JMJ

But I do know the difference between chicken and meat.

JMJ

You miss the point jersey.
One person believes that his set of morals are better than someone elses.
In my opinion its just as irrational to make the claim that we are just bugs in a petri dish.

I belong to no religion Brian.
I choose not to be a member of mass indoctrination.
My statement refering to “walking all over people”\was in connection to your opinion on Hitchens opinions that were somehow contaverting his opponents.

Brian;
“A belief in an idea that is unsupported, or contradicted, by evidence.”

And any evidence of a big bang theory is also inconclusive seeing as how it only relates to a certain time frame.

Brian;
Finnally The event horizon limitation I mentioned, just because we can’t know what caused the big bang, doesn’t mean we can’t come right up to it and proove it with all the available evidence.

You have evidence that only supports a theory.
Your evidence is subjective and has applied to many theories depending on the scientisits motivation.
Much like global warming.

As far as global warming goes, you are seriously misguided.

The vast minority of people that say it is not real ?
Brian
I’ve had many debates on this , and it has all had boiled down to a non conclusive issue.
I am not against any form of maintaining and keeping our environment safe.
What I am against is the implications and threats for our society that environmentalism holds.
Did you know that over the last century, global temperatures have risen about one degree, and that, furthermore, temperatures haven’t risen in about a decade? Did you know that two out of three scientists recently poled in each state of this country don’t believe that global warming is anything close to catastrophic? Did you know that over 17,000 scientists, ranging from climatologists to oceanographers to geophysicists, have signed the Oregon Petition, which declares that “there is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate”?

Did you know that worldwide, that figure of scientists more than doubles?

Here’s a quote from our brilliant MIT climatologist Richard Lindzen (whom I trust far more than Al Gore )

“There have been repeated claims that the 2007 year’s hurricane activity was another sign of human-induced climate change. Everything from the heat wave in Paris to heavy snows in Buffalo has been blamed on people burning gasoline to fuel their cars, and coal and natural gas to heat, cool and electrify their homes. Yet how can a barely discernible, one-degree increase in the recorded global mean temperature since the late 19th century possibly gain public acceptance as the source of recent weather catastrophes? And how can it translate into unlikely claims about future catastrophes?”
Many if not most scientists don’t think this kind of alarmism is at all justified. But if you find me so difficult to believe, ignore me, please, and listen to the words of the enviros themselves:

From one of the High Priests of Environmentalism, Stephen Schneider, a “scientist” (and it will be clear in a moment why I put that word in quotation marks) at Stanford University, and also one of the main men at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder. This is what he told Discover Magazine:

“On the one hand, as scientists, we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but.… On the other hand, we are not just scientists, but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place. To do that we need to get some broad-based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we ourselves might have….Each of us has to decide” (as opposed to letting the actual facts dictate) “what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.” (Discover, p. 47.)

“The ending of the human epoch on Earth” (written by philosopher Paul Taylor in Respect for Nature: A Theory of Environmental Ethics) “would most likely be greeted with a hearty ‘Good riddance!’”

Biologist David M. Graber of the U.S. National Park Services calls human beings a “cancer”; in the same article, he goes on to say: “I know social scientists who remind me that people are part of nature, but it isn’t true …Until such time as Homo sapiens should decide to return to nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along.” (“Mother Nature as a Hothouse Flower,” Los Angles Times Book Review.)

The head of the 1992 Earth Summit asks in all seriousness: “Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?”

“In Los Angles, curbside recycling means that the city had to have eight hundred rather than four hundred trucks to pick up trash. And that city already has an air pollution problem.” (Facts Not Fear, p. 49.)

The ban on CFC chemicals, such as Freon, which is used for refrigeration, has, according to the New York Times, created a huge black market, not unlike the so-called war on drugs. “Law enforcement officials say the refrigerant has become the most lucrative contraband after illicit drugs.” (Judy Edelson Halpert, “Freon Smugglers Find Big Market,” New York Times.)

