This seems frightfully relevant:

http://videosift.com/video/Why-Richard-Dawkins-Doesn-t-Debate-Creationists

This "debate" didn't do anything but solidify Atheists in the atheist camp and solidify Creationists in the creationist camp. If anything, Ray's status will go up...not down.

Again, I can't stress this enough. You're using logic and reason on people who don't use logic and reason! Laws affect only the law-abiding and logic and reason only work on people who listen to logic and reason.

You've got to drop this notion of false equivalency. Science and Creationism are not equal and opposite viewpoints...stop treating them like they are. If the guy wants to believe that bananas are proof of intelligent design, then let him, but this "debate" was nothing but a win for Comfort as it elevated him and lowered the Atheist Experience people.

indeed.

Much of my work is on somatic theory.
Chiropractic, as an osteopathy derivative, has some solid basis in that they look at nerve compression at the spine, and while it is certainly true that decompressing innervation at the spine can help with other problems, such as GI issues and asthma, in a technique sense they are only focusing on one aspect of distortion - that of restriction at the spine. However, once there is a distortion at the spine (the bottom of the brain) it becomes a whole body pattern and issue...which requires far more time, patience, and attention to detail than merely popping a facet joint. It requires the type of time and patience that is non-existent in most of western medicine, or chiropractic. The body is a seamless whole.

It's very hard to make a lot of money doing this work.
But a chiro can pop 10 people an hour. A western doc can write 40 scrips an hour.

Massage is typically working by accident. It helps, but it is premised on a muscular approach, which is incredibly misleading. Muscles may dominate the body in terms of size, but they are a reactive system, not a controlling system, and the lowest man on the totem pole in terms of the hierarchy of survival mechanisms. Physical therapy is also stuck on the muscular approach to the body. In fact, this approach typically dominates western thought when it comes to somatic/structural distortion/pain. And most people go to hospitals with essentially somatic complaints. See where i'm going with this?

Harrington rods for scoliosis should one day be properly viewed as barbaric.


In reply to this comment by gwiz665:
A friend of mine had scoliosis, at least I think that what she had, I never heard the proper medical term for it. She had it corrected by doctors inserting some metal rods by her spine, so now her back is all stiff - I'm a little vague on the details since it's a while since I heard the story.

In any case, I agree that we must also heavily scrutinize the medical system, since companies go where the profits are, and if there are no profits to be had, then that kind of medicine is discarded and abandoned. This is what has happened with many potential cancer treatments, since there is less profit in un-patentable formulas than those that can be patented.

If your methods actually do work consistently then it would certainly stand up to scientific standards, it must be replicable and verifiable and that's basically it. The problem is that often it works like "magic" and heals some, but not all with what appears to be the same illness. This is due to a lack of understanding of what is actually wrong with a patient.

The back and nervous system is notoriously hard to "fix" since few people understand it very well and each person is unique (to some extent).

Some "alternative" medicines are perinormal - they work, but we don't know it yet. They are essentially medicines, but we have not determined precisely how and why they help. "Home remedies" are really a proto-version of alternative medicines in this way, in that someone once used it and it worked. Others, like homeopathy, are demonstrably false and are indeed scams. The make wild claims based on nothing but superstition and humbug.

Prayer is also not medicine. If you get bitten by a snake and pray for the venom to leave your body, you die.

The court of public opinion is highly subjective and cannot be trusted to make reliable judgments. This is why the scientific method exists - to eliminate the need for "he said, she said".

It is smart to be weary of the medicinal industry, I'll grant you that, but your doctor is not an arm of that - he (or she) is a healer, that is their goal. I am deeply troubled when certain doctors are influenced by incentives that go against the patient's best interest - it does happen, medicinal firms offering bonuses if you use their products even though they're inferior and so on. But the fact remains that this inferior product has still gone through channels which ensure that it does work, alternative medicine does not.

It is absolutely imperative that people are not deceived to believe that some treatments do more than they think, like when chiropractic offers treatments to non-musceloskeletal problems like ADHD or asthma. It may help your back, fair enough, I've cracked my own back and I think it helps, because it feels good - chocolate feels good too, but it doesn't help my health.

The second such a snake oil salesman does not want to stand up to proper scrutiny is when he has revealed himself to be a fraud. Because if his method is disproved, then he cannot fake it anymore.

