The Da Vinci Code
discussion
Would you rather live in a world without religion…or a world without science?
Ah, sorry for the misattribution then, I read it but clearly didn't track who wrote it. :)
Gerd wrote: "How one can come to the conclusion that this is one and the same is beyond me, though. "The funny part is how she does that while telling herself how deep and profound she is while the rest of us just don't understand her brilliance because we're too stupid or something.
Maria wrote: ""would anyone who does not have a vested interest in the Quran being true come to the conclusion that you have? What would an objective person think?"It's like using the Bible (or Quran) to prove that the Bible (or Quran) is true. "The Bible says so" can't be used as proof of anything unless the person actually believes that the Bible is actually true."
I agree. It's the same kind of thinking.
Gerd wrote: "Ah, sorry for the misattribution then, I read it but clearly didn't track who wrote it. :)"Think nothing of it. It's an easy mistake to make and we all make it sometimes. Oddly enough, I think you were kind of dead on in that I think she made the same error you did, so it turns out your response was a kind of perfect response to what she was meant. Obviously, she can correct me if I'm wrong about that by pointing to the comment I made that fits her description. Somehow, I don't think she will. But, I will certainly be pleased to be proven wrong about that.
The main difference being that when you said something that turned out to be a tiny insignificant error, you admitted it and moved on like a grown up. It's not like it's a big deal. She, however, will continue to pretend she is never wrong by ignoring any situation in which she is shown to be wrong.
Daniel wrote: "Hiba wrote: "(p.s. Einstein agrees) "No he didn't and it would be nice if people would stop spreading this lie."
he didn't what? im not saying that he said he would rather live in a world without science but he did say (quote)'the more I study science the more I believe in god'
Daniel wrote: "The example I gave is actually a stronger case for it coming from the book than those that argue for the age of the earth being 6000 years old, but you agree with the one that already suits your perspective and dismiss without serious thought (the kind that does not start out with the assumption that the book cannot possibly be wrong) the one that does not."The bolded part suggests you are making the same mistake which you are accusing me of. Who decides if evidence is strong or not?
The topic that was being discussed requires knowledge of the Arabic language, since interpreting translations makes things much more difficult. I have some basic knowledge which probably means I understand more of it than you (since you're trusting completely on the interpretation of the authors of that website). The authors of the site seem to be biased against the legitimacy of the Quran and only provide what they believe is the correct interpretation. A truly neutral description would provide multiple interpretations where there is doubt (i.e. differential diagnosis).
I could have just dismissed this 'evidence' without even refuting a single argument, just by pointing out the strong bias of not only this page, but the whole wiki against religion.
I hope you look into critical appraisal sometime and into the different forms of bias. That will come in handy in any type of research.
But alright, if you're not willing to discuss further, I will stop here.
Hiba wrote: "im not saying that he said he would rather live in a world without science but he did say (quote)'the more I study science the more I believe in god' ."No he didn't. It's a kind of urban legend. He did, sometimes, use the word "god" but what he meant by it bears almost resemblance to anything religious people mean by it. He meant it as a kind of poetic expression of the concept of nature and laws of nature. He was quite clear that he didn't believe in any kind of personal god (that listens to or cares about people or doles out rewards and punishments or who writes books or sends prophets).
I'm not blaming you or anything. It's longsince been common practice in religious circles to take his comments out of context to bolster their own views. It may very well be that you heard it from that type of source or heard it from someone who did.
In that light, perhaps my response came across as harsher than I intended. If so, I apologize. I tend to get frustrated when the comments of great minds are deliberately distorted for someone else's gain, as many have done with Einstein on this issue.
Going on the assumption that you are genuinely curious what he thought about god, here is something interesting on the subject from a letter he wrote that sold at auction a few years ago:
http://theboard.blogs.nytimes.com/200....
It's pretty hard to misunderstand that.
Zaheer wrote: "The bolded part suggests you are making the same mistake which you are accusing me of. Who decides if evidence is strong or not?"This is actually pretty straightforward. There is only one thing in the bible that is used for that claim (6000 years old), which is people counting back the generations of people listed in the bible and accounting for their ages where possible and then the total is added up to roughly 6000 years. In the case of the Quran, there are many examples that lead to this conclusion, which is stronger evidence because even when someone attempts to explain one away, they are left with many more. The more there are, the less likely it is that there is some endless series of explanations that all happen to explain away each and every case. It's Occam's Razor. That's what makes it a stronger case. It's not my fault that it's a stronger case.
