The Week in Blog: Duck and Cover (Bill Scher & Kristen Soltis)

[Starwatcher162536]

Not much to add here; I just want to reiterate oil and electricity are as of now only very loosely linked issues.

[stephanie]

Originally Posted by miceelf

There aren't many people who hate religious people qua religious poeple, and even fewer who post here (i.e., unless Richard Dawkins is here in disguise and exercising an amazing level of restraint).

Dude, in badhat's mind, you and I probably hate religious people, because we believe in evolution and are against prayer in school. It's not actually rational, it's about BS political talking points.

[badhatharry]

Originally Posted by tom

Someone who takes the position that the Earth was created 6000 years ago (or yesterday, for that matter) with every molecule arranged such that it would be indistinguishable from an Earth that was 4.5 billion years old (on which life evolved as scientists think, etc.) is not engaged in a dispute with science.

But how would that person explain the ongoing stuff which is based on new measurements? In the scenario we are talking about, time is compressed. 6000 years = 4.5 billion years. There are ongoing processes which can be measured which will show that the person who believes that the earth is 6000 years old is incorrect. He would then have to come up with a date in time when the process stopped being sped up and went real time. I think that would certianly be disputed by science because science relies on uniformitarianism.

[graz]

Originally Posted by badhatharry

But how would that person explain the ongoing stuff which is based on new measurements? In the scenario we are talking about, time is compressed. 6000 years = 4.5 billion years. There are ongoing processes which can be measured which will show that the person who believes that the earth is 6000 years old is incorrect. He would then have to come up with a date in time when the process stopped being sped up and went real time. I think that would certianly be disputed by science because science relies on uniformitarianism.

You're pulling a simplified Behe. I give it an A for effort.

[badhatharry]

Originally Posted by AemJeff

What does that have to do with anything?

You said they are people who pretty much don't deserve consideration. I don't take that position. I think I'm right about what I believe and they think they are right about what they believe. What they believe doesn't affect my life at all so I am tolerant of their views.

[Don Zeko]

Originally Posted by Sulla the Dictator

The Left always says this sort of thing, no matter who the GOP nominates.

So you don't think those Social Security comments will be a touch embarrassing come next November?

[badhatharry]

Originally Posted by stephanie

Dude, in badhat's mind, you and I probably hate religious people, because we believe in evolution and are against prayer in school. It's not actually rational, it's about BS political talking points.

What sort of political talking points would those be? My point has always been, in a very non-political talking point sort of way, that everyone who believes in God is essentially in the same boat. Some of the details differ. You may believe in evolution while another person may believe that the earth began 6000 years ago but it's the same belief boat, in my estimation.

I was actually referring to people who think their portion of the belief boat is better than other portions and go to great lengths trying to distinguish themselves from their shipmates.

[badhatharry]

Originally Posted by Don Zeko

So you don't think those Social Security comments won't be a touch embarrassing come next November?

It depends on how crazy the current president is perceived as.

[tom]

Originally Posted by badhatharry

But how would that person explain the ongoing stuff which is based on new measurements? In the scenario we are talking about, time is compressed. 6000 years = 4.5 billion years. There are ongoing processes which can be measured which will show that the person who believes that the earth is 6000 years old is incorrect. He would then have to come up with a date in time when the process stopped being sped up and went real time. I think that would certianly be disputed by science because science relies on uniformitarianism.

I think we're not on the same page.
I didn't think we were talking about a time compression. Rather, we're talking about God creating a universe at a given moment with the appearance of age.

Imagine a hypothetical scenario in which God created the universe yesterday at 3:37 PM with every single molecule having the same position and moving with the same velocity, along the same vector, as our actual world. There is no scientific test we could do right now that would distinguish between the actual universe and this hypothetical one.
Now imagine that instead of 3:37 yesterday, we're talking about 6000 years ago. That's what I thought we were discussing, based on your statement:

...then God, by definition, can have made the earth look like it's 4.5 billion years old in order to test the faith of his people.