I do not doubt that massage therapy does offer relief and helps with muscle problems, I could also believe that chiropractic helps with joint pain, muscle pain or some skeletal problems - but they must be studied and analysed properly and not just pretend like it works, we must know WHY it works.

In reply to this comment by criticalthud:
Some great insights.
My difficulty is in the gross generalizations that are taking place.
I do what some people call "alternative" medicine. I don't necessarily take exception to that title given the state of western medicine.
Growing up with a scoliosis I searched for different approaches to fix the problem, and eventually ended up practicing and teaching manual therapy from a neurological model of the body, focusing on rotational distortion. It is essentially cutting edge, and i can do things with a spine that would make a western neurosurgeon question his approach.

However I may not stand up to scrutiny by western standards, since I essentially view the body in a much different manner, and certainly work with it in a much different manner.
Tomorrow however, may be a different story, as it has been with acupuncture, massage, osteopathy, non-freudian psychology, or any number of treatments that have made their way into the mainstream. Scrutiny is often the court of public opinion, although this court of opinion is greatly effected by what we have been brought up to believe and who we automatically give status and credibility to.

I think it is essential that all practitioners of the healing arts, including western medicine, realize that our actual knowledge of the human body, it's functions, and it's abilities, is very small. And it is exceedingly important to keep those doors to possibilities open.

At the same time, it is incumbent upon us to heavily scrutinize the current accepted treatments which are more often than not inadequate, reliant upon drugs, or are barbaric in nature. At the same time we must heavily scrutinize an overall system which is premised on the industry making a profit, which lends itself to indefinitely treating symptoms rather than preventative medicine.

In reply to this comment by gwiz665:
Scientific method.

"Alternative" medicine wants to do the same thing as Intelligent Design, it wants to take the easy road. ID wants to be in the class room without having sufficient evidence to support its claim. Alternative medicine wants to be sold and used to heal sick people. The latter is fine and even admirable, if it works, but there is insufficient evidence to support the claims that alternative medicine makes.

If you buy a service from me that I cannot provide, then you have been scammed and my claim was bunk. This is what alternative medicine does.

Defining alternative, it's medicine that hasn't gone through thorough scrutiny and does not stand up to it. It is medicine that doesn't work.

Pick your poison: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_medicine Homeopathy, Chiropractic, energy therapy, crystals all that stuff.

Regarding massage and acupuncture, I'm in a more relaxed approach, because they don't promise magical solutions. Massage works at healing muscle pain, certainly, and it certainly relaxing. Acupuncture, I don't have sufficient knowledge about to make a definitive judgment about. Naturally, I'm skeptical, because as far as I know, it has not been tested to the proper extent that it should to be called medicine. When I read about more details of it "Qi" and whatnot - I get more skeptical.

It may work, but it should be tested experimentally, before making claims of healing.

People are allowed to use their money as they want, but these things should damn well not be able to call themselves medicine. Relaxation, sure, therapy, perhaps, healing - no.

In reply to this comment by criticalthud:
would you care to define alternative? do you mean non-american, non-western?
does acupuncture stand up to western scrutiny? how about manual therapy? who's scrutiny are you talking about? Tell me how you measure what people FEEL with a machine, or a bloodtest.
how well does typical western medicine deal with back pain? - drugs, drugs, more drugs?
how about a scoliosis? neurological strain patterns? any chronic pain issue?
western medicine, relies on over-drugging it's patients, treating each as a number. What and how they practice is often completely controlled by insurance companies.
perhaps your statement doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
sure there is crap out there, but lets not pretend that western medicine is immune. far from it, it's peddling a good portion of the stinkiest garbage.



In reply to this comment by gwiz665:
Alternative medicine is bunk. Like alternative math or alternative reason.

If there was any truth to it, it would stand up to scrutiny and it would be used as proper treatment. Homeopathy especially is downright fraud.

*debunked

A friend of mine had scoliosis, at least I think that what she had, I never heard the proper medical term for it. She had it corrected by doctors inserting some metal rods by her spine, so now her back is all stiff - I'm a little vague on the details since it's a while since I heard the story.

