. We simply aren't letting you get away with it. Paranoia, there are tests you can do to see whether "I don't believe" or "lack belief" is really a neutral position and whether we really use it as a neutral position. You simply test it outside theism/atheism. 1. Go to any synagogue and announce "I lack belief that the Holocaust happened." See if they take that as a "neutral" position. Or do they interpret that as "I believe the Holocaust did not happen"? 2. Go to a sports bar in any major city and announce "I lack belief that (favorite local team) is a good team." 3. Go to a pro-life meeting and announce "I don't believe the fetus is a human being." We keep the word. We just recognize that, in some case, BOTH sides are equally a matter of faith. Atheists are "believers". The believe deity does not exist. They are also believers in another sense: they believe that the processes we call "natural" occur on their own. That belief exactly fits Webster's "firm belief in something in the absence of proof".

From the pov of science, to say "I believe (entity) does not exist" without the evidence to falsify it is making a statement of faith. What is confusing you, I think, it that all of us share some beliefs. You can I share, for instance, a belief that leprechauns don't exist. When enough people share a belief, we often lose sight of the fact that this is a belief and mistakenly think of it as "true" or "fact". Now, you can say "I don't know if (entity) exists or not." This is what I would call "lack of faith". There is no faith on either side -- existence or non-existence. You, however, tend to equate "disbelief" and "lacks belief". I claim those are 2 different things. The questions are not different. What you have done is say that the answer to the questions is different. When first posed, there was no evidence for any of those entities! 1. I think the major problem is that several people here have a mistaken view of how science works. This mistaken view is that first you gather evidence and THEN you make a hypothesis/propose an entity. However, science most often works the opposite. First you ask the question/propose the entity, and then you go looking for evidence. So, after looking specifically for evidence in an attempt to falsify atoms, quarks, and natural selection, they are supported. BTW, "predictions" are simply "evidence/observations we have not seen yet". 1. As stated, that's not true. I'll get back to that later. 2. But you have to ask the question: Why don't we have supporting evidence? Is it because there is no supporting evidence or is it because science can't find or identify it? It's the latter. I did this in my post when I said "Science is in the same boat when looking for evidence of deity. The methodology of science is incapable of directly detecting deity. It's called Methodologial Materialism (or Naturalism). Despite some claims about it, MM comes directly from how we do experiments." Again, is this the hypothesis' fault or a problem with how science works? It's a problem with science. Now, back to the "proof". You have to define what you mean by "proof". The only "proving" science can do is "disproving" or proving that something does not exist. Even with all the supporting evidence we have, we [and I mean scientists] have not, strictly speaking, "proven" natural selection or gravity. "the experimental results may square with the hypothesis, or they may be inconsistent with it. ... but no matter how often the hypothesis is confirmed -- no matter how many apples fall downward instead of upwards --the hypothesis embodying the Newtonian gravitational scheme cannot be said to have been *proved to be true*. Any hypothesis is still sub judice and may conceivably be supplanted by a different hypothesis later on. ...To my mind the great strength of Karl Popper's conception of the scientific process is that it is realistic -- it gives a pretty fair picture of what actually goes on in real-life laboratories." "The Threat and the Glory", by P.B. Medawar (Nobel Prize winner in medicine), HarperCollins, New York, 1990 (original publication 1959). pp 96-101. But a "disbelief" is believing in the opposite. "b (1) : firm belief in something for which there is no proof " So, when you say "I disbelieve in God" you are saying "I believe God does not exist." That's a firm belief for something for which there is no proof. QED And now you know why theists believe! What have you stated? You've stated you will "believe" when you have personal experience/evidence. Theists already have had personal experiences of deity.

