Wow so much and nothing answered. Not one thing you said answered a single question. Nice attempt at redirect. Lets try again.

What Corruption did he show?

What war crime did he show?

What did he do that made him your hero?

For there to be whistleblower should there not be something wrong that he has knowledge of?

He stated he did not like what was being done in the United States citizens names. What exactly? And what gave him the right to claim anything in my name? anyone's name?

You and the rest of your little group keep saying the same thing and yet never manager to answer a single question. What makes him a hero?

He has shown no war crimes, No corruption. Nothing.

Your not worshiping him as a hero your worshiping the IDEA of him.

So can someone answer the questions with out the dogma?

Do some homework ;-).

Your religion (Christianity) is a bastardization of "Messianic Judaism" (the crazy old testament stuff) and Mithraism (a "Gnostic" religion which was highly (& most) prevalent among the roman legions around the time of the reformation).

Virtually everything positive you allude to in the Christian teachings originally come from Hermeticism and other such ancient "Gnostic" traditions.

Jesus (that is to say "Yeshua ben Yosef") as portrayed as a mortal man is a fabrication at best (and outright fraud at worst).

The "Christ" however has been around for a loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooongass time before the name "Jesus" ever hit the scene . This stuff goes back to the Greeks, Egyptians, Babylonians, Cannanites etc.

And that not even mentioning The Buddha, Zoroaster, Lao Tzu etc. etc. all of whom predate your Jesus by quite some centuries and preach many of the same fundamentals.

Ditch the Dogma and try out the approach of some other religions, you'll quickly find that underneath all the silly myths there's certain things they all have in common (to a greater and lesser extent). You'll also I hope quickly start to realise that the three major "Exoteric religions" (Christianity, Judaism, Islam) are by this stage corrupted to the point of being barely serviceable and a mere shadow of their "Esoteric" counterparts.

Then again you could always just pull the faith card on me

Love is the law...

Reason > Dogma.

yes, it is part of our dogma.

I said it that way because it's a stupid paranoid idea that the likes of Glen Beck spout, and I don't want my government giving that lot any ammunition. I thought that was clear. I never backed away from my stance that it was NOT a compliance test, I simply commented that the reported conduct makes that argument hard to make to the conspiracy minded. this is the kind of comprehension problem and mistaken assumption I spoke of.
The "they" I speak of is the police that reportedly violated people's rights. No conspiracy needed for that to happen, 'punishment' is needed to curtail it.
What part was a lame appeal to patriotism and nationalist dogma (that) betrays an authoritarian worldview? I agree, I should have included "unreasonable" (not "reasonable" as you keep writing) with "search and seizure", especially since it's the definition of "unreasonable" that we are discussing. It was not an intentional omission as you imply.

Apologies to @newtboy and others for possibly ramping up a leetle too quickly and harshly. (Edit: Never mind.) There's just a certain type of nuttery and flight from logic that immediately gets me up in arms. It is, imnsho, the kind of buffoonery and dangerous dogma that can only become the self-fulfilling prophecy of those who embrace it.



Ok... going hiking tomorrow. Eagle Creek. Tunnel Falls. I hope to return relaxed. and less abrasive. (Edit: not healthy to deny one's nature)

This one suspect was not a threat to the entire Boston area, and did not make what amounts to Martial law without the declaration right.

Says you. You have no idea what they knew or didn’t know. How many people would he have to endanger to declare martial law (which they didn’t)? This idiotic logic you choose to use, that 1 man couldn’t possibly be a risk to ¾ million people, completely ignores that he was, as evidenced by his actions up to that point, a danger to some of those ¾ million people. I can’t believe I’m actually defending the cops, but defending the public is exactly what I believe their jobs should be (as opposed to primarily raising revenue by writing tickets), and until I see evidence to the contrary, it appears they did just that with the knowledge of the situation and the suspects that they had at the time, and until you can show different, the warrantless searches seemed reasonable.

If you think being scared is the best reason to give up your rights to privacy and freedom from search and seizure, you don't understand the USA and perhaps should move to one of those other countries that agree with you, there are many.

