You forgot one....
'The Church says that the Earth is flat, but I know that it is round. For I have seen the shadow of the earth on the moon and I have more faith in the Shadow than in the Church.'-Ferdinand Magellan

I would say that many of these people in your linked list were not actually 'creation scientists', most were from before the invention of the scientific method, and many others were heretics that may not have stood in public opposition to 'creation science', but didn't believe it. At the time, stating something against the church's doctrine might get you tortured to death.
That's not why we call scientific 'laws' laws. It has NOTHING to do with church or god.
Not a single hypothesis in 'young earth' "theory" (a complete misuse of the word 'theory') is testable, because they're just plain wrong and based on a single person's terribly bad math based on the bible and the length of each generation listed within it. It was NEVER scientific in any way. Sorry.
Not a single hypothesis in creation "theory" (there's that misuse of the word again, it's not a 'theory') is testable either. Not one. If it were, you would have scientific proof of god, and you simply don't. Please don't lie about science.
Macroevolution has been seen in the lab, in fruit flies and bacteria amongst others. It has been observed and repeated with empirical testing. IT is a THEORY, not an inference based on an unprovable hypothesis (like creation science and young earth both are).

Leave it to Satan to embrace the scientific method.

Actually you said

Cannabis cures cancer. To HELL with western medicine.

Then you posted a bunch of anecdotes from a hemp oil salesman.

Then you talked about Dr Marcia Angell; I presume that's the same Marica Angell that said

It is time for the scientific community to stop giving alternative medicine a free ride... There cannot be two kinds of medicine — conventional and alternative. There is only medicine that has been adequately tested and medicine that has not, medicine that works and medicine that may or may not work. Once a treatment has been tested rigorously, it no longer matters whether it was considered alternative at the outset. If it is found to be reasonably safe and effective, it will be accepted.

and finally a bunch of studies that show that cannabis may affect cancer.

None of which implies that "cannabis cures cancer" (again, your own words).

Cannabinoids certainly have some interesting properties that might well lead to some breakthroughs, but right now, NOTHING cures cancer. As you said, it gets cut, burnt or poisoned (all of which is preferable to dying), or it just goes into remission.

As for your general distain for "western medicine" aka medicine, you continue on with your fairy dust and good wishes. Me, I'll be over here with the scientific method and the single most successful endeavour in the history of humanity.

Wow... there is a LOT of stupid in this video, and not just his usage of the word "stupid".

Don't even have to watch for long.

Please, dude, take a logic course. It's the basis of the scientific method, and if you don't understand that, you can't understand science.

Jews have the old testament.
Christians have the old testament and new testament.
Muslims have the old testament, new testament, and yet a newer testament.

All 3 share the old testament.
The 'violence promoting' scriptures are found in the old testament - which all 3 have in common.

Reza is right.
If people want peace, the religious of them simply ignore the violent edicts of their religions.
If they want to be violent, the religious of them legitimize it with excuses from their religions.

He's also right about the national hypocrisy. Al-Qaeda at the time of 9/11 was a pet organization of members of the Saudi royal family.
But instead of going after the Saudis (who also today finance ISIS), we go after 2 countries that are unrelated to the attack.

Look at today's irony. Assad in Syria (who we wanted deposed because he was friendlier to Russia than the U.S., and allowed Russian bases on Syrian soil [in the middle east]) is now fighting ISIS, while we ally with the Saudis who are supporting ISIS.

We also didn't mind supporting the Mujahedin (Jihadi fighters) in Afghanistan when they were fighting our enemy. We had no problem throwing Afghanistan into the dark ages when it suited us.

Ultimately, extremist Islam is a foil, meant to rouse western people's emotions. As national policy, we don't _actually_ do anything to stop it, we just use it as an excuse to do whatever else is of national interest.
Who would be the boogey man if extremist Islam was gone? We need a boogey man if we want to keep excusing and paying for a large military. People simply don't have the foresight and patience to maintain a strong military without someone scaring them into support. Particularly now, when we don't have the manufacturing capacity to quickly build a large military.

However, Reza is ignoring Turkey's and the Pacific islander's Muslim problems. Indonesia and the Philippines have extremist Muslim organizations doing attacks home (Philippines also has Christian terrorists). Turkey is a large source of Muslim fighters pouring into Syria.



The various related religions also have historical developmental differences.

Jews were for a long time in such minorities that they did not have the political capability of waging any campaign of violence. They were either too small, or too busy being occupied by European powers (Rome, etc).