Yes. The Nicene Creed makes a theological statement: God created. This is creation. Creationism is a particular HOW that God is said to have used to create. As studied in the period 1500-1831, it was a scientific theory. Scientists, all of whom were theists and many of whom were ministers, showed that creationism was false. What we have today are people who refuse to accept that the theory was falsified. Is that a mental disorder? No. If refusal to accept falsification of a theory is a mental disorder, then many scientists, including Einstein, have suffered from it. There have always been scientists who refuse to accept that a particular theory has been shown to be false. There were phlogiston chemists who went to their graves refusing to accept phlogiston wasn't responsible for combustion. Maxwell and Lorentz refused to accept the falsification of the aether. Einstein refused to accept that strict determinism was falsified. Now, back to the term "creationist". To be a creationist, you must believe that God directly manufactured some entities. All creationists, whatever their other disagreements, agree that humans were directly manufactured. Remember, creationism is a particular method that God used to create. You can believe in creation but accept that what science has discovered is the mechanism that God used to create. This is what Darwin and the half of evolutionary biologists who are theists have done. By this belief, God created the universe by the Big Bang, galaxies, stars, and planets by gravity, life by chemistry, and the diversity of life by evolution. (Theology calls these "secondary causes"). This is "theistic evolution". It should be noted that creationists will not accept that theistic evolutionists are creationists. "A Law of Nature then is the rule and Law, according to which God resolved that certain Motions should always, that is, in all Cases be performed. Every Law does immediately depend upon the Will of God." Gravesande, Mathematical Elements of Natural Philosophy, I, 2-3, 1726, quoted in CC Gillespie, Genesis and Geology, 1959. "To my mind it accords better with what we know of the laws impressed on matter by the Creator, that the production and extinction of the past and present inhabitants of the world should have been due to secondary causes, like those determining the birth and death of the individual." C. Darwin, On the Origin of Species,pg. 449. Phi, yes "yom" can mean time longer than a day, but it doesn't in Genesis 1. The authors deliberately set up creation to be six 24-hr days so that they would have a justification for the Sabbath. The authors intended a 24 hour day. The internal clues are: 1. In the first 3 days, the text specifically says "morning and evening" even tho there is no sun. This is there to make the day 24 hours. 2. When we get to the 7th day, which could be indefinite, we don't have "yom" anymore. Instead Genesis 2:1 and 2:2 uses the word "beyom" which means "in THE day" and is limited to occuring in a 24 hour day. This limits the 7th day to 24 hours because, otherwise, the ambiguity of "yom" in this context could have God still resting. 3. Exodus 20:11 and a passage in Levitcus explicitly tie the 6 days of work and 1 day of rest in the Commandment of the Sabbath to the 6 days of creation. If creation "days" were indefinite time, then the justification doesn't work. So Day-Age Creationism fails on hermeneutical grounds as well as scientific grounds. As I said, this is what the authors intended. The reason is to make a theological statement, not actual history. Creationism can be called a "con". The professional creationists are conning the laypeople creationists. The reason for this is that creationism does not have God as the object of worship. Creationism -- based on Biblical literalism or Fundamentalism -- worships the Bible, not God. This can be seen in the pamphlets The Fundamentals (online at http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Parthenon/6528/fundcont.htm ) A basic statement of Fundamentalism is that the Bible is "inerrant". Science and Higher Criticism (and Jesus) challenge this belief. Since the literal Bible is god, Fundamentalists simply ignore Jesus but feel compelled to attack science and Higher Criticism. After all, if science is right, their god can't be real. Not necessarily. That's the problem: you have to take the claims one at a time, like we do everywhere else (such as Origin of Species). The 900 years can be falsified because it won't fit with history, but the miracles of the Plagues and Parting the Red Sea can't be falsified by science. I can easily see how you can have a personal opinion that these accounts are not true, but you can't know they aren't true.

6. M Roach, Why men kill. Discover 19: 100-108, Dec. 1998. Summarizes study of Amazon tribe where half the males are murdered. looking for the evolutionary roots of violence.

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/thermo/heatreg.html http://www.siu.edu/~tw3a/331temp.htm http://www.ihop-net.org/UniPub/iHOP/pm/9462153.html

You can "bet" all you want. What matters is data. That is different from studies on thimerosal and Alzheimer's. What are the studies and are they looking at organic or inorganic mercury? You have to be careful extrapolating those to thimerosal. That's per day. Remember that. The flu shot is given ONCE. So, for a 110 pound woman (50 kg), that comes to 5 ug Hg per day. So, the woman got 5 days worth of Hg in one. Shot. So she doesn't eat fish for the rest of the week and she is still ahead (see below). I think you are getting your information from autism sites. There has been a discussion in the lay public about a link between autism and thimerosal. You need to check all these figures before you cite them as fact. For instance: yes, there is 25 ug of Hg in 0.5 ml of a flue vaccine. However, many vaccines have no Hg at all: http://www.vaccinesafety.edu/thi-table.htm Not true. They are told "Because methylmercury and high levels of elemental mercury can be particularly toxic to unborn or young children, organizations such as the U.S. EPA and FDA recommend that women who are pregnant or plan to become pregnant within the next one or two years, as well as young children avoid eating more than 6 ounces (one average meal) of fish per week.[26] " So they are told to limit their fish to 6 oz per week. The flu shot is a one time thing. this is direct into the blood stream and able to cross the blood brain barrier where alot of it will be converted into ionic Hg, ionic Hg resides in the brain for longer Sharks have high levels of Hg, at about 1 ppm. A 6 oz steak is 180 gm (about 30 g/oz). That is 180 million micrograms. At 1 ppm that is 180 ug. Lots more Hg in shark than a flu shot. How much did you bet? Pay up.So, if you have one shark steak per week, your daily Hg intake averages to 26 ug Hg/day. Again, you can get all this info on PubMed. You have to remember that there are different types of toxicity. What is not toxic to an adult can be very toxic to a developing fetus. And it is here that Hg is very toxic. It's a potent teratogen and interferes with the development of the brain if present during embryogenesis. You also have to remember pharmacokinetics. The Hg in fillings stays there. You need the Hg to be ingested (food) to be absorbed by the GI tract, inhaled as from a broken thermometer, on the skin or cuts in merthiolate, or injected via thimerosal. Again, Lewis and Lincoln experienced Hg exposure as adults. Exposure to fetuses and infants is different. Remember thalidomide. No toxicity in adults, was a really potent teratogen.