You don’t have a right to freedom from search and seizure. You have a right to freedom from unreasonable search and seizure. Living in a free country gives you the right to be as ignorant as you wish about the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, but demonstrating that ignorance in a public forum such as this should be embarrassing.

Now, we appear to have a comprehension problem...I said I disagree with those claiming this was some conspiracy or even a compliance test. I did not say, and have not heard anyone else say (besides the suspects father) that this was perpetrated by the government, that's a pretty big jump there. The implication is that the police are using the fear violate people's rights thinking they'll be either be justified in their actions or at least get away with them.

“I have heard some say” is the most common and sleazy way of introducing an idea one has not a lick of evidence for, but wants to wedge into the conversation because it supports, again, a narrative he/she wants to advance. You said it and then only denied you were one who said it. You went on to truss up the notion of “compliance test”, and imply your agreement of it, with “difficult to argue against that idea”, and then revealed your conspiracy nuttery with “so they don't want to (or can't afford) to do this again”. The next paragraph’s lame appeal to patriotism and nationalist dogma betrays an authoritarian worldview. You don’t have a reading comprehension problem. You have a reality comprehension problem.

Sadly they would likely be right, thanks in large part to people like Fletch that don't understand or agree with the freedom from 'search and seizure'.

Unlike you, I understand what the Fourth Amendment says, but I'm pretty sure I also understand what you and your ilk wish it would say. Again (again), you choose to detach “unreasonable” from “search and seizure”, which, I think, demonstrates that even you realize the invalidity of your blustering, and that your primary purpose here is to advance a narrative.

{snipped lots of ridiculous, ignorant horseshit of personal beliefs about police actions and procedures he has no evidence whatsoever to support; read it above if you need a chuckle; #youtubelawyer}

Again, you appear to suggest that the police may enter your home to search for dangerous criminals at any time they choose in the name of safety because they are dangerous criminals and MAY be in your home, they are certainly in the area. That's just plain dumb and shows lack of forethought and lack of understanding of the right to be free from search and seizure, especially in your own home.

I didn’t suggest anything of the sort, although you continue on in your paragraph with the false presumption that I did. I don't even know of anybody who does suggest it. It only seems to exist in your paranoid fantasies. Do you have any point or argument that you didn’t pull out of your ass, or anything that doesn’t rely upon some other bit of info you assumed, presumed, or just fabricated? This isn’t YouTube. You can find support here, but your bullshit will be called, and criticism won’t be muted by the endless scroll of a thousand comments.

If you want to give up your rights because your a coward, move. I hear Australia is nice.

Oy... more authoritarian nuttery. Australia is awesome, btw. Bravest thing their government ever did was pass effective gun control. That we should have such courage…


Edit: Went a leeetle too far

I like being an atheist - we don't demand that people be in our special club or go to eternal hellfire.

People can and should be nice people without any christianity, faith or dogma - simple common sense, a well rounded moral compass, a general sense of not being a dick to people gets all that stuff done.

The one commandment: Be nice.

Would have been a good book.

@enoch I'm not hostile towards those who disagree with me, but towards those who intentionally misrepresent me. I'm guessing you once met some fundamentalist hard-headed fox news republican whatever, and you think I'm that guy. I'm not. So, please stop misrepresenting me, it's really annoying.

You suggest letting government/society burn? Sure, maybe that's what we're headed to anyways. I don't treat politics as discussing "what should we do", that's irrelevant if you and I can't agree on what's actually wrong. To me, it's more about understanding the problem.

@dag The problem I see in how you're using examples outside of America is that what you suggest as a solution in another country can just as much be an example of another country's success despite what you're pointing out as the solution.

"we tax the rich a lot in Australia and everything is better over here". Ok. What if Australia would be better off if you didn't tax the rich so much? Then you'd be just proposing we do what's not helping Australia to help America, all the while overlooking whatever is actually working in Australia.

It does seem somewhat obvious that taxing the rich would forcefully reduce wealth inequality, but then we wouldn't be looking at what's causing the inequality, just trying to punch it out of existence with taxes, and possibly establishing more social injustice in the process. To me, it seems quite unfair to tax someone more just for being richer, a moral hazard even (punishing productivity?), but moral concerns are passé and don't seem to bother anyone these days.