“In 1980 the late Julian Simon, economist and political philosopher, had, like many of us, grown frustrated with the Malthusian claims which in essence state that, because of population growth, the world is “soon” going to run out of food, oil, and other raw materials. Forget that the Malthusian predictions have never panned out and that Thomas Malthus himself was spectacularly wrong in his more immediate predictions—still the Malthusians keep proclaiming. So in 1980 Julian Simon made a $10,000 bet, open to any takers. He allowed his opponents to choose any raw materials, including grain and fossil fuels, and he wagered that, as long as the material wasn’t government controlled, the item or items chosen would have dropped in price at least one year later. He allowed his opponents also to choose the time of reckoning. [Environmental high priest] Paul Ehrlich, of Stanford University, had written in 1970: ‘I if were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.’ Fittingly, it was this same Mr. Ehrlich, along with two Stanford colleagues, Harte and Holdren, who accepted Julian Simon’s challenge, stating they would ‘accept Simon’s astonishing offer before other greedy people jump in.’ Ehrilich added: ‘The lure of easy money can be irresistible.’ They chose copper, chrome, nickel, tin, and tungsten, and a ten-year period.

“At settling time, in September of 1990, not only the sum of the prices, but also the price of each individual metal had fallen. Julian Simon offered to make the same bet again, at increased stakes, but the Ehrlich group never took him up on his second offer.” (Julian Simon, The Ultimate Resource 2, p. 35-36.)

In 1980, the Global 2000 report predicted that “at least 500,000 to 600,000 species” would become extinct in the next twenty years. We now know that this was not only totally inaccurate, but had absolutely no factual basis to begin with. It was pure guess work, with a very specific agenda. “In the history of the planet earth, species have always come into and gone out of existence. The existing data on the observed rates of species extinction are fatuously incongruous with conservationist claims, as, in 1992, even the sympathetic World Conservation Monitoring Centre conceded.” Quoting their words: “In fact, these and other data indicate that the number of recorded extinctions for both plants and animals is very small….” (Heygood and Stuart 1992 p. 93.)

Here’s a little more (please note the dates):

“I take this opportunity to express my opinion in the strongest terms, that the amazing exhibition of oil which has characterized the last twenty, and will probably characterize the next ten or twenty years, is nevertheless, not only geologically but historically, a temporary and vanishing phenomenon—one which young men will live to see come to its natural end” (1886, J.P. Lesley, state geologist of Pennsylvania).

“There is little or no chance for more oil in California” (1886, U.S. Geological Survey).

“There is little or no chance for more oil in Kansas and Texas” (1891, U.S. Geological Survey).

“Total future production limit of 5.7 billion barrels of oil, perhaps a ten-year supply” (1914, U.S. Bureau of Mines).

“Reserves to last only thirteen years” (1939, Department of the Interior).

“Reserves to last thirteen years” (1951, Department of the Interior, Oil and Gas Division).

“We could use up all of the proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of the next decade” (Former President Jimmy Carter speaking in 1978 to the entire world).

“At the present rate of use, it is estimated that coal reserves will last 200 more years. Petroleum may run out in 20 to 30 years, and natural gas may last only another 70 years” (1980, Merrill high school textbook Science Connections).

“At the current rate of consumption, some scientists estimate that the world’s known supplies of oil … will be used up within your lifetime” (1993, The United States and its People).

“The supply of fossil fuels is being used up at an alarming rate. Governments must help save our fossil fuel supply by passing laws limiting their use” (1993, Glenco textbook Biology, An Everyday Experience).

(Give particular heed to that last sentence.)

Quotes like these could fill a thousand pages easily. Here, for the hell of it, are a couple more:

The Sierra Club website has this resolution: “State and federal laws should be changed to encourage small families and discourage large families.”
(Government bureaucrats, in other words, should tell us how many children we are allowed to have. As they do in Communist China, for instance. Let it also be noted, however, that this is coming from a group whose founder, Mr. John Muir, wrote in 1894 that the Indians of Yosemite Valley were “mostly ugly, and some of them altogether hideous.” They “seemed to have no right place in the landscape,” and they disturbed his “solemn calm.”)

“The technique is to introduce legislation to achieve some vague, positive-sounding generality, such as ‘worker safety’ or ‘environmental protection’—things no politician will want to go on record voting against. When the legislation is passed and a new regulatory agency is created to enforce it, that’s when the actual decisions are made about what specific restrictions will be imposed and which lands will be removed from human use. Governmental power is passed down to an army of minor bureaucrats who are not accountable to the people and only vaguely accountable to Congress and the president.