In any case, I agree that we must also heavily scrutinize the medical system, since companies go where the profits are, and if there are no profits to be had, then that kind of medicine is discarded and abandoned. This is what has happened with many potential cancer treatments, since there is less profit in un-patentable formulas than those that can be patented.

If your methods actually do work consistently then it would certainly stand up to scientific standards, it must be replicable and verifiable and that's basically it. The problem is that often it works like "magic" and heals some, but not all with what appears to be the same illness. This is due to a lack of understanding of what is actually wrong with a patient.

The back and nervous system is notoriously hard to "fix" since few people understand it very well and each person is unique (to some extent).

Some "alternative" medicines are perinormal - they work, but we don't know it yet. They are essentially medicines, but we have not determined precisely how and why they help. "Home remedies" are really a proto-version of alternative medicines in this way, in that someone once used it and it worked. Others, like homeopathy, are demonstrably false and are indeed scams. The make wild claims based on nothing but superstition and humbug.

Prayer is also not medicine. If you get bitten by a snake and pray for the venom to leave your body, you die.

The court of public opinion is highly subjective and cannot be trusted to make reliable judgments. This is why the scientific method exists - to eliminate the need for "he said, she said".

It is smart to be weary of the medicinal industry, I'll grant you that, but your doctor is not an arm of that - he (or she) is a healer, that is their goal. I am deeply troubled when certain doctors are influenced by incentives that go against the patient's best interest - it does happen, medicinal firms offering bonuses if you use their products even though they're inferior and so on. But the fact remains that this inferior product has still gone through channels which ensure that it does work, alternative medicine does not.

It is absolutely imperative that people are not deceived to believe that some treatments do more than they think, like when chiropractic offers treatments to non-musceloskeletal problems like ADHD or asthma. It may help your back, fair enough, I've cracked my own back and I think it helps, because it feels good - chocolate feels good too, but it doesn't help my health.

The second such a snake oil salesman does not want to stand up to proper scrutiny is when he has revealed himself to be a fraud. Because if his method is disproved, then he cannot fake it anymore.

I do not doubt that massage therapy does offer relief and helps with muscle problems, I could also believe that chiropractic helps with joint pain, muscle pain or some skeletal problems - but they must be studied and analysed properly and not just pretend like it works, we must know WHY it works.

In reply to this comment by criticalthud:
Some great insights.
My difficulty is in the gross generalizations that are taking place.
I do what some people call "alternative" medicine. I don't necessarily take exception to that title given the state of western medicine.
Growing up with a scoliosis I searched for different approaches to fix the problem, and eventually ended up practicing and teaching manual therapy from a neurological model of the body, focusing on rotational distortion. It is essentially cutting edge, and i can do things with a spine that would make a western neurosurgeon question his approach.

However I may not stand up to scrutiny by western standards, since I essentially view the body in a much different manner, and certainly work with it in a much different manner.
Tomorrow however, may be a different story, as it has been with acupuncture, massage, osteopathy, non-freudian psychology, or any number of treatments that have made their way into the mainstream. Scrutiny is often the court of public opinion, although this court of opinion is greatly effected by what we have been brought up to believe and who we automatically give status and credibility to.

I think it is essential that all practitioners of the healing arts, including western medicine, realize that our actual knowledge of the human body, it's functions, and it's abilities, is very small. And it is exceedingly important to keep those doors to possibilities open.

At the same time, it is incumbent upon us to heavily scrutinize the current accepted treatments which are more often than not inadequate, reliant upon drugs, or are barbaric in nature. At the same time we must heavily scrutinize an overall system which is premised on the industry making a profit, which lends itself to indefinitely treating symptoms rather than preventative medicine.

In reply to this comment by gwiz665:
Scientific method.

"Alternative" medicine wants to do the same thing as Intelligent Design, it wants to take the easy road. ID wants to be in the class room without having sufficient evidence to support its claim. Alternative medicine wants to be sold and used to heal sick people. The latter is fine and even admirable, if it works, but there is insufficient evidence to support the claims that alternative medicine makes.

If you buy a service from me that I cannot provide, then you have been scammed and my claim was bunk. This is what alternative medicine does.

Defining alternative, it's medicine that hasn't gone through thorough scrutiny and does not stand up to it. It is medicine that doesn't work.