and what do you think the major stimulator of local inflammation is? Prostaglandin! Prostaglandins also stimulate substance P, which is a direct stimulator of peripheral sensory nerves. So, blocking prostaglandin also blocks stimulation of the nerves Which are the receptors for endorphins! The reason the receptors were called "opioid" was because opioids were known long before endorphins were discovered. The natural ligands for the receptors are the endorphins. The names should have been "endorphin" receptors. True. More molecules to bind to the same receptors. Very good. Altho your description is somewhat overly complex. ("disinhibition" is a somewhat awkward term. ) What happens is that morphine inhibits the release of GABA. Without GABA to inhibit the release of dopamine in dopaminergic neurons (those that use dopamine as a transmitter), the result is increased release of of dopamine. http://www.portfolio.mvm.ed.ac.uk/studentwebs/session6/54/opioids.html http://www.anesth.utmb.edu/cohen/DRUG%20HANDOUT.htm

You are saying facts are the result of science? If so, please explain how you reached that conclusion.

You are confusing your acceptance of the theory with whether the theory is accurate. Whether YOU believe the theory has nothing to do with whether the theory is valid or invalid. What you have confessed to is that you don't do science. You are saying that the universe must conform to someguy's idea of logic. ALL hypotheses/theories must be tested. A theory can have perfect logic, but if the data is against it, it is wrong. Another confession you aren't doing science. Sorry, but I don't care if I can convince YOU. All I care about is whether the theory is tested and accurate. Whether "someguy" or "galaxyblur" accept it is irrelevant. I know that makes you sound unimportant, but you are unimportant compared to the accuracy of the idea. And guess what you are doing here? Testing the theory. That's the first test of a theory: it must be consistent with known data. So, if the math portrays a universe that doesn't match the one we already see, then that is a test of the theory. And a test the theory fails. Better. Because now you've got a failed test of the theory. I think, someguy, that you may actually do testing and depend upon it. You just don't realize that you do. When you say "math gets tailored to properly represent observations", that is because those observations are the initial tests. So the theory (math) is modified in the face of data. Remember, observations we have already made are still "direct experience of the universe". Now, the way you distinguish between competing theories that both cover known observations is to look at knowledge we should find (predictions) IF the theory is true. Then you do experiments to test for them. Both Special Relativity and Newtonian gravity covered known observations. BUT, Special Relativity predicted that light would bend in a sufficiently strong gravitational field. Newtonian gravity predicted light would continue in a straight line. So, in 1919 Eddington and others looked for the position of stars during an eclipse. They were displaced from light traveling in a straight line. Special Relativity supported, Newtonian gravity falsified.