Zaheer wrote: "The authors of the site seem to be biased against the legitimacy of the Quran and only provide what they believe is the correct interpretation. A truly neutral description would provide multiple interpretations where there is doubt (i.e. differential diagnosis)."
On what basis have you decided that they are biased against it? Simply because they reach a conclusion you find inconvenient?
And actually, if you read the link, I think they do a pretty good job on each point of explaining what both sides say before drawing their conclusions. It's helpful that they do that since it is exactly what you accuse them of not doing.
But really, that site is only one example. I understand that you will disregard any examples that do not start with the assumption that it is definitely true and then set about trying to figure out how to prove that it is. Why you don't consider that a bias and presume to lecture me on biases, I have no idea.
But please do take a moment to answer why that link is biased. If there is some good reason for it, I will most certainly listen.
In my experience, people often confuse "bias" with "disagrees with me".
For what it's worth, I quite like the book. I don't consider it the end-all be-all of religious texts or anything and I don't think it has magic powers or is in any way associated with anything magical (since I see no reason to reach such a conclusion), but as a piece of ancient literature, I happen to find it rather beautiful at times. I also think there's a pretty strong case to be made that Muhammad is the single most influential man in history. However, I'm perfectly capable of thinking those things while still not agreeing that the book is the product of magic or that it is always automatically right about every single thing it says.
The Bible also has it's place as a good piece of literature (give or take a few detailed and tedious passages). Cool war stories, nice proverbs and adages, good lessons learned.
But written by God (which God)? I don't think so.
Besides, don't we use authors actual names? To say it's written by God is like saying a book is written by "doctor" or "president" - title, not name.
At least the Muslim religion (really all non-Christian religions) have the cahones to actually use the name of their god(s) in their worship.
Maria wrote: "The Bible also has it's place as a good piece of literature (give or take a few detailed and tedious passages). Cool war stories, nice proverbs and adages, good lessons learned.
But written by ..."
It's true. I don't trust the literary opinion of anyone who doesn't think the 23 Psalm (King James translation) is a beautiful piece of writing. It doesn't have to be true in order to be well written. If it did, we'd have to throw out Shakespeare.
Although to your second point, "Allah" translates to "The God" so it's not as much a name as people commonly think. In fact, even many arab christians use the term to refer to the christian god. It just got carried over despite translation of other aspects because it distinguishes it from the christian god in western culture. I suspect it was a largely practical matter.
It's just always bugged me about the name thing. "Christians" spout off about "all those who call on the name of God will be saved". Well what is his name? Jehovah, Yahweh, Allah, Vishnu, Thor, Darth Vader?It's not Jesus, that's God's son, right?
Maria wrote: "It's not Jesus, that's God's son, right? "Actually, depending on who you ask, it sort of is. The various trinity doctrines are convoluted to be sure, but often conclude that (for lack of better phrase) Jesus is both god and god's son at the same time.
I don't buy it. The word Trinity is not in the Bible, any translation I've ever come across. It just doesn't make sense, and if something doesn't make sense, it usually isn't true.
Maria wrote: "I don't buy it. The word Trinity is not in the Bible, any translation I've ever come across. It just doesn't make sense, and if something doesn't make sense, it usually isn't true."I'm not arguing that it's true. I'm just saying that it is not an uncommon belief.
Oh, I know. It just seems so hypocritical - Christians claim to use the Bible as the basis for their religion - but not one has ever been able to show me the word "Trinity" in any translation.
If the Trinity is such a major part of their belief system, and if their belief system is based on the Bible, then one would expect to find the word in there somewhere. Not just vague references that could be interpreted in a number of ways.
I dare someone to show me a Biblical passage that says in effect "God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are all one person/entity and this phenomenon is called the Trinity"!
Not jumping on you, it's just been a pet peeve of mine for some time.
Well, as a religious argument it sure has its short comings, as a interpretation of probable writer's intent, i.e. "The author of the Bible meant God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit to be aspects of a single entity", it makes sense - a good author will never spell everything out for his readers.
Like I mentioned before, everyone who thinks mankind can live without science, has a misconception of science. Science is everything that you observe a number of times to reach a conclusion. Science is not having a belief out of nowhere and work to prove it collecting evidence, it's the other way around: facts that you observe lead you to formulate a hypothesis.Silly example:
You're someone who lives tons of years ago, the first generation of humans. Your name is Grmph and you just saw your fellow Grhggh drop dead. After a few days, you see your fellow Thrwrr drop dead.