Christians did have a long period of majority, starting around 400ad when Rome decided that a good way to control/pacify any dissent within the empire was to make the empire 1 religion and make Rome the head of that religion. They elected Christianity as the state religion, forced everyone in the Roman empire to convert, and you had a continent's worth of Christians.
This included north Africa and Middle East - and is when Jews (by now called Palestinians) were forced to convert from Judaism to Christianity (**and few hundred years later forced to convert from Christianity to Islam).

Although, Christians had the benefit of the Inquisition(s) to temper their enthusiasm for Christianity. A large part of the population was killed for consorting with the devil. Once it got so bad that everyone knew someone who had been convicted and killed - and everyone was sure that those killed were innocent, it cast a large doubt on Christianity as whole. People questioned if the devil even exists, or if it's all a sham. The distrust and resentment paved the way for the eventual birth of Deism and Empiricism. A time when the scientific method and physical observation started to take over.

Islam is still a young religion. They still have to experience their religion becoming all powerful, and the inquisitions that inevitably come from absolute power. The one good thing about Islamic extremism is that it makes the people living under those conditions more likely to suffer. Once the suffering becomes so pervasive that everyone is suffering, the people will start to dislike/distrust their religion, and the extremism will resolve itself from the inside out - like it did with Christianity.

The bigger problem would be if things are 'too tolerable', and the religion grows more extreme (no one is inclined to say 'no'). The biggest problem would be if the religious leaders 'solve' the balance issue, and manage to stabilize the oppression at a level that is as extreme as it can be while still being permanently sustainable. Then the religious leaders can live the life of power without the threat of deposition.

-scheherazade

What the fuck is that? That is not a committee of scientists!? That is absolutely and desperately embarrassing. And i'm sure there is some equivalent in the UK.

This is the problem. We need the scientific method applied to governance. The scientific method by which we choose the best option based on mathematical and scientific evidence. Why wouldn't we choose the best option based on the evidence we have? This is utterly ridiculous..

If this is how science works now then I think we're screwed. Someone/Group/Etc gathers a bunch of (and not all of) conflicting data and then says the average equals true?

"..it's a judgement call as to which analyses is correct".
"I tend to favor".
"because it seems"

Is that the scientific method? The scientific mind at work?

What happened to reproducible results?

@Trancecoach - respectfully leaving this discussion based on the following:

"You are actually going a long way to make my point that those who are "believers" in climate change are missing the value and indeed necessity for ongoing skepticism"

I don't understand how you can say that after i was the person that investigated the source of the first link you gave out. You hadn't even bothered to look into it, so i did, and you can say with a straight face that i'm a "believer" who has lost his scepticism?

You didn't even check completely through the second lot of links you posted, because the one i did check (on YOUR ultimate recommendation) ended up being written by a guy who saw climate change as one of mankind's top 10 problems. You've shown yourself twice now to be using sources that you haven't even fucking looked at, evidenced by a half hour investigation by me! You didn't even put a half hour into it!?

I remain open to evidence that climate change is not a man-made concern, or that it is not a concern. I'm not going to sit here and relay exactly how each of us think the scientific community works. You can read how it works on the scientific method and scientific consensus pages i linked earlier, anyone can. It's not open for debate; there is an overwhelming majority of scientific evidence in favour and there is not enough and not significant enough scientific evidence against. It isn't a coincidence that ~99% of the research points in one direction, and it isn't some conspiracy.... that isn't how science works. It's not perfect, a lot of shit science gets through because it's so hard to read and so relatively few people want to trawl through shite, but that's why it's better to look at the consensus - what is the AVERAGE opinion of ALL the clever people? It's a community that i consider incorruptible - because even if you paid off 10 research centres, there's still millions of individual scientists, individual institutions, so many people dedicated to keeping it pure because we know that's the only way we get the most from it. And ... the science and maths speaks for itself, the models are not "just models" as the moron associated with your latest link says. They are the best representations we have and they do represent parts of physical reality, and by using carefully considered techniques we can extract information about things. The alternative is to consult a Ouija board!?

By the way, nice 240 page pdf document for me to refer to. I didn't ask for a single link, i asked for a single point about which we were in disagreement... usually papers are cited to reinforce a point. You don't just cite something and go "there you go, read all of that, whatever you see that agrees with me; that's what i'm talking about!"