"not believing" is the same as believing something does not exist. Still faith unless you can falsify the entity. Some of those require faith. You aren't really trying to falsify; just intellectual laziness. Santa Claus and Tooth Fairy can be falsified by data. Think about the statements regarding each and how they are tested and falsified. The statements about leprechauns are such that leprechauns, to my knowledge, are unfalsifiable by science. Therfore if you "don't believe", you do so on faith. As it turns out, there are a lot of people who share your faith, including me. But from the pov of science, it's faith. Remember, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. In science, that is EXACTLY the burden of proof for every entity. If you can't falsify, the entity stays on the table as possible. See below for examples. Same statement. This is just semantic sleight of hand. "I do not believe" is the same as saying "I believe there is not". How do you know the hypothesis isn't correct? So, back to science and the examples I talked about. "1. Tachyons: can we rule them out. The special theory of relativity has been tested to unprecedented accuracy, and appears unassailable. Yet tachyons are a problem. Though they are allowed by the theory, they bring with them all sorts of unpalatable properties. Physicists would like to rule them out once and for all, but lack a convincing nonexistence proof. Until they construct one, we cannot be sure that a tachyon won't suddenly be discovered. 3. Time travel: just a fanstasy? The investigation of exotic spacetimes that seem to permit travel into the past will remain an active field of research. So far, the loophole in the known laws of physics that permits time travel is very small indeed. Realistic time-travel scenarios are not known at the time of writing. But as with tachyons, in the absence of a no-go proof, the possibility has to stay on the agenda. So long as it does, paradoxes will haunt us.'' Paul Davies, About Time, 1994. So, what's your position on tachyons. They are very similar to deity: 1. Allowed by theory. 2. Undetectable. 3. A pain in the ass if they exist. Do you believe tachyons exist? Do you believe they don't exist? How about you "don't believe" they exist? How is that different from believing tachyons don't exist? Do you not know whether tachyons exist or not. If you are willing to entertain the possibility, how do you deal with the "lack of evidence" for tachyons? That's what atheists have tried to do with "weak" and "strong" atheism. They claim that "strong atheism" corresponds to "I believe deity does not exist". "Weak atheism is the "I don't belief that deity exists." The problem is that, upon critical examination, weak atheism is unstable. It becomes either agnosticism or strong atheism. Also, irregardless of whether you say "don't believe" or "believe that deity does not exist", atheism is still stuck with at least one statement of faith: "natural" process happen by themselves and are not dependent on deity. You are making this personal in "I don't believe them". This isn't about people, but about an idea. Is it accurate or inaccurate? The question "Does deity exist?" is no different from saying "do atoms exist?" or "do quarks exist?" or "does natural selection exist?" Science is about testing the existence of entities. You don't decide that you are trusting an individual scientist, but rather whether an idea is correct. Then you believe their claim is false. Right? So we are back to atheism being a belief. See how the "I do not believe in ..." becomes "I believe (the opposite)"? The "affirmative denial" is the same as "affirmative belief" when you say the same thing but use correct semantics. Since this is a science forum, let me remind you all that science does not have the evidence to falsify the existence of deity or strongly support it to the point that we (provisionally) accept it as true. The reason science is agnostic. Your personal view on the question -- whether theist or atheist -- is equally reasonable. What I see in some atheists trying to say that atheism is not a faith is to try to illegitimately give atheism an epistemological value it doesn't have. Of course, not all atheists do this. Many are honest with themselves: "both "God did it" and "God didn't do it" fail as scientific statements. Properly understood, the principle of methodological materialism requires neutrality towards God; we cannot say, wearing our scientist hats, whether God does or does not act. I could say, speaking from the perspective of my personal philosophy, that matter and energy and their interactions (materialism) are not only sufficient to understand the natural world (methodological materialism) but in fact, I believe there is nothing beyond matter and energy. This is the philosophy of materialism, which I, and probably most humanists, hold to. I intentionally added "I believe" when I spoke of my personal philosophy, which is entirely proper. "I believe," however; is not a phrase that belongs in science." Science and Religion, Methodology, and Humanism, Eugenie C Scott, NCSE Executive Director; Reports of the National Center for Science Education 18: 15-17, Mar/Apr. 1998. Because I can test and falsify the statement "there is an elephant in the room". Contrary to what you realize, there is actually evidence of absence. 1. You can do so if you can search the entire search space. For instance, I can say "there is a couch in my living room". If you can inspect the ENTIRE living room and find no couch, then you have searched the entire space possible and have, thus, falsified the statement. This is how unicorns get falsified. BUT, notice that you have to search the entire search space. Remember coelencanths. People looked very hard for fossils of coelencanths more recent than 65 million years ago. They didn't find any. By your criteria, they could "justify" the idea that coelencanths didn't exist. But they couldn't search the entire search space and, in the 1930s, coelencanths were found. 2. You have to be able to do the search! This is where science gets into trouble. Science is simply incapable of finding direct evidence of deity. It's like using the Hubble telescope to look for evidence of mitochondria. You can say, by your criteria, "we looked very hard for mitochondria and couldn't find any evidence for them, therefore we can justify the statement that mitochondria don't exist." Of course, you would be completely wrong. You aren't justified in your conclusion because the Hubble telescope simply can't find the evidence. Science is in the same boat when looking for evidence of deity. The methodology of science is incapable of directly detecting deity. It's called Methodologial Materialism (or Naturalism). Despite some claims about it, MM comes directly from how we do experiments. The only way science can even approach the problem is to sneak deity in the backdoor. What you do is hypothesize a material method that you say deity works by. Then you test the method. You can easily see the problem here: all you've done is support or refute the mechanism. You haven't tested deity. Same thing. Explain how "don't assume the existence of one" is different from "does not exist". BTW, in science, in order to test ANY and EVERY hypothesis, you assume it is correct. So, in order to test whether there is a need for deity, you are going to have to assume deity exists. PS, "you don't see a need" is the Argument from Ignorance.