But if we're instead talking about a certain period, say T-4.5 billion to T-5000 (where T is the present time) in which the process is "sped up"... things become really confusing here. Are natural processes sped up with respect to uniform time? Are natural processes sped up because time itself is sped up? I suppose there might be an interpretation of that idea according to which there would be a real conflict with science, but I'd first have to see the idea spelled out in detail.

[miceelf]

Originally Posted by Sulla the Dictator

Except that as I pointed out, it isn't an instance. Jesus resurrected someone else earlier. Besides, I don't think dying and being resurrected is one of those things that is within the odds of scientific possibility as we understand human biology. Of course, cross reference that miracle with the others performed by Jesus and you have no scientific explanation.

No. But again, you are talking about a specific instance (and adding a couple of more instances doesn't make them any less instances. Versus the foundation of the entire universe.

I am just saying that it takes less of a leap from science to say that our world is ordered in a particular way, and occasionally there is supernatural intervention in it (a position, I actually believe) versuse believing that our entire world came into being in its current form through supernatural intervention.

Originally Posted by Sulla the Dictator

You note that there is no "Death Class". There is no class that says death happens in all cases of man, it is irreversible, and that there is no afterlife. If there was such a class, people who believe in the Resurrection would believe it was an attack on their religious beliefs.

Well, possibly. Bu the other reason is that what happens after death is completely beyond the ken of science. Any theory about it that science could come up with couldn't be tested. This is different than scientific theories on evolution and heliocentrism, and gravity.

[miceelf]

Originally Posted by Sulla the Dictator

The Left always says this sort of thing, no matter who the GOP nominates.

YOu realize you were responding to carkrueger, right?

[tom]

I hate leaving off at such a distant tangent from the original dispute, so I'll return to that briefly.

You said:

How does believing that people can rise from the dead not undermine science? It's nice to put brackets around some religious beliefs and say they are acceptable because they don't undermine science but, in fact, they do.

I think this is probably a better place to hash out our disagreement.

Science describes a set of natural laws that govern the way matter behaves. In principle, those laws are still correct even if a supernatural being occasionally intervenes and violates them. That is to say, those laws still correctly describe the natural behavior of atoms, molecules, biological systems, etc. Science is only trying to describe the system of natural laws, so it is not "undermined" if a supernatural force arbitrarily violates those laws.

By the same token (and maybe this will clarify what I mean by all of that) science can never identify a supernatural event as such. At best it can point to an anomaly and say there's no known explanation. If the "anomaly" happened with predictable regularity, it would cease to be an anomaly and would require some revision of scientific knowledge; until that point it is the equivalent of an open investigation. All of this is to say that supernatural phenomena are in a sense just outside the purview of scientific inquiry.

[badhatharry]

Originally Posted by tom

Science describes a set of natural laws that govern the way matter behaves. In principle, those laws are still correct even if a supernatural being occasionally intervenes and violates them. That is to say, those laws still correctly describe the natural behavior of atoms, molecules, biological systems, etc. Science is only trying to describe the system of natural laws, so it is not "undermined" if a supernatural force arbitrarily violates those laws.

OK, I'll buy that for the moment. This goes to your objections about ID because those people are trying to undermine what science has described to be the origins of the species. I suppose to make this hang together they are speculating about other things, too. I admit to not being versed in ID thinking.

So bottom line, religious beliefs are OK when they don't go against current scientific knowledge even though they admit the presence of the supernatural which intervenes on occasion.

But then there's this...and I must go. These little interventions don't leave any trace? There is no little piece of godly kleenex left at the scene? Or is that the way God works? He leaves no trace. Is that possible?

[badhatharry]

Originally Posted by tom

I think we're not on the same page.
I didn't think we were talking about a time compression. Rather, we're talking about God creating a universe at a given moment with the appearance of age.

OK so you were talking about the world coming into existence with a 4.5 billion year 'look' and from then on everything went on as it would normally. I guess I was harkening back to something I heard once about under certain circumstances coal could be formed under extreme pressure in a matter of years. Maybe we can both agree this didn't happen.