I think your efforts are commendable, but doomed to fail. Trance is not interested in learning, and when you teach him something he can't find a crazed, wrong link to discount your knowledge with, he'll simply ignore it and move on to more and more infantile argument. He recently became my second ignore.
I am glad you called him out on his doctorate in underwater basket weaving, unfortunately for us all it does not help him understand science in the least, or the scientific method, but somehow convinces him that it does.
EDIT: Oh, "doctorate in Social 'science'", which he must mistakenly believe is a true science and not a misnomer.
I see he continues with his intentional miss-reading and/or miss-quoting, claiming you said purely consensus is the ONLY way science progresses, not that it's the way that progression is accepted by the scientific community. Me thinks this miss-understanding is an intentional miss-statement in order to continue his 'debate' by constantly changing either his own, or your stance on the subject.
I also noted the passive aggressive (and terrible English) statement " the manner in which I posted the links may not have been "fair," ", to me implying you just couldn't assimilate that much information, not conceding that it was all an attempt at an overwhelming avalanche of BS propaganda.
Kudos on your reasoned, patient approach. I ran out of patience with the kindergarten argument style and quit him.

@Trancecoach holding a doctorate doesn't make you capable of understanding the scientific literature. If you held a bachelor's degree in one of the three sciences you'd stand a lot better chance of being able to understand the literature than someone who had a doctorate in say Art History. I would actually refer back to the Dunning Kruger effect and suggest that holding an unrelated qualification might lead you to overestimate your abilities.

And for someone who says that they *are* capable of understanding the scientific literature (and therefore the scientific method and approach), you dismiss "scientific consensus" as not being "scientific evidence". I don't understand what you mean here, but i think that's because you don't understand what scientific proof is.

I think it's a fundamental mistake that you're making. Scientists propose theories. Those theories that most accurately describe the situation and are most rigourously investigated are the ones that are accepted as being the case, and when things are found that are not correct, adjustments are made to the theory or other theories are proposed. There is never ever, ever.... EVER.. absolute evidence of anything in the way in which you request it, and that's your fundamental error, and stems from you not understanding the scientific method.

We have a lot of scientific consensus about gravity, but we do not have "scientific evidence" in the way you describe it. The evidence is ALL of the science that is done, ALL of the experiments ALL of the conclusions, positive and negative, and the consensus of the scientific community is reached and refined based on that research and ongoing research. There is no one document anywhere that constitutes "proof" that gravity is how we think it is. Not even all of the documents do that. They merely indicate to us what is most likely to be happening according to all of the knowledge and ingenuity that we've built up over the years.

I don't appreciate the scatter gun method you've used by posting all those links. You said in your latest post here that people try to confuse the issue by redirecting your request for "evidence" - the type that doesn't exist - towards other issues that you deem contentious. Yet you have almost drowned me in what appears to be about 15 different links to pages that seem to show singular examples of individuals that deny climate change. (Again, there are so many, and so many quotes, and no actual specification of what you are disagreeing with me about, that i can't rightly assess any of them.)

My point here is twofold - 1) don't try to be confusing like you accuse your opponents of, i.e. throwing as many links as possible to extend the argument to other points and 2) if that isn't what you were doing, could you perhaps condense your 15 links and selected quotes into a smaller point; that point being what it is about my previous posts you disagreed with?

Here are my points for you, simplified:
1) Scientific consensus does not mean "THIS IS HOW THINGS ARE" - it means that, on balance, according to everything we know and the opinions of those that are in the know, this is how we think things are until we know better.
2) There is no such thing as "scientific evidence" in the way you use the term; the only absolute proof is the one Descartes spoke about; the only thing you can know for sure is that your consciousness exists.
3) It is very easy to be misled by articles such as the one you linked from "the libertarian republic" website. This is also true of the last link you recommended for my research; you used that book to support your opposition to my assertion that human-caused climate change is not a matter of debate in the scientific community. Yet the same author was involved in the Copenhagen Consensus which lists as 6th most worthy of investigation (for the benefit and future of mankind), i quote; "R&D to Increase Yield Enhancements, to decrease hunger, fight biodiversity destruction, and lessen the effects of climate change"

I think that out of courtesy you should select one link which backs up whatever it is that you wish to refute, because it's not a good use of my time to have to go through each individual link, find out what you disagree with me about, and then spend time looking into it.

So, we disagree on one of the following:
1) The scientific consensus is that human-caused climate change is real, and that consensus represents the best of our current understanding as a species.
2) "Proof" in the sense you use it doesn't exist, the correct term is scientific evidence. The more evidence and the more convincing it is, the more firm the belief in a theory.
3) The article you linked from the libertarian website was unfairly representing its argument in relation to the paper it was referring to.

