Arete

There are a number of assumptive statements in this section of your post I think need evidence before they can be accepted as generally correct: 1. "psychology says that atheism is evil" - you'll need to cite this. Psychology is the study of mental functions and behaviors and thus would be assumed to be irreligious (i.e. not pertaining to religion). Saying that the field has an overall religious bias requires some evidence. 2. Suggesting meditation is not equivalent to suggesting one MUST like eastern beliefs, any more that suggesting falafel is tasty is suggesting that you have to worship Mohammed to eat a kebab. 3. I think that any suggestion that sic. "psychologists" ? say that men with a certain aesthetic sexual preference are evil needs citation. THe psychology of differences is aesthetic attraction is a relatively well studied field e.g. http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev.psych.57.102904.190208

There's several flaws in the argument: 1. Humans are by no means the only organisms for which a set of rules govern their social interactions. Many organisms have highly complex social patterns and hierarchies. Wolf packs, chimpanzee troupes, bee hives, zebra herds, lion prides, etc all have "rules" and social norms regarding the interactions of members of their society. There's plenty of examples of order and "right and wrong" in animal interactions and behaviors. 2. Humans can and do kill each other, en masse. There have been countless violent confrontations between humans. 3. Humans also kill other species (like tigers, great white sharks, etc) en masse. Most human societies consume animals.

Einstein has to be one of the most misrepresented people in history. I think, at least from my experience with speculative posters is that a lot of them have started their inquiry with a mindset of "Theory X is wrong. I am going to find proof." as opposed to wanting to actually learn about a certain theory or scientific field. They then encounter something that they personally don't understand, or that they think is unexplained by the theory and have their "eureka" moment. They come here (or elsewhere) touting their brilliant discovery (not knowing the established venues for presenting a new scientific idea i.e. peer reviewed publication - or even worse having been rejected by peer review) only to be dismayed and offended when it is trivially dismissed as flawed. Thus the resulting "science is just religion/dogma which rejects any ideas outside the mainstream" rant. As a postdoc, I'm only a junior, minor cog in the machine of science. Even so, I think that a lot of these speculative posters would be astounded at the amount of thought, analysis and review that goes into even the most trivial advancement in a scientific field, or the number of ideas, including my own which wind up on the cutting room floor of science. Rather than rally against "the dogma of mainstream science" when I have an idea which has been shown by someone greater than me to be flawed, I'm usually impressed with myself for having come up with an idea that someone I admire did, even if it turned out to have been wrong, or already tested. I think a lot of them would be astounded at how much effort it takes to simply push the tentacles of knowledge out an inch from the body of our understanding, let alone overturn it.

As I stated before, their sampling was of patients who suffered a reaction, not of patients administered a vaccine: "total of 366 patients with adverse reactions to live measles, mumps, and rubella monovalent vaccines were reported to the vaccine postmarketing research unit at the Kitasato Institute." http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0091674999705087 It's not 2% of vaccine recipients - it's 2% of patients reporting adverse reactions to vaccines - which has been demonstrated to be an exceptionally low proportion by the same paper (see post #33). You can't cherry pick like that to try and inflate statistics - it's patently dishonest. I'll assume you missed it rather than avoided it, so I'll re-ask: Given your own sources are showing vaccines are orders of magnitude safer than other, widely administered medications such as antibiotics and aspirin, would you consider these medications to be more unacceptably dangerous than vaccines? If so, what would you consider the acceptable chance of adverse side effects to be to consider a medication "safe"?

You're still only citing the abstract of the paper, which leads me to believe you haven't read the body of the manuscript. I am repeating myself again by saying they DO NOT examine whether or not the vaccine causes sensitivity to gelatin - they examine whether or not it causes an anaphylactic reaction, and speculate that it MAY be causative in the end of the discussion. I.e., "we should consider the possibility of sensitization through repetitive immunization of gelatin-containing DTaP vaccine" Furthermore from the same paper: "Among 325 patients [N.B. the study group for the paper was patients who presented to a hospital with adverse reactions to vaccines] , 34 manifested anaphylaxis (15 after measles vaccine, 9 after rubella vaccine, and 10 after mumps vaccine). The total number of doses shipped of each vaccine was 1.26 million doses of measles vaccine, 1.38 million doses of rubella vaccine, and 0.54 million doses of mumps vaccine during the period of the investigation. The reported incidence of anaphylaxis was 11.9 cases/1 million doses for measles vaccine, 6.52 cases/1 million doses for rubella vaccine, and 18.5 cases/1 million doses for mumps vaccine." Meaning that reported in your own citation, are much lower rates of adverse, anaphylactic reactions in comparison with an extremely broad array of other medications. It's doesn't hold that vaccine safety is unacceptable, unless many many other medications are too. For example, the risk of an anaphylactic reaction to aspirin is 1/50,000, much more likely than a reaction to a vaccine. Is aspirin unacceptably dangerous too?

