Faith is to reason as:

(I'll start it off)

Saint Augustine is to Galileo Galilei

An F-16 Fighting Falcon is to Peanut Butter

Crack-Cocaine is to long-term-health

I was joking. I'm not Asian, therefore I'm putting myself down.
Don't hate me, hate my inferior DNA.

Also, white people smell funny.
(don't believe me? Come to my house, I'll prove my point)

>> ^Pprt:
My God all this paranoia about racism.
People foam at the mouth at the very hint of race being mentioned. For a bunch of post-religious liberal hipsters, most of you aren't much unlike those who imprisoned Galileo.
Yes his comment was distasteful, but talk about a storm in a teacup. (Yet this equally disturbing comment merits no attention.)
Hitler's great posthumous legacy is the absolutely panicked and desperate attitudes Europeans take on race.

The difference between the comment you are referring to and westy's comment, is that Majortomyorke included a at the end of the comment, implying sarcasm.

There is no immediate way to gauge the tone of Westy's racist comment and so we must conclude that his intent was a literal statement that "black people... are monkeys."

Even upon further analysis (after westy explained that it isn't intended to be racist), I cannot see anything sarcastic, satiric, funny, or clever about it.


I'm with Spoco2: if it should be so clearly innocent to all of us, why can't anyone explain it?


>> ^Pprt:
My God all this paranoia about racism.
People foam at the mouth at the very hint of race being mentioned. For a bunch of post-religious liberal hipsters, most of you aren't much unlike those who imprisoned Galileo.
Yes his comment was distasteful, but talk about a storm in a teacup. (Yet this equally disturbing comment merits no attention.)
Hitler's great posthumous legacy is the absolutely panicked and desperate attitudes Europeans take on race.

My God all this paranoia about racism.

People foam at the mouth at the very hint of race being mentioned. For a bunch of post-religious liberal hipsters, most of you aren't much unlike those who imprisoned Galileo.

Yes his comment was distasteful, but talk about a storm in a teacup. (Yet this equally disturbing comment merits no attention.)

Hitler's great posthumous legacy is the absolutely panicked and desperate attitudes Europeans take on race.

>> ^quantumushroom:


Scientists are human, fallible, biased, cliquish, etc. Like everyone else with a job, they also have to deal with politics.
I have a job and I don’t have to deal with politics. I come in, do what is expected, and every two weeks they cut me a check. No politics, no drama. Although, I have noticed over the years very often people that are not good at their jobs blame “politics” for all their woes.

When money speaks, the truth keeps silent,

If that was true, and considering the deep pockets of big tobacco, then the health risks associated with smoking would have never seen the light of day.

and there are infinite ways to distort raw data,

Until another scientist comes along, discovers the distortion and blows the whole deal. Scientific frauds are very hard to pull off, and when a fraud is discovered, its always discovered by another scientist.

There's more junk science than real science being reported by the media charlatans.

And how’s that the scientists fault? They don’t have a say in what the talking heads report.

Lots of scary bullshit that never comes to pass, and the taxpayers always get stuck with the bill

Yea. Reagan’s SDI program comes to mind.

for the next round of tyrannical laws which do nothing except expand the size of government.

The size of the government expanded at an astronomical rate under Bush and the Republican controlled congress, a president and congress that was also somewhat less than enthused about science. If one wants an example of conservatives ignoring science while interjecting themselves in the private life of citizens, look no further than the Terri Schivo debacle.

I can think of no examples where scientists have bowed to political pressures, out side of instances like when they had to build a working a-bomb, or get a man on the moon. I can however instantly cite Copernicus and Galileo as examples of where scientists have stood their ground against political pressures.

In all seriousness and jest....
You are exactly like the pope who mocked Galileo Galilei when he claimed that the earth revolved around the sun.

Kinda the opposite, really.

To claim that science "supports" or "favors" Christianity.

This is going to be fun.

Between the Buddhist and Christian worldviews? Undoubtedly.

While I have carefully written down your objection to the notion that Christianity and science are compatible, I've also noted you don't disagree with me on this point.

>> ^ShakaUVM:
If you were held at gunpoint and forced to pick between Christian and Buddhist worldviews on the ultimate nature of reality, based on our current scientific understanding of the universe, a rational person would pick Christian.


The fearful one would pick Christian.

You know why I don't want to go to heaven? Because I've heard it's filled with Christians.

In all seriousness and jest....

You are exactly like the pope who mocked Galileo Galilei when he claimed that the earth revolved around the sun.

The Pope said something like "Look above you, what do you see? Isn't it obvious? Even a fool can see that!" And then he said something like "If we're revolving around the sun, where is the wind?"

Just as it is more accurate to say "our sun" rather than "the sun," it is more accurate to say "our world" rather than "the world," and "our universe" instead of "the universe." The Big Bang only applies to the sliver of eternity that we pretend to perceive.

I won't convince you otherwise, nor do I wish to.

I only know that even if I'm wrong, I'd rather be wrong than hang out with people like you, be it in this life or the next.