Then you catch a wild animal stealing little red fruits from the bush and, just when you were about to chase it to make it dinner, it also drops dead. You remember that Grhggh and Thrwrr also were eating those little red fruits before they died and you wonder if they're deadly. You go tell the others that they should stay away from all kinds of fruit.
The others tell you you're wrong because they eat fruit and are alive. So you start wondering if only certain kinds of fruit are deadly and decide to bait animals with different fruits to see which ones kill them.
Four generations later, everyone knows that those little red fruits from that bush that looks like this and that are deadly and people shouldn't eat it. It is known as a fact, nobody needs proof anymore (and if they try, they reach the same conclusion).
Everything we know (know, not believe) about our daily lives comes from scientific observation. How do you know that you will die if someone chops off your head? Is it a belief or a fact? How do you know that you should throw away that food to the garbage instead of eating it if it smells foul and has fungus and worms growing all over the place? Is that faith or knowledge?
Even a mother who learns to recognize the different tones of her baby's crying and the most effective ways to sooth them is doing science, in a way.
That said, having a belief, a faith or even following a religion is a choice, while science is not. Even if you want to believe you can live without science, as long as you have a working brain, you can't avoid practicing science or doing scientific observations every day, wrong as you may be in your conclusions.
Not a hard decision. Religion loses.
Hiba wrote: but he did say (quote)'the more I study science the more I believe in god' "It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.
- Albert Einstein, letter to an atheist (1954)
This whole idea that science and religion are in conflict is false and unfortunate. Its reinforced by ignorance among some religious fundamentalists and some closed-minded "rationalists." Believe it or not, the Christian churches (with exception of modern fundamentalists) and Islam (before about 1000AD) were the greatest proponents of science.
Please, the christian church has always denied scientific discovery, and still does.
No Scott, in fact that is not true. For example, Gregor Mendel the father of genetics, was a Catholic monk and Blaise Pascal was a mathematician, physicist, inventor, and Christian philosopher. Newton was very religious. Read Catholic theology - there is nothing that prohibits or discourages scientific inquiry or discovery.
Scott wrote: "Please, the christian church has always denied scientific discovery, and still does."Not all of it. Not always.
The Jesuits, for example:
"Ignatius and the early Jesuits did recognize, though, that the hierarchical Church was in dire need of reform. Some of their greatest struggles were against corruption, venality, and spiritual lassitude within the Catholic Church. Ignatius's insistence on an extremely high level of academic preparation for ministry, for instance, was a deliberate response to the relatively poor education of much of the clergy of his time. The Jesuit vow against "ambitioning prelacies" was a deliberate effort to prevent greed for money or power invading Jesuit circles...."
"The Jesuit schools played an important part in winning back to Catholicism a number of European countries which had for a time been predominantly Protestant, notably Poland and Lithuania. Today, Jesuit colleges and universities are located in over one hundred nations around the world. Under the notion that God can be encountered through created things and especially art, they encouraged the use of ceremony and decoration in Catholic ritual and devotion. Perhaps as a result of this appreciation for art, coupled with their spiritual practice of "finding God in all things", many early Jesuits distinguished themselves in the visual and performing arts as well as in music...."
"The Jesuits have made numerous significant contributions to the development of science. For example, the Jesuits have dedicated significant study to earthquakes, and seismology has been described as "the Jesuit science."[75] The Jesuits have been described as "the single most important contributor to experimental physics in the seventeenth century."
According to Jonathan Wright in his book God's Soldiers, by the eighteenth century the Jesuits had "contributed to the development of pendulum clocks, pantographs, barometers, reflecting telescopes and microscopes, to scientific fields as various as magnetism, optics and electricity. They observed, in some cases before anyone else, the colored bands on Jupiter's surface, the Andromeda nebula and Saturn's rings. They theorized about the circulation of the blood (independently of Harvey), the theoretical possibility of flight, the way the moon effected the tides, and the wave-like nature of light."
Mark wrote: "For example, Gregor Mendel the father of genetics, was a Catholic monk and Blaise Pascal was a mathematician, physicist, inventor, and Christian philosopher. N..."Mentioning that a few scientists were religious due to the time in which they existed in no way contradicts the truth that the church as an organization always suppressed science. See: Galileo for the most famous example... albeit finally pardoned 300 years later!
Sheila wrote: "Not all of it. Not always.The Jesuits, for example"
You're right, scientific inquiry was allowed--as long as discoveries did not contradict biblical claims.