@shatterdrose I treat a smaller government solution as something like a paradigm shift. You see government doing things right in country X, Y or Z, and I see them as, most likely, taking credit for what they're not fucking up. I mean, seriously, don't you know governments do that all the time?

There are plenty of people who unfairly benefit from government, but government is mostly not a net benefit to society, and those people will lie through their goddamned teeth about how much good they do, usually taking credit for anything working in society. There sure are plenty of suckers who believe them.

Wanting less government is not snap judgement, it's not dogma, it's quite often what no one ever considers.

Wanting more government is the convenient way out, governments are the agents of every social planner's wet dreams. In their minds, governments always have "unlimited" resources, they're always above any law, they're never morally wrong, and they're always run by honest uncorruptible people.

I love your "get involved" answer to criticizing government. What you don't seem to realize is that I'm criticizing how much government IS involved. That can hardly be changed from the inside. People who run for government always want a bigger piece of the pie, they're not likely to win on a "we want less pie" platform.

Exactly. This is the result of living in a bubble, receiving only positive reinforcement of one's delusions from like-minded individuals. This is not just some righteous nutter regurgitating gun lobby dogma. It's religion.

Finally, religious dogma I can get behind.

Every paragraph you write to me lately is simply stringing the same three ad homs together in a different order (you are a dogmatist, you dont understand science, you dont engage with critical thinking).

They're not ad homs. They're what I see. They're substantiated by fact. "Crackhead" would be an ad hom because I have no reason to believe that you are addicted to illegal narcotics. But it's empirically true that religious canon is dogma and you believe religious canon, that you repeatedly speak in non-scientific ways, and that you jump to convenient conclusions as part of your argument style rather than investigating the claims you're making.

You say you've inquired about my views. I don't remember that happening, except when you were baiting me into a certain admission that you had a prepared answer for. But then you didn't listen to my response to your answer, at least not in an open-minded and critical way. You regularly claim to have the answer. It's only when forced into a corner based on the fact that you're human and fallible that you ever admit you technically could be wrong. You just proved it again, BTW. "Your PoV is apparently blah blah blah." There's all sorts of possible PoVs that I could have, but dogmatically believing in everything a scientist says couldn't be one of them. As a scientific person, that's not a possible position for me to hold. You haven't accepted that you have lost credibility due to your lack of scientific understanding. You never ask how your understanding is wrong. If you wanted to learn, there's all sorts you could learn, but you retreat into playing the victim. If you've got nothing left, you claim you're being attacked. I'm arguing against you, and then honestly explaining why I'm not putting in any more effort; I'm not attacking. I'm not trying to hurt your feelings. I'm telling you mine, my opinions about you, what those opinions are based on and what they entail for the limit of where I'm willing to go in our conversations.

I may or may not understand the basics of your current argument about uniformitariansim, and so forth, but I sure understand the basics of scientific thought, and that comes first. I can read a book or watch a lecture and learn about uniformitariansim, but when I come back, you still won't understand how to talk scientifically. That's why I'm not going to bother talking to you about science except to hear your reasons for claiming something in modern science is pseudoscience (If I were dogmatic about science, I wouldn't even ask you), and if I think your argument is strong enough, I'll get interested and maybe learn something. I have learned some things, but none that overturn the science you claim it does. The fact that you think you have presented enough information to overturn anything in science shows how little you understand science.

So, you wanna be openly curious about my religious views, I'm here for you. I'll talk about that as long as you want. You want to have a real conversation about science? You have to accept that you don't understand what science is first. Are you humble enough to admit you might not understand it? As always, curious, open-minded and willing to be surprised.

That doesn't sound like circular reasoning to you?

It would sound circular if none of those had any other basis for their timelines other than each other, which, not being an expert, I have to guess is not the case. You, the one making the enormous claim that the entire field of geology is unscientific, have to demonstrate that.

I found some more cherry-picking. From that article about mudstones, you take this one quote: "One thing we are very certain of is that our findings will influence how geologists and paleontologists reconstruct Earth's past" and determine from it that the age of the planet will be scientifically revised from many billions of years to a few thousand. You have no basis for that. Also, why are you quoting geologists? That isn't even a science, I thought, right? Is it just because these ones happen to sound like their story could be twisted to agree with yours?