>> ^bobknight33:
It is very sad to see such a great society built firmly on the foundation of God's word to trashed by today's people.
Why would not believe in GOD and show him the proper respect? In general, you believe in evil things like Ghosts, Demons and such evil things? We all seen stuff that scared the crap out of us and know it is from some type of supernatural evil source. Why believe that but not the existence of GOD?

Just because Christians don't act GODly does not make the bible wrong, meaningless or irrelevant. GODs word is the TRUTH. Not the crap on TV and media.



I don't believe in "evil things like ghosts, demons" or UFOS, or jesus, or buddah, or allah, or the tooth fairy, or santa claus.

As for giving god "respect," I don't think he deserves it. His representatives don't give atheism, science, common sense any respect. He's got to earn it.

For me to respect god, he'd have to raise Galileo from the grave and apologize to him.

Take back astronomy? Oh, does he mean the same bullshit four hundred years later?

Quoth the Wikipedia:

On 15 February 1990, in a speech delivered at the Sapienza University of Rome, Cardinal Ratzinger (later to become Pope Benedict XVI) cited some current views on the Galileo affair as forming what he called "a symptomatic case that permits us to see how deep the self-doubt of the modern age, of science and technology goes today."

Unless you are Einstein...or Newton...or Galileo...or any scientist who has ever created a new hypothesis

>> ^ReverendTed:
>> ^imstellar28:
consensus has nothing to do with fact, so it really doesn't matter even if 100% of scientists believe something.
If my position disagrees with "100% of scientists," then I'm probably going to recheck my data.

It is possible to understand something yet disagree with it...that is how science proceeds. Do you think Galileo failed to understand Copernicus, or Newton failed to understand Galileo, or Einstein Newton, etc. etc.?

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>> ^budzos:
D'Souza's "three basic faith-based principles upon which science is suspended" are utter fucking nonsense. Each one boils down to a logical fallacy, first and foremost being the straw man... I don't think any prominent thinkers are putting forth the idea that the universe is conscious, and I don't think anyone with intelligence is even able to confuse the laws of physics with the laws of man.
He's just a FUCK. ARRGH I CANT STAND THE BULLSHIT.


He does not say that the universe is conscious. He says it is rational. That is, it can be measured, chopped up conceptually into discrete chunks, bits of it can be mathematically compared to other bits, it shows order, and so on. The universe need not be conscious to be rational.

The three "faith-based principles" he mentions are indeed fundamental requirements for science as we know it. (Sort of. The third is only essential for the most popular notions about science, not for doing science itself.) However, the principles are not Christian in origin. They are Greek, from Athens rather than Jerusalem. The the universe is rational, and that the mind corresponds to it, can be found in Plato and Aristotle. That it shows a uniquely mathematical order can be found in Pythagoras.

The principles made their way into modern science through the Renaissance. The creators of modern science, men like Galileo and Kepler, were profoundly interested in Pythagorean theories of the universe.

>> ^Farhad2000:
The debate of freedom of speech and censorship is on going, am not parroting one line or the other. I believe in freedom of speech myself and have disagreed with the inane protests that occurred during the publishing cartoons, but the question has to be raised when you have a film that is negative of an entire religion while any similar criticism is labeled as anti-semetic when applied to the Jewish community. The hypocrisy is there.

Of course it's hypocritical. And I decry the suppression of Mein Kampf just as much as Fitna. That's my point. It's absurd to outlaw stupid or unpleasant ideas, because usually the arguments for them are so pathetic that they should be easy to dismiss. That they cause diviseness is an even worse reason for censorship. Imposed homogeneity is far worse - and terribly boring. When unpleasant ideas are not so easily dismissed, it is even more important to guard their right to be expressed. It was certainly more socially cohesive for the Vatican to outlaw the ideas of Copernicus and Galileo, but obviously very wrong for it to do so.


Furthermore society censors ideas because it finds them offensive and detrimental to social cohesion, I don't think you would find many defending the freedom of speech of people burning crosses, wearing KKKs masks and calling black people the n word, using Nazi symbols in German or denying the holocaust.

Cross burning is not an act of free speech - it is an act of violent intimidation (not to mention arson). Wearing KKK gear isn't outlawed in the U.S., and it may surprise you to learn that the ACLU itself has fought for the rights of even those loonies to be able to assemble or march in various towns. Saying nigger is clearly not illegal - ever listen to gangsta rap?

Obviously there are limits to free speech. Directly inciting violence/riots, causing dangerous panic ("Fire!" in a theater) and libelous speech are all outlawed, but not because the ideas contained in such speech are "bad". They are outlawed because they can directly cause damage to people and property. I agree that stuff like Fitna falls somewhere in that grey area in that it could cause people to commit violent acts, but it does not itself call for violence upon Muslims.

I'm droppin' science like Galileo dropped the orange!

According to legend, upon Galileo's trial when he was forced to renounce the blasphemous theory that the Earth was not stationary and not the center of the universe. Galileo muttered "E pur si muove" meaning, "And yet it moves" before leaving the courtoom. Afterwards the man spent the remainder of his life under house arrest.