Please let me know. Remember - nothing is "beyond scepticism" in your words. I am sceptical about everything, including gravity, which i have an incredible amount of evidence for. However i am still sceptical about our understanding of it - i am always looking for differences. That doesn't mean that our understanding isn't the best one we have, and we should use it for our own advantage and safety.

I also note that you seem loathe to have a proper discussion with me. Our discussion could have been either about the scientific method or about the article you linked, but to throw all these links at me makes me feel you're unwilling or incapable of challenging your own opinion based on evidence. You don't even refer to the assessments of the article that i offered; you immediately discarded the article from your argument and linked me to other people that may or may not be misrepresenting the argument.

@A-Winston @lantern53

Have you ever heard of the Dunning-Kruger effect?

I'll simplify it for you - those who are not well educated in a subject greatly overestimate their ability at the subject, because they don't know all of the things that they don't know.

Those who are better educated in a subject greatly underestimate their ability at the subject, because they know how complicated it is.

Now you two don't know about science, and that's ok - that's not an insult and i don't want any of this to be insulting. But it is meant to be a reminder that you are talking about one of if not the most technical and complicated abstract subjects that we as a species pursue. If you don't even understand the "scientific method" (a distinct term) and how the "scientific community" (another distinct term) works and comes to consensus, how can you possibly hope to decipher fact (science) from fiction (propaganda)?

I keep having to post this, but i'll do it again. The scientific community is made up of all kinds of people such as university lecturers and students (yes, your kids might be part of the community), amateur scientists, people at research institutions.... anyone who cares enough to approach things methodically and systematically, anyone interested in finding out as much as we possibly can about everything we can. Real science does not get paid based on results - the funding is provided for the research and the research finds whatever it finds. You can't lie about science, because other anal bastards (far worse than me) are just waiting to find something wrong with it and pillory it. That's how the scientific community works, it's like internet comments only worse. You can't get away with doing bad science for long.

Most people in scientific research do not have a lot of money, do you understand that? I can tell you right now - i contribute to scientific papers and such, so that makes me part of the scientific community. I'm just a post-grad student living on a student loan and doing something that i enjoy. My lecturers make a living, but they are not well-off by any means. We also suffer tax when politicians take our evidence and twist it in front of our faces. And we're left standing here, exasperated, wondering why you'd listen to non-experts over experts. If your doctor said you had diabetes, you wouldn't ask a politician to confirm it? If you want a scientific opinion, consult the scientific community.

I would love you to ask yourself the following question; "What do i really know about the scientific community and the scientific method?" Because if you took half an hour one day to go to an accredited university and ask the science department about how science works, how consensus is formed, and what makes good scientific practice, you'd be able to rid yourselves of these myths that somehow all scientists (i.e. average people, doing scientific research for the sake of science) are in some kind of club or gang or being paid to say that humans are causing climate devastation. The reason the majority of people say that is because the science speaks for itself and is not open to interpretation. The facts are facts.

Are you really thinking this through?

I want to show you one final thing, and it comes from the wikipedia page on Scientific method (which i recommend you read to avail yourself about which you speak, please don't speak from ignorance).

"The chief characteristic which distinguishes the scientific method from other methods of acquiring knowledge is that scientists seek to let reality speak for itself, supporting a theory when a theory's predictions are confirmed and challenging a theory when its predictions prove false."

The science speaks for itself, and i recommend you start listening to real scientists. Why prefer the opinion of a few individuals who are either flawed in their scientific reasoning or flat out being paid to lie? The scientific community is in full agreement.

Edit: Sorry for the long post, but you're talking about something you don't understand and it exasperates me. You wouldn't come here and talk about the details of internal medicine, but you're quite happy to tell a scientist, to his face, that he doesn't know science.

@Trancecoach - they respond in literature all the time. A scientist's response is to prove it, scientifically. They do, and are, all the time. But most people do not understand science and those that do still find scientific papers daunting and difficult to follow. People like the two i mentioned above, they don't have a hope in hell of understanding the source of the information, and they sadly look to the wrong people to explain it to them.

The scientific community *knows* that climate change is real. The scientific community is made up of individual researchers at universities all over the world, anyone who practices good science and adheres to the scientific method is in no doubt about what the research points to. You can't buy the global scientific community, there are too many of "us" (i guess) that are all absolutely anal about good scientific practice. You could buy one or two, you could buy a small group, but the only thing that changes the opinion of the global scientific community is hard scientific reasoning.