The distinction being that I was pointing out that the strawman argument posed was due to the poster's lack of understanding, then explaining why the argument was a strawman, and finally providing a link as so that the poster, and other readers who did not understand why the argument posed was logically invalid could educate themselves - Rather than simply asserting that zorro was wrong because he couldn't/wouldn't understand. While I agree wholeheartedly with the spirit behind the mod comment in that basing an entire argument on accusing someone of not understanding should be considered innappropriate, being absolutely unable to point out where someone has a lack of basic understanding, and offer to correct their understanding of a theory would significantly curtail discussions negatively. E.g., here if I was unable to point out that zorro's argument stems from a lack of basic understanding of what evolutionary theory claims about the process of speciation, it would be much more difficult to add some fundamental explanation to the thread. In addtion, zorro had a substantial history of arguing using logically flawed premises and from misunderstood positions, and shown resistance to correction. This may well have led to an exasperated/frustrated tone in my and other's posts, which is probably not the most constructive way to debate, for which I apologize.

No, it's a demand you made of Moontanman in post 84 and 86. What you post here is a strawman argument based on your own lack of even a basic understanding of evolutionary theory. There is no "first ancestor". Speciation as a process is a continuum. See here for a comprehensive explanation of the process. http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/evo_40

Hmm, it would seem strange to demand a first human ancestor as a leading question to "debunk" evolution, as the biblical account has all of humanity arising from Adam and Eve - therefore it's impossible to escape intra-population evolutionary divergence, even if you are a new earther. Black, white, brown, yellow etc people all have a common ancestor, and yet back people don't give birth to white babies. While we're on the unreasonable demands bandwagon, can you direct me to the graves of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden, so we can verify the biblical account of the origin of humanity? Seems only fair given you're demanding others account for the precise identification of a pair of prehistoric individuals.

Actually it's a rather textbook example: You start with the premise that no one's version of God is evil - therefore doing evil acts in the name of God is not possible. When presented with evil acts done in the name of God, you make a false distinction between religion and belief in God (belief in God is a FORM of religion) and claim that they were done in the name of religion, not God. Classic no true Scotsman fallacy.

No true Scotsman fallacy

I've reviewed a letter for the journal, so I assumed they were - from their website, it seems that most aren't so you're query is valid - it may well not be. I'm totally open to the pew survey being legitimate. My criticism is at Zorro for simply dismissing a source because you found another that supports your version of the story. Finally, my statement was "a rough estimate in the UK and the US puts the number of scientists who believe in some form of personal God at 3% and 7% respectively" To which Zorro responded "That is an unreliable Source. The LA Times found around 40% Theist Scientists." Which is: a) False. The Pew Research Center found it and they reported 51% of respondents say they "believe in God or a higher power", only 33% or respondents say they "believe in God." 40% is not reported anywhere. b) Shifting the Goalposts. "Believing in God or a higher power" is not equivalent to believing in "a personal God". I was careful in the OP to specifically define what the precentages refer to. Putting an exact number on "how many scientists believe in God" is ultimately a cloudy issue - what sort of God? Does a Spinoza style version count? What qualifies you as a "scientist"? The Larson et al survey asks a pointed, direct question ("Do you believe in a personal God") of a select group of elite (i.e. you must be invited to be a member) of widely esteemed scientists. The Pew survey asks a more general question ("Do you believe in God or a higher power?") of a subscription (i.e. anyone interested can join) group of self purported scientists. There's an expected difference in results, but the conclusion of both studies is that belief in God is much lower in the scientific community than the community at large.

Peer reviewed science is wrong because you found a newspaper article in which a survey asked a different group of people a different question, which discovered a different result. Rightio then.

The 7% figure comes from a peer reviewed article in the Publication Nature. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v394/n6691/full/394313a0.html The 3% figure comes from a peer reviewed artilce in the journal Intelligence. http://fringe.davesource.com/Fringe/Religion/Average-intelligence-predicts-atheism-rates-across-137-nations-Lynn-et-al.pdf The sources are fine.

A post of mine from an old thread: So a rough estimate in the UK and the US puts the number of scientists who believe in some form of personal God at 3% and 7% respectively.

I must've missed the pointer where you decided what was and wasn't up for discussion.