Pick your poison: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_medicine Homeopathy, Chiropractic, energy therapy, crystals all that stuff.

Regarding massage and acupuncture, I'm in a more relaxed approach, because they don't promise magical solutions. Massage works at healing muscle pain, certainly, and it certainly relaxing. Acupuncture, I don't have sufficient knowledge about to make a definitive judgment about. Naturally, I'm skeptical, because as far as I know, it has not been tested to the proper extent that it should to be called medicine. When I read about more details of it "Qi" and whatnot - I get more skeptical.

It may work, but it should be tested experimentally, before making claims of healing.

People are allowed to use their money as they want, but these things should damn well not be able to call themselves medicine. Relaxation, sure, therapy, perhaps, healing - no.

In reply to this comment by criticalthud:
would you care to define alternative? do you mean non-american, non-western?
does acupuncture stand up to western scrutiny? how about manual therapy? who's scrutiny are you talking about? Tell me how you measure what people FEEL with a machine, or a bloodtest.
how well does typical western medicine deal with back pain? - drugs, drugs, more drugs?
how about a scoliosis? neurological strain patterns? any chronic pain issue?
western medicine, relies on over-drugging it's patients, treating each as a number. What and how they practice is often completely controlled by insurance companies.
perhaps your statement doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
sure there is crap out there, but lets not pretend that western medicine is immune. far from it, it's peddling a good portion of the stinkiest garbage.



In reply to this comment by gwiz665:
Alternative medicine is bunk. Like alternative math or alternative reason.

If there was any truth to it, it would stand up to scrutiny and it would be used as proper treatment. Homeopathy especially is downright fraud.

*debunked

Some great insights.
My difficulty is in the gross generalizations that are taking place.
I do what some people call "alternative" medicine. I don't necessarily take exception to that title given the state of western medicine.
Growing up with a scoliosis I searched for different approaches to fix the problem, and eventually ended up practicing and teaching manual therapy from a neurological model of the body, focusing on rotational distortion. It is essentially cutting edge, and i can do things with a spine that would make a western neurosurgeon question his approach.

However I may not stand up to scrutiny by western standards, since I essentially view the body in a much different manner, and certainly work with it in a much different manner.
Tomorrow however, may be a different story, as it has been with acupuncture, massage, osteopathy, non-freudian psychology, or any number of treatments that have made their way into the mainstream. Scrutiny is often the court of public opinion, although this court of opinion is greatly effected by what we have been brought up to believe and who we automatically give status and credibility to.

I think it is essential that all practitioners of the healing arts, including western medicine, realize that our actual knowledge of the human body, it's functions, and it's abilities, is very small. And it is exceedingly important to keep those doors to possibilities open.

At the same time, it is incumbent upon us to heavily scrutinize the current accepted treatments which are more often than not inadequate, reliant upon drugs, or are barbaric in nature. At the same time we must heavily scrutinize an overall system which is premised on the industry making a profit, which lends itself to indefinitely treating symptoms rather than preventative medicine.

In reply to this comment by gwiz665:
Scientific method.

"Alternative" medicine wants to do the same thing as Intelligent Design, it wants to take the easy road. ID wants to be in the class room without having sufficient evidence to support its claim. Alternative medicine wants to be sold and used to heal sick people. The latter is fine and even admirable, if it works, but there is insufficient evidence to support the claims that alternative medicine makes.

If you buy a service from me that I cannot provide, then you have been scammed and my claim was bunk. This is what alternative medicine does.

Defining alternative, it's medicine that hasn't gone through thorough scrutiny and does not stand up to it. It is medicine that doesn't work.

Pick your poison: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_medicine Homeopathy, Chiropractic, energy therapy, crystals all that stuff.

Regarding massage and acupuncture, I'm in a more relaxed approach, because they don't promise magical solutions. Massage works at healing muscle pain, certainly, and it certainly relaxing. Acupuncture, I don't have sufficient knowledge about to make a definitive judgment about. Naturally, I'm skeptical, because as far as I know, it has not been tested to the proper extent that it should to be called medicine. When I read about more details of it "Qi" and whatnot - I get more skeptical.

It may work, but it should be tested experimentally, before making claims of healing.