I can't speak for where you live, but if you were to walk into my university's physics department tomorrow and ask any lecturer or professor about climate change, they'd tell you that, and the same goes for just about any university in the UK, holland and france i imagine, if not more like germany and so on. Anyone who has spent any amount of time comparing graphs and looking for statistical anomalies will tell you that there is a god damn big and unwieldy peak sticking up on the temperature/time graph right about where we started mass producing greenhouse gases, and the only new influence into the equation was us, because the old peaks are flat compared to this one. This is happening on a HUMAN timescale, not on a geological one.

We're seeing ocean floor methane bubbling up to the surface that we haven't seen before due to the heating of the ocean, and only this week the scientist who studied it tweeted flat out that if even a fraction of that methane is released into the atmosphere... "we're fucked."

It's pretty damn serious, but i'm not telling you that you need to pay huge taxes or fees to green companies or anything, and no scientist ever will. The agendas that politicians take up in the name of science should not stop you from accepting the science, and there are simple, good common sense things you can do to make a small difference that would cumulate to something big if we all did them. The only reason governments haven't been investing more into green energy is because they are relentlessly lobbied by the hugely wealthy and powerful and corrupt energy firms.

What is more likely?

@nock

If we accept that he is a very proficient physicist, then he is certainly able to understanding the scientific method - the attention to detail, the terms, the maths, the statistics.

A proficient physicist can spend weeks analysing a research paper written about their own particular field, needing hundreds of re-readings to understand everything.

I would say, on balance, NdT is very likely to be very capable of understanding of the biology with access to scientific research resources and reference materials. As for the chemistry - a lot of physics (especially the astro) IS chemistry; big bang nucleosynthesis, star nucleosynthesis, nuclear reactions, radioactive decay... Physicists joke that chemistry is just a subset of physics. And biology comes down to chemistry!

I think you're not giving him anywhere near the respect he deserves on this matter. He is not just a physicist - he's a scientist.

(Sorry if i'm a bit like a dog with a bone, i often think that real, well rounded scientific understanding isn't given the respect it deserves - no bias honest! But i would say that NdT could very easily conduct biological research if he found a subject that interested him in that area. Many of the tools are probably the same.)

Far from conclusive, but the idea of a designer-god (demiurge) was at one time a thought provoking perspective on existence.

However, your statement is best expressed as a belief made through faith; NOT a conclusive argument made through PROOF, the definition of which you're incorrectly ascribing your statement to.

Which makes it less thought provoking now that we have more advanced ways of reasoning and pondering the universe. i.e. the scientific method.

Admirable, perhaps, to still cling to said belief, but not convincing in the least, considering it is something that is neither deniable nor undeniably a possibility. Concluding science to be "proof" of God is merely a logical trap to be avoided.

EDIT:
"...therefore the inference to the best explanation is that which points to a mind, and therefore a designer."

Also, just because our theories of abiogenesis are not as sophisticated as our theories of evolution, does not suddenly mean that a designer is the final, undeniable conclusion. If that were the case with science we'd drop all of our theories in conclusion that it must be a god. We can't connect our theory of gravity to abiogenesis, therefore it is God. Laughable conclusion based in logical fallacy.

The only thing that infers such an explanation is your mind saying it is so. Similar to my inference that trees being phallic and in abundance, necessitate a giant penis god. You fail to see that science isn't merely based upon human logic and pattern recognition, it is based in mathematical observation -- which your logical leaps and bounds are not able to compete with, no matter how hard your brain tries to find a hidden pattern in anything you can grasp for, like a man drowning in an ocean of possibilities.

Anyone can infer anything from something of similar value, ergo inference without a scientific basis is silly.

Why would the acknowledgement of a designer be a depressing dismissal of the human spirit? Some of the greatest scientists who ever lived, like Johannes Kepler and Issac Newton, said their search for truth through the scientific method was enhanced by their faith in a Creator. Check out some of these quotes:

http://www.newlife.org/node/362

If you came to a beach and you found the message "Drink Coke" drawn out in the sand, would you assume that this was the product of wind, waves, and erosion? It would be obvious to you that it was the product not of natural processes, but a mind. The message in the sand doesn't contain information, it is information. It has a semiotic meaning, and the information in DNA is no different than that. You can derive information from natural processes but the information in DNA is organized for a purpose. It is a genetic language with features that far outstrip anything even our finest minds have developed.

I would also add that the truth does not care for our personal preference. We need to follow the evidence where ever it leads, and if it leads somewhere we don't like, we need to adjust our way of thinking. To do otherwise would only be to deceive yourself.