I believe that many of the stem cells used come from unused 3 day embryos left over from IVF treatments, once consent of the patients had been gained. The issue is a cluster of 6-10 cells is not biologically, or physiologically considered a human. Given that many more such embryos are created fro IVF than used, there are an inordinate number of such embryos perennially frozen, never to be implanted. As such, for most people, given parental consent, there is no ethical issue in using these for research. Imbuing such an entity with the same rights as a walking, talking human stems from the belief that their creation is the divine will of a creator, and not bound to any of the physical attributes of the entity itself - which again biologically and physiologically is nothing more than a ball of cells. As such, the implicit assertion in UNity+'s posts that there is a necessity to find alternative,non destructive menas of harvesting cell rather than using these unwanted embryos stems from religious belief. Ergo, religious belief has unequivocally impeded some branches of stem cell research. Furthermore, misunderstanding of the multifaceted science of stem cells has led to campaigns against other branches of stem cell research, and a blanketed stigma towards the approach in general.

I speculate that God rode the big bang on the back of a T-rex on a surfboard. What color were the T-rex's board shorts? * The point of the clearly ridiculous question I've posed is that, if I make a series of unfounded assumptions, and begin the debate at that point in deduction, the foundation of the debate is quite likely, fundamentally flawed.

You used the term in post #3 in a rather unequivocally religious context. Given the name has nothing to do with actual religion - it would at least appear, prima facie to reveal a considerable level of scientific obliviousness. This would cast doubt on your assertions about connections between religion and science, and indeed considerable doubt on your speculation as to the motivation for the name of the particle in question.

100% Effective? Effective and promising for sure but nowhere near 100%. "The researchers found that the higher dosages of PfSPZ Vaccine were associated with protection against malaria infection. Only three of the 15 participants who received higher dosages of the vaccine became infected, compared to 16 of 17 participants in the lower dosage group who became infected. Among the 12 participants who received no vaccine, 11 participants became infected after mosquito challenge. "

I don't believe you've read the paper (singular, n.b.) you're citing, as it doesn't present the finding you keep saying it does.

Any would be a start.

Repeating myself: You have presented no evidence that vaccines cause food allergies: so we either have a plain fallacy, or a non issue. Are you offering new evidence? Otherwise there is little to discuss that hasn't already been comprehensively debunked.

Your argument is a rather blatant strawman - no one ever said vaccines - or any other medication is side effect free. The CDC doesn't lie about it - in fact your evidence that they cause food allergies COMES from the CDC. Here's a standard warning label from the MMR vaccine documenting possible anaphylactic reaction to those allergic to eggs: http://www.rxlist.com/m-m-r-ii-drug/warnings-precautions.htm Second, your title is plain fallacy - the article you cite does not provide direct evidence that vaccines cause food allergies. It demonstrates that vaccines can cause reactions in people susceptible to food allergies and speculates that vaccines may have a causal relationship in the development of allergies. But to put it the whole issue into perspective, the risk of an anaphylactic reaction to a vaccine is approximately 0.65 in one million. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14523172 and to further put that in perspective, the risk of death for infant measles is around 3 in 10 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measles Regardless of the role of vaccines in food allergies, the risk/benefit analysis on vaccine use - an analysis which applies to ANY medication, is fairly straightforward. I, along with around 2% of the human population http://www.thepermanentejournal.org/links/730-therapeutic-antibiotic-use.html (so a risk factor about 30,000 times higher than vaccines) suffer an anaphylactic reaction to penicillin. Many, many drugs widely taken by the population have far, far higher incidence of serious side effects than vaccines. The is a risk of side effects with ANY medication. singling out vaccines and making out that it's a grand conspiracy shows a considerable lack of rudimentary understanding of medicine and anatomy. I'd be interested in how you feel about any surgical procedure. Death induced by general anesthesia is about 34 to one million - making any form of surgery inherently about 52 times more dangerous than a vaccine. http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/story/2012/09/21/surgery-survival.html

Having done a lot of catching snakes, and know that often a startled snake will move for the closest cover, even if it is towards the potential threat. If you look at a snake's skull there isn't much room for brain up there. As such, I usually put "the snake chased me" stories down to: person saw snake, snake saw person, both freaked out, snake moved towards person, person ran away = snake chased me story. Form you link it does look like some are territorial and there may be some truth to it. Gets even worse with monitor lizards, who will climb the nearest, vertical object when startled, even if it happens to be the person who startled them in the first place! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goanna I have actually witnessed an approximately 2m long lace monitor who had learned that it could rear up and hiss at tourists barbequing at a popular lookout, scare them away and steal their meat off the grill. Was a highly amusing antic to watch.