Scott wrote: "You're right, scientific inquiry was allowed--as long as discoveries did not contradict biblical claims."This is true, but it's also true that a lot of scientific research these days is also manipulated by other interests. Not all of it, of course.
Although everyone seems to be restricting "science" to what they think science is, but who cares, right?
Laura said: " it's also true that a lot of scientific research these days is also manipulated by other interests."That is true - look at the "research" on global warming. All manipulated by the US Government to their own ends...
Maria wrote: "That is true - look at the "research" on global warming. All manipulated by the US Government to their own ends... "Not all of it, but some of it for sure.
Laura wrote: "Although everyone seems to be restricting "science" to what they think science is, but who cares, right?"Actually, the people who understand it have done quite a good job of defining it.
Scott wrote: "Actually, the people who understand it have done quite a good job of defining it. "True, some comments have defined a large part of it, yes.
Maria wrote: "Laura said: " it's also true that a lot of scientific research these days is also manipulated by other interests."That is true - look at the "research" on global warming. All manipulated by the ..."
Ah, no. Just no. All credible research is subject to peer review. In the very rare occasions when someone tries to make a claim that can't be justified, it is quickly spotted when other scientists can't replicate it.
No Government - anywhere in the world - is manipulating evidence on climate change for their own ends. The problem is real and the evidence is overwhelming. We might not like what the evidence shows us, but that doesn't mean we can discount it or invent highly unlikely conspiracy theories.
Maria wrote: "Laura said: " it's also true that a lot of scientific research these days is also manipulated by other interests."That is true - look at the "research" on global warming. All manipulated by the ..."
How exactly does the US government benefit from creating the illusion that the world climate is changing? Please explain, Maria.
Will wrote: "Ah, no. Just no. All credible research is subject to peer review. In the very rare occasions when someone tries to make a claim that can't be justified, it is quickly spotted when other scientists can't replicate it."That is the theory and it's wonderful, but in practice it's a bunch of BS, excuse me to be so vulgar. If you try to publish in a scientific journal, only a portion of your probabilities of success depend on the scientific accuracy and statistical validity of your work. If your results are "negative" (meaning, not what you would have expected), be prepared for journals to just reject you without even sending it to peer review. Expect your peers to review your work negatively for the same reasons. Expect your data to be disregarded and the information obtained never known. Oh, and trends, don't forget the trends! It's worse than in fashion. If you try to publish something about a subject that wasn't broadly studied, from a country nobody cares about and that doesn't include the last trends that everyone cries about, be prepared for a long and painful road.
EDIT: I'm not talking specifically about climate change research in any country in particular. I'm talking about common international scientific journals on any discipline.
Laura - but we are not talking about the probability of being published, are we? That's a totally different chip on a different shoulder.We are talking about the mass of evidence for climate change somehow being fabricated or manipulated. This would need a conspiracy that would have to include the vast number of people who are researching climate change (and being published), just about every Government in the world, just about every opposition party in just about every country in the world, plus the oil companies (who have now given up trying to discredit climate change).
That would mean a conspiracy which would include hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions.
Of all the ludicrous conspiracy theories out there, this one has to be the most spectacularly implausible.
Now that's what I call BS.
@Will, again, I'm not talking about any research subject in particular, but if you think getting published has nothing to do with this, you're very wrong. The scientific information that gets broadcast to open media and general public is scientific information that got published. When someone writes a report or review about any subject (including climate change) for TV or a magazine or whatever, they have to find sources of information, and those sources are published articles in scientific journals.If certain types of results and topics are less likely to get published, that is some sort of manipulation of information. If the most renowned journals systematically refused to publish data on, say, populations where toxic substance X didn't cause effect Y for unknown reasons, that means that everyone will keep believing that toxic substance X always causes effect Y, without ever exploring the reasons which could protect from effect Y in specific populations. That never gets out to the public and, therefore, the information that the general public gets is biased.
I'm not claiming that there is a conspiracy to make people "believe in" climate change. That's just as silly as trying to make people "believe in" evolution. You either see the evidence or you don't. However, it is important to keep in mind that the evidence that the general public gets to see may be biased and manipulated by the scientific community.
Will wrote: "We are talking about the mass of evidence for climate change somehow being fabricated or manipulated."Well, actually I would say repressing information you don't like, or presenting it in a light that makes it appear favouredly to the point you would like to make is in effect manipulating the evidence.
So I would have to say that Laura does have a point there.