“Consider that federal regulatory agencies make thousands of rulings each year, adding about 80,000 pages annually to the Federal Register. Do you think Congress can exercise ‘oversight’ by debating all 80,000 pages of these regulations? Do you think the president, his advisors and his cabinet officers can consider and personally approve all of these decrees? Of course not. By its nature, the federal decree-issuing apparatus cannot be controlled, and it has only one tendency: to impose more regulations and, by filling the federal register with such restrictions, to make private activities like logging grind to a halt.

“These campaigns are proof of the greens’ real motives. They want to stop development and keep the Third World in a state of poverty—while they work to bring the same ideal of poverty to industrialized nations. Most environmentalists embrace this goal, but few dare to admit it openly—so they peddle a variety of ruses to hide their meaning, ranging from ‘sustainable development’ to ‘shrinkth,’ a term suggested by the editor of Earth Island Journal as a less negative-sounding ‘antonym for growth’.”

“Nobody is interested in solutions if they don’t think there’s a problem. Given that starting point, I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous it is …” Mr. Albert Gore, ladies and gentleman, Grist magazine.

This tiny set of quotations, culled quickly and more or less at random, doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface. If you’d like more, please let me know. I have notebooks full of them.
Also , as you can see I am very up to date and aware of how alarmism is used to promote agenda driven by ideoligy from one side or tthe other.
If you would like to join the rest of the lemmings running off the cliff with their hair in fire , by all means be my guest.
But I will not be brought into the hysteria by the guilt the enviromental movement wishs to impose upon me.
And I will not be a part of the down turn it will inflict upon our freedoms, market and technologoies

Micky2

Both your comments are surprisingly related, which is what is so interesting here.

Yes, it is true, there is the concept of faith does arise in many situations, and I would agree that spirituality is a good thing that everyone possesses and should express. This is my main disagreement with Religions that are exclusive.

Exclusive Religions do indeed ‘walk all over people.’ They say that irregardless of your actions and/or beliefs, you will go to some kind of Hell if you do not agree with their core philosophy. No matter what, you are wrong. Also, Exclusive Religions, unlike the eastern religions which merely say “If you want to join you’re welcome to,” can be very pushy about getting non members to join. I would say that kind of constitutes ‘walk all over people’… just keep in mind, it’s only walking all over people who aren’t a part of their Religion.

No, perhaps it cannot really be proven whether or not God exists. If it could then there wouldn’t be an argument as to who was correct!  So, since there is no ‘evidence,’ unless you justify the existence of everything as evidence- to which I say, all that proves is that we perceive everything to exist, not that it was created. So, lack of evidence aside, we use faith, which itself is defined as

A belief in an idea that is unsupported, or contradicted, by evidence.

What a perfect match! Coincidence? Not hardly. There is no Bonafide ‘theory’ in science that has no proof. It cannot be accepted because it cannot be tested. This is why intelligent design is largely regected by the scientific community. It can’t withstand the rigors of science because it’s just not compatible.

As for global warming being a conspiracy, lol, why is it that you’re going along with the vast minority of people and scientists who say that it’s not real? Do you honestly think that the release of millions of tons of greenhouse gasses is not effecting the temperature here? Just look at the latest proof, sattellites have shown that the amount of heat leaving the earth into space has decreased markedly over the past 30 years. The people who claim global warming doesn’t exist are motivated by greed via oil. The combustion engine has been obsolete for so long, we’ve had electric cars for almost 30 years but their patents have been supressed just as long by the OIL COMPANIES. Good electric cars = less oil profits. Global warming=innovation=less oil profits. These junk scientists who claim global warming isn’t real are motivated by oil companies to keep profits up. The longer it can be disputed, the longer profits keep rolling in! There’s so much proof of global warming, how can you ignore it ALL because of a global cooling cycle and a few pundits with vested interests claiming it a hoax!

Whew, you struct something I’m passionate about. 

Finnally The event horizon limitation I mentioned, just because we can’t know what caused the big bang, doesn’t mean we can’t come right up to it and proove it with all the available evidence.

I have evidence, you have faith. Which one holds up in court? Which one holds up to scientific rigor? When the church controls government and science, we tend to get stuck thinking that earth is flat and at the center of the universe.

I look forward to your response!

Brian C.

No. “Religion only feeds the irrationality” because it is IRRATIONAL. It makes no sense. If you put your senses to religion you have no choice but to doubt, unless there’s something wrong with you. (”you” as a third person, of course)

JMJ

“Well, we may never know with that kind of Event Horizon,”

Is it only me who sees the contradiction here ?