So, under your definition, the person who believed that the earth was fully formed as we see it today -6000 years is not disputing science in any way. I have to disagree. And here I go back to the uniformitarianism issue. We know that certain processes must have taken place in order that the earth appear as it does today. Those are processes we can observe and measure. The person who says that those processes didn't take place in the time it would take them to take place and instead, in the twinkling of an eye, is certainly disputing science.

And then I have another question about the 6000 year belief...didn't that include the week it took to make the planet? It's hard to keep track of this stuff. But I tell you, 6000 years is a whole lot easier to conceive of than 4.5 billion years.

[tom]

I'll reply to both of your replies in one place to keep it more simple to follow.

Originally Posted by badhatharry

So bottom line, religious beliefs are OK when they don't go against current scientific knowledge even though they admit the presence of the supernatural which intervenes on occasion.

Well, I was deliberately trying not to wade too far into the broader question of what's "ok", for both politicians and ordinary citizens. But religious beliefs do not require one to reject science (either by alleging conspiracy, or merely ignoring evidence) when they merely admit the presence of supernatural intervention.
As to whether it's "ok" to reject science - the conversation would be interesting, but it's the sort of disagreement that is usually resolved over months or years rather than a few paragraphs of conversation. I do believe it's a bad thing, and yes, I think it's especially a problem when politicians believe that evidence doesn't matter as much as ideology, or that there's a conspiracy of many thousands of scientists doctoring millions of data points because of some secret agenda.

Assuming that many of your beliefs differ from mine, I think this thread could start to break into ten smaller ones at this point, but I'll take a small step in that direction anyway with the caveat that I'm not so much trying to offer a decisive argument so much as stating my position. I think Rick Perry's refusal to consider the possibility that he oversaw the execution of an innocent man, and his efforts in preventing an investigation into that matter, reveal a man who puts ideology before reality. In utilitarian terms, it's just one dead man, but one man executed by the state is a much greater moral atrocity than one man dying in a car crash or even murdered in his home. And he said openly that he thinks there's a conspiracy of scientists on climate change, which I think is crazy. (I should note that I believe "Climate-gate", to which he is almost certainly referring, is a manufactured scandal.) I don't see his ability to confidently believe whatever he wants, reality be damned, in both cases to be a coincidence. Neither of those cases are religious, but one does involve "ignoring science", and it would be easy to get into examples that are more directly related to religion with him.

Originally Posted by badhatharry

But then there's this...and I must go. These little interventions don't leave any trace? There is no little piece of godly kleenex left at the scene? Or is that the way God works? He leaves no trace. Is that possible?

It depends on what kind of trace you're asking about. If Jesus really performed miracles in front of large groups of people, that's a trace that leaves its mark in written and oral records. Yet we have no way of showing those traces have supernatural origins. If we're talking about the hypothetical creation of a universe with the appearance of age, then no, not necessarily. If we're talking about (for example) God doing some small violation of the laws of nature tomorrow (say making some rocks fly around in circles before dropping on the ground), then it leaves its trace but not in a way that would be testable as "supernatural". If we're talking about the ID stuff, it seems in principle possible to me that there would be something that biologists would be forever at a loss to explain. But as I said earlier, it's outside of the purview of science to call that "supernatural". It's just unexplained.

Originally Posted by badhatharry

So, under your definition, the person who believed that the earth was fully formed as we see it today -6000 years is not disputing science in any way. I have to disagree. And here I go back to the uniformitarianism issue. We know that certain processes must have taken place in order that the earth appear as it does today. Those are processes we can observe and measure. The person who says that those processes didn't take place in the time it would take them to take place and instead, in the twinkling of an eye, is certainly disputing science.

He is disputing the model of the world/universe that science gives us, but he's not really disputing any specific scientific evidence. I would prefer to say that he's just completely bypassing scientific models in a way that doesn't lock horns directly with science. If he is disputing science, he's doing so in a very different way from creationists/ID theorists.