People are allowed to use their money as they want, but these things should damn well not be able to call themselves medicine. Relaxation, sure, therapy, perhaps, healing - no.

In reply to this comment by criticalthud:
would you care to define alternative? do you mean non-american, non-western?
does acupuncture stand up to western scrutiny? how about manual therapy? who's scrutiny are you talking about? Tell me how you measure what people FEEL with a machine, or a bloodtest.
how well does typical western medicine deal with back pain? - drugs, drugs, more drugs?
how about a scoliosis? neurological strain patterns? any chronic pain issue?
western medicine, relies on over-drugging it's patients, treating each as a number. What and how they practice is often completely controlled by insurance companies.
perhaps your statement doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
sure there is crap out there, but lets not pretend that western medicine is immune. far from it, it's peddling a good portion of the stinkiest garbage.



In reply to this comment by gwiz665:
Alternative medicine is bunk. Like alternative math or alternative reason.

If there was any truth to it, it would stand up to scrutiny and it would be used as proper treatment. Homeopathy especially is downright fraud.

*debunked

Scientific method.

"Alternative" medicine wants to do the same thing as Intelligent Design, it wants to take the easy road. ID wants to be in the class room without having sufficient evidence to support its claim. Alternative medicine wants to be sold and used to heal sick people. The latter is fine and even admirable, if it works, but there is insufficient evidence to support the claims that alternative medicine makes.

If you buy a service from me that I cannot provide, then you have been scammed and my claim was bunk. This is what alternative medicine does.

Defining alternative, it's medicine that hasn't gone through thorough scrutiny and does not stand up to it. It is medicine that doesn't work.

Pick your poison: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_medicine Homeopathy, Chiropractic, energy therapy, crystals all that stuff.

Regarding massage and acupuncture, I'm in a more relaxed approach, because they don't promise magical solutions. Massage works at healing muscle pain, certainly, and it certainly relaxing. Acupuncture, I don't have sufficient knowledge about to make a definitive judgment about. Naturally, I'm skeptical, because as far as I know, it has not been tested to the proper extent that it should to be called medicine. When I read about more details of it "Qi" and whatnot - I get more skeptical.

It may work, but it should be tested experimentally, before making claims of healing.

People are allowed to use their money as they want, but these things should damn well not be able to call themselves medicine. Relaxation, sure, therapy, perhaps, healing - no.

In reply to this comment by criticalthud:
would you care to define alternative? do you mean non-american, non-western?
does acupuncture stand up to western scrutiny? how about manual therapy? who's scrutiny are you talking about? Tell me how you measure what people FEEL with a machine, or a bloodtest.
how well does typical western medicine deal with back pain? - drugs, drugs, more drugs?
how about a scoliosis? neurological strain patterns? any chronic pain issue?
western medicine, relies on over-drugging it's patients, treating each as a number. What and how they practice is often completely controlled by insurance companies.
perhaps your statement doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
sure there is crap out there, but lets not pretend that western medicine is immune. far from it, it's peddling a good portion of the stinkiest garbage.



In reply to this comment by gwiz665:
Alternative medicine is bunk. Like alternative math or alternative reason.

If there was any truth to it, it would stand up to scrutiny and it would be used as proper treatment. Homeopathy especially is downright fraud.

*debunked

Scientific method.

"Alternative" medicine wants to do the same thing as Intelligent Design, it wants to take the easy road. ID wants to be in the class room without having sufficient evidence to support its claim. Alternative medicine wants to be sold and used to heal sick people. The latter is fine and even admirable, if it works, but there is insufficient evidence to support the claims that alternative medicine makes.

If you buy a service from me that I cannot provide, then you have been scammed and my claim was bunk. This is what alternative medicine does.

Defining alternative, it's medicine that hasn't gone through thorough scrutiny and does not stand up to it. It is medicine that doesn't work.

Pick your poison: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_medicine Homeopathy, Chiropractic, energy therapy, crystals all that stuff.

Regarding massage and acupuncture, I'm in a more relaxed approach, because they don't promise magical solutions. Massage works at healing muscle pain, certainly, and it certainly relaxing. Acupuncture, I don't have sufficient knowledge about to make a definitive judgment about. Naturally, I'm skeptical, because as far as I know, it has not been tested to the proper extent that it should to be called medicine. When I read about more details of it "Qi" and whatnot - I get more skeptical.