Your argument from incredulity not-withstanding, I think Max Planck sums it up rather nicely: " A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."

If by that quote you mean that old people tend to have a hard time changing their minds about things in face of contradictory evidence, you're right -- that's human nature. If you mean that scientific theories change randomly because new opinions grow and the old ones die out like cultural habits, you're wrong.

There was a paradigm shift from catastrophism to uniformitarianism in the late 19th century. It was a deliberate move away from the idea of a global flood. To make their theories worked, they needed vast amount of time

This is another grand claim. Can you give a verifiable non-biased (non ID) reference as to the deliberateness of the shift, and the pre-formed idea that they needed to conjure up vast amounts of time? Science doesn't become conventional wisdom without a preponderance of evidence to back it up. It doesn't mean any of it is correct, just that there's a lot of supporting evidence.

In other words, you believe whatever the scientists say and there is no reason to understand the alternative viewpoint.

No. You're the one making ridiculous claims. I'm rebutting for fun, for sport. I don't believe your religion is real. I trust scientists more than dogmatists, and if I have to choose how to spend 1.5 hours, it's going to be reading Feynman or watching TYT or studying math or practising card tricks. You brought up the topic, and I happen to only care enough about it to rebut a bit, not to dedicate hours to it. Also, you have a history here of providing horribly unscientific quotes and references without any attempt at intellectual honesty, and based on that, I can guess the quality of that video, and I don't need to spend 1.5 hours only to be disappointed in myself for trying. If I were really that curious, I would go to the geology department of my university and ask some professors about the circular argument, and what the original basis was for the dating. If you care that much about actually finding the truth, you'll do just that. But I think you're too afraid to learn something contradictory to your dogma.

It's all predicated upon the philosophy of deep time. Deep time is the cornerstone of modern research, and it supported by flimsy, circumstantial evidence.

Non-ID reference for the flimsiness required for grand claims.

You're cherry-picking. That sentence isn't the key one. I'm not sure what is meant by that sentence (the use of "constraint" is ambiguous), but it would be utterly unscientific if it meant that the stratigraphic position pre-determined the outcome. Geology would be scientistic nonsense like ID, not science.

Yes, and that is the point. If Geology worked like that it would be scientific nonsense, and it does work like that. The stratigraphic position is determined by the index fossils and radiometric dating. The age of the index fossils is determined by the stratigraphic position and radiometric dating. Radiometric dating itself is "checked" by stratigraphic positioning. That doesn't sound like circular reasoning to you?

On the other side the date is determined by the uniformitarian assumptions about radioactive decay rates in the past, and many other things. It assumes, among other things, that the rate will never change. As I showed in my reply the Bicyclerepairman, the rates can indeed change.

Even the next two sentences demonstrate this: "There is no way for a geologist to choose what numerical value a radiometric date will yield, or what position a fossil will be found at in a stratigraphic section. Every piece of data collected like this is an independent check of what has been previously studied."

Now this is the intellectually dishonest part. They say they can't choose where a fossil will be, but they have already the determined that the presence of certain fossils and radiometric dating igneous layers above and below it determines the age of that layer. They don't choose where a fossil is, but they do choose what the age of the layer is that contains the fossil based on their assumptions. So they are basically saying that radiometric dating and stratigraphy is validated by index fossils and radiometric dating, and vice-versa.

The date that is returned is indeed chosen by the scientists as it is based on uniformitarian assumptions that they've made about the past. Perhaps you don't understand how it works, but there is nothing about the rock which reveals its age. They use the secondary evidence of how much radioactive decay of certain elements they believe have occurred, but if the rates aren't always constant, the measurement is worthless. As I showed in my reply to Bicyclerepairman, even secular scientists have acknowledged the rates can change. Therefore it is unreliable on its own, and what is essentially happening is that they are propping up one unprovable assumption with the evidence interpreted through another unprovable assumption.

If geologists were in the habit of treating data this way, scientifically-minded people who entered the field would be disgusted and leave, and form their own new scientific discipline of the study of the earth. The fact that this hasn't happened means the geological method appears scientific to scientific-minded people, if not dogmatists.