The fact that evidence can not lie, does not mean that those presenting it can't.
Sorry, no, that's far too big a leap of logic.Yes, we cannot have 100% faith in what we read in scientific journals. They are based on the information available at the time and our understanding is constantly being updated. It is also perfectly true that there is a possibility of bias because of the people who choose what gets published. Just because it is written in a scientific journal does not mean that it is true or that we should trust it.
But ... and it is a big "but" ... it is very hard for any one person or group of people to deliberately or accidentally manipulate the system in any systematic way or over any prolonged length of time.
Any misleading research can be countered by publishing more accurate work - especially in a field like climate change when there are large vested interests.
The false logic here is that just because scientific journals aren't 100% reliable it does not mean that they are 100% unreliable. That's the sort of silly logic that conspiracy theorists use to justify their nonsense. Just because there is a small degree of uncertainty about some tiny aspects it does not mean that overwhelming evidence isn't overwhelming.
I love the idea that the "scientific community" somehow gets together to agree to manipulate information. Or do they send an email to each other?
And just how do the scientists employed by the environmental organisations manage to get the scientists employed by the oil companies to all say the same thing? Not to mention all the different universities and Government agencies across the planet.
Yes, it is theoretically possible that they have all got together to hoodwink us, although I have absolutely no idea why they would want to do such a thing. Theoretically possible but exceedingly difficult and implausible.
Remember this wouldn't be one person manipulating evidence. It would take tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands.
The fact that something is theoretically possible does not mean that it is likely.
Gerd wrote: The fact that evidence can not lie, does not mean that those presenting it can't. And the fact that someone could lie does not mean that they will.
Or they will be able to get aware with it, if someone else can come up with better evidence.
"The global-warming agenda is increasingly being revealed for the scam it is.There was the Climategate scandal of 2009, in which “scientists” at the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit were conspiring to suppress data that contradicted their global-warming agenda; there was the British judge who ruled, in a lawsuit to ban Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth from UK government schools, that the movie contained nine significant errors; there was the revelation that the claim that 97 percent of scientists agreed with the AGW (man-caused global warming) thesis was bunk. Now a mainstream publication, the UK’s Telegraph, has published a scathing denunciation of warmist propaganda. Citing information from Steven Goddard’s blog Real Science, Christopher Booker writes:
Goddard shows how, in recent years, NOAA’s [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s] US Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) has been “adjusting” its record by replacing real temperatures with data “fabricated” by computer models. The effect of this has been to downgrade earlier temperatures and to exaggerate those from recent decades, to give the impression that the Earth has been warming up much more than is justified by the actual data. In several posts headed “Data tampering at USHCN/GISS”, Goddard compares the currently published temperature graphs with those based only on temperatures measured at the time. These show that the US has actually been cooling since the Thirties, the hottest decade on record; whereas the latest graph, nearly half of it based on “fabricated” data, shows it to have been warming at a rate equivalent to more than 3 degrees centigrade per century."
"According to the RSS satellite data, whose value for April 2014 is just in, the global warming trend in the 17 years 9 months since August 1996 is zero. The 212 months without global warming represents more than half the 423-month satellite data record, which began in January 1979. No one now in high school has lived through global warming."
My heart sinks. You don't really believe all that, do you?It's a collection of half-truths, innuendos and tabloid journalism.
If you really want to know about so-called "climategate", start from here and read the notes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic...
Will wrote: "Sorry, no, that's far too big a leap of logic.Yes, we cannot have 100% faith in what we read in scientific journals. They are based on the information available at the time and our understanding ..."
First of all, I never said that there is a clear intention to manipulate information. I never supported (and said it clearly) any sort of conspiracy theory on the part of any government or institution. I never said that scientific journals are 100% unreliable. I don't know how you can interpret that from my text, but you are a wonderful example of how evidence can be misinterpreted.
What I did say: I said that the information that gets shown to the general public is biased and that is true. I said that the scientific community (and I am part of it, so I really know what I'm talking about, in case you're wondering) has issues regarding what gets published and that certain topics and results aren't "sexy" enough to be published. We all play the game, because by now we sort of know what will be published and what won't. Some scientists have more ethics than others, but there are cases where people manipulate their own data to make results more appealing to what we all know is "publishable".
That doesn't mean all or most scientific journals are corrupt or biased, but I never said that in the first place. But it's true that some can be as sensationalist as a tabloid, especially when it comes to environmental issues. It's really difficult to publish that people are safe, that's "boring".