It may work, but it should be tested experimentally, before making claims of healing.

People are allowed to use their money as they want, but these things should damn well not be able to call themselves medicine. Relaxation, sure, therapy, perhaps, healing - no.

In reply to this comment by criticalthud:
would you care to define alternative? do you mean non-american, non-western?
does acupuncture stand up to western scrutiny? how about manual therapy? who's scrutiny are you talking about? Tell me how you measure what people FEEL with a machine, or a bloodtest.
how well does typical western medicine deal with back pain? - drugs, drugs, more drugs?
how about a scoliosis? neurological strain patterns? any chronic pain issue?
western medicine, relies on over-drugging it's patients, treating each as a number. What and how they practice is often completely controlled by insurance companies.
perhaps your statement doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
sure there is crap out there, but lets not pretend that western medicine is immune. far from it, it's peddling a good portion of the stinkiest garbage.



In reply to this comment by gwiz665:
Alternative medicine is bunk. Like alternative math or alternative reason.

If there was any truth to it, it would stand up to scrutiny and it would be used as proper treatment. Homeopathy especially is downright fraud.

*debunked

Even more evidence what humans are intelligently designed in the image of God(tm).

>> ^Calcul8r:

Bananas and cauliflower don't demonstrate evolution. They demonstrate intelligent design. Had the mutations not been specifically selected by the growers they would have disappeared, overwhelmed by the overall gene pool of the species.


You're right. For some reason the writer of the video choose 3 examples of selective breeding, then stopped.

To everyone saying selective breeding is a type of evolution, that just isn't how the word is defined. The utility and methods of selective breeding were well understood in Darwin's day, and were not controversial then or now. Educated people were well aware of how much selective breeding could change the form of an animal or plant. Darwin's great insight was that a similar process exists in nature, driven by survival of the fittest as well as sexual selection. He called it natural selection to distinguish it from the human-driven kind everyone was familiar with.

The science of evolution is the study of the natural process. Selective breeding and genetic engineering are ways of producing genetic change WITHOUT evolution.

EDIT: I was wrong. Sorry, I know it's irritating when people try to correct incorrectly. Scientists do consider artificial selection a type of evolution. However, it is good to keep in mind that the creationist position is not that selective breeding/artificial selection doesn't work. But they'd argue either that god is invisibly guided the development of animals, or that the earth is so incredibly young that animals were created virtually as they are today. They use the word evolution to mean only natural selection pressures. And here I thought that was the real definition.

>> ^Calcul8r:

Bananas and cauliflower don't demonstrate evolution. They demonstrate intelligent design. Had the mutations not been specifically selected by the growers they would have disappeared, overwhelmed by the overall gene pool of the species.


So what you're saying is that they had a beneficial mutation which enabled them to survive and prosper in their current environment? That sounds like a text book example of evolution to me.

'Evolution' is shorthand for 'Evolution by Natural Selection' in the context you're using it, with 'natural selection' being the mechanism that Darwin and Wallace realized could be driving the evolution that others had for so long struggled to explain.

When groups of people select what should be bred and crossbred and carried on for our benefit, its 'evolution by human selection'. Eventually human-driven selection can produce things like dogs which can no longer interbreed (but come from the same ancestors) and plants that don't even produce seeds (like bananas, which have to be planted by people).

'Natural Selection' is only different because it takes people out as the selectors of who breeds and who has offspring, and roughly says 'in nature, small variations between individuals play a role in determining which ones thrive and have offspring (or conversely don't thrive)... this natural selection slowly accumulates, and whole new species can develop (especially with migration to new areas where different adaptations give benefit)'.

>> ^Calcul8r:

Bananas and cauliflower don't demonstrate evolution. They demonstrate intelligent design. Had the mutations not been specifically selected by the growers they would have disappeared, overwhelmed by the overall gene pool of the species.

Bananas and cauliflower don't demonstrate evolution. They demonstrate intelligent design. Had the mutations not been specifically selected by the growers they would have disappeared, overwhelmed by the overall gene pool of the species.

When all the comments are taken out about how stupid is the other side, we all sound very smart (That was a compliment to you.) God, my wife just screamed about the pantry hurting her... sorry, random, painful thought... I tried not to say you are a moron, I tried to say we all have moron tendencies that come out when telling someone else off.