It's far more likely that you, a dogmatist and a non-geologist, are cherry-picking information to come up with data that supports your dogma. Dogmatists, by definition, cannot be relied upon for unbiased information that either challenges or confirms their dogma. Their dogma pre-disposes them to coming to wrong conclusions far more than non-dogmatists.

Your argument from incredulity not-withstanding, I think Max Planck sums it up rather nicely:

A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it

There was a paradigm shift from catastrophism to uniformitarianism in the late 19th century. It was a deliberate move away from the idea of a global flood. To make their theories worked, they needed vast amount of time. Most of the contention comes down to how fast or slow certain geological features take to form. Scientists have staked all of their modern research on the theory of deep time, and they interpret all of the evidence through that conclusion. In other words, it has become conventional wisdom..IE, dogma. Please read my reply to Bicyclerepairman to see how bias effects interpretation.

If you examine the history of science, you will see that scientists have had it wrong many times and wasted decades and decades of research on things ultimately proven to be false. The near universal agreement of scientists on any issue is not any indicator of truth.

I'll take 10 minutes to respond to your comments, but I'm not taking 1.5 hours to watch more non-scientific nonsense framed in scientific terms. If there were strong enough evidence that the Earth were a few thousand years old, there would be a branch of geologists studying it. And I'm excluding the dogmatic "creation geology". It is pseudoscience.

In other words, you believe whatever the scientists say and there is no reason to understand the alternative viewpoint. Your dismissal of the material as "non-scientific nonsense framed in scientific terms" flatly shows your intellectual incuriousity, not even having looked at it. Dr. Emil is an accomplished geologist and his discussion is framed in the terminology and methodology used in that field. If you want to debate this subject, you should at the bare minimum understand the basics of the position you are defending and the position you are arguing against. Also, the video is about 1 hour with 30 minutes of questions.

FWIW, according to Wikipedia: "Flood geology contradicts the scientific consensus in geology and paleontology, chemistry, physics, biology, geophysics and stratigraphy". Do you think you can knock all those scientific fields down as well? Have at it.

It's all predicated upon the philosophy of deep time. Deep time is the cornerstone of modern research, and it supported by flimsy, circumstantial evidence. If you can show deep time is false, then all of it crumbles.

Also, "former atheist" means "current dogmatist". You don't find it astounding that his conversion happened to coincide with his discovery that the evidence didn't hold up? I do. Evidence of non-scientific thinking.

It's interesting you're still inventing reasons why you shouldn't watch the video. You don't know anything about the man but you make wrongheaded assumptions about him. Such as that he converted because he had doubts about the evidence in Geology not holding up. Yet, that isn't the reason he converted, and it had nothing to do with his work as a geologist. Your conclusions here are evidence of non-scientific thinking.

You're cherry-picking. That sentence isn't the key one. I'm not sure what is meant by that sentence (the use of "constraint" is ambiguous), but it would be utterly unscientific if it meant that the stratigraphic position pre-determined the outcome. Geology would be scientistic nonsense like ID, not science.

Even the next two sentences demonstrate this: "There is no way for a geologist to choose what numerical value a radiometric date will yield, or what position a fossil will be found at in a stratigraphic section. Every piece of data collected like this is an independent check of what has been previously studied."

If geologists were in the habit of treating data this way, scientifically-minded people who entered the field would be disgusted and leave, and form their own new scientific discipline of the study of the earth. The fact that this hasn't happened means the geological method appears scientific to scientific-minded people, if not dogmatists.

It's far more likely that you, a dogmatist and a non-geologist, are cherry-picking information to come up with data that supports your dogma. Dogmatists, by definition, cannot be relied upon for unbiased information that either challenges or confirms their dogma. Their dogma pre-disposes them to coming to wrong conclusions far more than non-dogmatists.

Anything scientific can be independently verified by someone else, and if a scientists makes a strong claim and it's later proven wrong, that scientist's credibility is shot and their career severely damaged. So-called ID "scientists", on the other hand, can make all the wild assertions they want, and if something is proven false (again) they lose nothing, and may even gain standing in the ID community for trying -- they've shown their heart is in the right place, even if they're incompetent scientists.