I have tons of examples of this happening, which I see first hand, and it has happened for decades. Furthermore, what you see on TV is not the sum of all the scientific information available; it's what the guy who wrote that chose. He or she may have ignored a dozen scientific articles that didn't prove the point he or she wanted to make, the message that he or she wanted the audience to get.
The solution should be obvious: people must start being more critical of what they read or see, what gets "fed" to them. They must wonder what the other side of the story is and learn how to find other sources of information, when available.
Will wrote: "The fact that something is theoretically possible does not mean that it is likely. ..."Well, I'd say if something is theoretically possible it is _very_ likely to be done.
That's just human nature. :)
And that evidence can't be misrepresented for a substantial amount of time doesn't mean that it doesn't get willfully misrepresented anyways.
The fact that the earth never happend to be flat at any given time didn't stop religion to claim it to be - and it's followers to believe so.
Nor did evidence stop scientist from declaring that blacks are lower on the evolutionary ladder than whites, point is that any given lie has just to be large enough and presented in the right way for people to believe in it for an amount of time.
No matter what the evidence really says.
Laura - people should question and wonder about the other side of the story? Absolutely! If they did that, just about every conspiracy story would be shown for the snake-oil that it is. Looking at both sides of the story means looking at the scientific evidence as well as the conspiracy theories. And when you do the differences between the two are very clear.
Gerd - so your argument is that anything which is possible is likely to happen and that mankind has been wrong before so we should discount all evidence? Okaaaay.
Gerd wrote: "Well, I'd say if something is theoretically possible it is _very_ likely to be done.That's just human nature. :)"
By someone, sure. By thousands and thousands of people working as one towards an inexplicable goal? Highly unlikely, as Will says.
"The fact that the earth never happened to be flat at any given time didn't stop religion to claim it to be - and it's followers to believe so."
For a long time they didn't have any way of finding out otherwise. It seemed flat and that was that.
Will wrote: "Laura - people should question and wonder about the other side of the story? Absolutely! If they did that, just about every conspiracy story would be shown for the snake-oil that it is."I insist, you are living proof how information can be utterly misread and misinterpreted. I mean, when you see on TV a full report on global warming, you should also wonder to what extent it's as serious as they are showing you and find other sources of information. I mean you check other sides of a story, but I'm only considering the serious kind. Where in my posts do you see me giving any credit to conspiracy theory or comparing them to sound science? You, who talked about too big leaps of logic! There are scientific articles, sometimes even in the same journal, rebutting and contradicting each other, with opposite results, all equally sound and valid. THAT is what I mean, for crying out loud, not obscure websites about how fake the moon landing was! Geez!
And Gerd is further making my point. As far as I read, he's not claiming we should discount all evidence, that's merely the reading that you are making. That's why I say you're proof of misinterpretation. If you were to write a report about the contents of this thread, the results would be tremendously biased toward what you think it's going on, disregarding the rest. See? That's how it happens. No conspiracies here, just a guy misreading.
Will wrote: "Gerd - so your argument is that anything which is possible is likely to happen and that mankind has been wrong before so we should discount all evidence? Okaaaay."Hmm, where exactly did I say that? ;)
Will said: "My heart sinks. You don't really believe all that, do you?"Not sure if I do or not. Unless you are one of the people doing the actual research, how can you be sure either way? It's got just as much chance of being true as your thoughts. Like I said, unless you were actually there first hand, which I doubt.
How do you know that whatever evidence, research you are reading from is authentic?
Or do you not believe that the U S government would actually lie to it's people?
And by the way, Wikipedia is not a real source.
Laura wrote: "when you see on TV a full report on global warming, you should also wonder to what extent it's as serious as they are showing you and find other sources of information. I mean you check other sides of a story, but I'm only considering the serious kind."That sounds like when people say creationism is "another side of the story".
We've known about climate change since the 1950s, but it's only in the last decade or so it has become such a "controversy." But the only reason it's controversial is that some people don't feel like acknowledging it. There's no substance behind it. It's simply inconvenient.
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How one can come to the conclusion that this is one and the same is beyond me, though. "
I didn't say that. Someone else did. But when she realized that, she pretended it never happened to avoid admitting to being wrong. She did the same thing when she accused me of calling her "religious" and I called her on it.
It's sort of her thing:
Say a bunch of stuff that is demonstrably false and then when anyone points it out, just pretend it never happened rather than own your mistake like an adult.
To be fair, Zaheer does much the same thing. Message 246 is one of many examples.