On your note, you are correct--evolution began life, not the world. I was crossing big bang versus intelligent design versus evolution and creationism. And that cannot be blamed on the Percocet either--since I would have made the same mistake anyways.


As far as those intolerant laws you mention, they are more based on personal gain and okayed through religion than religion-based. I say this because, when we break it down, religion is just another form of governance. People are scared to break another bond "we" all "should" have towards each other... That is sad...

Greed is obvious in slavery, but it is also there in rape (Owning a woman) and the death penalty.
********************************************

I used to be big on rhetoric, ie. I was the best at calling out religion, the right, and before, long ago when I was young and quiet foolish, calling out gays. I stopped hating gays for obvious reasons (The fact that I was being an asshole in that regard.) But after John Stewart's rally, and after the little girl died with the assassination attempt in Tuscan, I am going to "attempt" to better myself. I still will argue, but there will be no expectations to win, no placating and no superior point of view. That is for the "other side" of the debate...

And for my wife

>> ^hpqp:
>> ^Lawdeedaw:
>> ^Opus_Moderandi:
>> ^hpqp:
People like this should get there their teaching credentials automatically revoked. And how the eff is it legal to teach lies opinions in school? How about historians teaching that the holocaust didn't happen?


Hahha! Good one Opus. I like how people (I am not speaking towards you Opus) point out other morons first, but sometimes we never evaluate the moron within. Good to make Hp see the mirror.
This pastor-ish guy is not dumb, but just idealized. He is not spreading lies but beliefs. And as to how is it legal? How is it not? I think we have a bit too many laws on the books of intolerance. Such as the law against gay marriage, the laws against pot, public nudity, and looking at your wife's email...
There are plenty of dumb beliefs taught, even in school; where to draw the line is a bit harder. I think religion and Earth's creation should be taught in History class, not science. But then, I am one man and not an all-knowing dick.
And please don't spell check/ grammar check my own, I just had nose surgery and am on strong pain meds...

Wow, so I am a moron for making a common grammar mistake (as a French-speaker, mind you). Would you mind telling me the difference between beliefs and lies? If I say objects fall to earth because God wants them to, and not because of gravity, is that an opinion/belief? All the evidence points towards a Holocaust having occured but hey, I believe it's a Zionist conspiracy to occupy Palestine and oppress Muslims... shouldn't I be able to "teach the controversy"?
Yes, there are plenty of intolerant laws (almost all religious-based, hint hint), but because they're (woot, grammarnazically correct!) legal for now doesn't make them right. Remember all those God-given acts and principles that used to be legal (rape, slavery, death penalty for just about everything, etc.)?
Anyway, I said that more in a spirit of social equity... think of all the non-faitheads that are unemployed, surely there are decent, scientifically-minded replacements among them, no? Actually, considering the pitiful state of America's educational system, that might not be the case.
p.s.: you do know that evolution has nothing to do with earth's creation, right?

"Still think truthers are crazy? 9/11 victims family members don't. This is what we've been talking about all along...."

No I don't think they're crazy, what I think is that the Truthers have not provided verifiable or demonstrable evidence to back up their claims. Of those 1300 engineers and architects how many have done an experiment or produced a model or even theoretically tested a hypothesis about Building 7s collapse. It's not that we're just saying "Shut up and believe the government" it's that we're being like Dr. Neil Tyson...we need more than just "I SAW IT!"

Give us something we can test in a lab...bring your findings to a reputable engineering or architectural journal. Give us some evidence we can test and verify...don't just repeat the same shit over and over and over. You sound like you're advocating "Intelligent Design".

yeah, man!

What's up with these "intelligent design" enthusiasts not comprehending the difference between inanimate objects and living organisms?

Houses don't have sex! [ironic since theists tend to harp on that topic a lot]

Can we make a videosift television station please?
And make one of the channels a 24/7 informative series on evolution?

Regular updates on new findings and maybe some call-a-thons like PBS! =P

Pseudoscience is that which masquerades as science without actually concerning itself with using science to prove the truth of its claims. It is therefore simply a statement of fact to call Intelligent Design pseudoscientific.