It's late and I have to finish this, but two closing points:
1. I think part of our disagreement has developed into a primarily semantic one, which I see as progress.
2.

We know that certain processes must have taken place in order that the earth appear as it does today.

We "sort of" do. One might argue that we technically only know what the present day evidence says. That is, it's possible to imagine a universe in which there's an "Earth" identical to ours at this very moment, but which was created by a god yesterday, as in my earlier example. The scientists on this "Earth" would be thinking, observing, and claiming the same things as scientists on our Earth. Do they "know" that certain processes must have taken place in the same way that we do?

Ok apologies for the lack of brevity or clarity... way past my bedtime.

[Ocean]

Originally Posted by tom

But religious beliefs do not require one to reject science (either by alleging conspiracy, or merely ignoring evidence) when they merely admit the presence of supernatural intervention.
As to whether it's "ok" to reject science - the conversation would be interesting, but it's the sort of disagreement that is usually resolved over months or years rather than a few paragraphs of conversation. I do believe it's a bad thing, and yes, I think it's especially a problem when politicians believe that evidence doesn't matter as much as ideology, or that there's a conspiracy of many thousands of scientists doctoring millions of data points because of some secret agenda.

[...]

I think Rick Perry's refusal to consider the possibility that he oversaw the execution of an innocent man, and his efforts in preventing an investigation into that matter, reveal a man who puts ideology before reality. In utilitarian terms, it's just one dead man, but one man executed by the state is a much greater moral atrocity than one man dying in a car crash or even murdered in his home. And he said openly that he thinks there's a conspiracy of scientists on climate change, which I think is crazy. (I should note that I believe "Climate-gate", to which he is almost certainly referring, is a manufactured scandal.) I don't see his ability to confidently believe whatever he wants, reality be damned, in both cases to be a coincidence. Neither of those cases are religious, but one does involve "ignoring science", and it would be easy to get into examples that are more directly related to religion with him.

That sums it up pretty well.

A religious belief, alone, when it's kept in ways that doesn't contradict our shared sense of reality, as evidenced by the scientific method of knowledge, doesn't pose a problem for political function.

However, when such religious belief defies scientific knowledge, it indicates a certain flaw in reasoning, and/or perhaps a personal choice of following "faith" or revelation or religious text over science. And that's dangerous. Add conspiracy theories and it gets even worse. The next disaster would be a top politician stating that God spoke to him and told him to go to war. And we know how that can go.

[AemJeff]

Originally Posted by badhatharry

You said they are people who pretty much don't deserve consideration. I don't take that position. I think I'm right about what I believe and they think they are right about what they believe. What they believe doesn't affect my life at all so I am tolerant of their views.

This has little or nothing to do with "tolerance" or your particular view of anybody's ideas. What we're talking about is how ideas are to be treated in the public sphere. Once someone has tried to encode their particular belief system in legislation, then it becomes a legitimate, indeed a mandatory, subject of public debate and is therefore subject to open critical scrutiny and hard-edged analysis.

[badhatharry]

Originally Posted by tom

As to whether it's "ok" to reject science - the conversation would be interesting, but it's the sort of disagreement that is usually resolved over months or years rather than a few paragraphs of conversation. I do believe it's a bad thing, and yes, I think it's especially a problem when politicians believe that evidence doesn't matter as much as ideology, or that there's a conspiracy of many thousands of scientists doctoring millions of data points because of some secret agenda.

This thing all started when I replied to a post calling out the litany of Obama missteps with the sarcastic comment that to my knowledge he believes in evolution. This was meant to convey what I think is the ridiculous idea that whether or not you believe in evolution is some measure of the man.

I suspect I give more thought to this than most people. I have a fascination with geology and I happen to live in the mountains so I wake up to the old earth every day and I think about the implications. But I think for most people evolution is something they learned about in college and that they believe in but probably don't know much about. I could of course be wrong.

I think Rick Perry's refusal to consider the possibility that he oversaw the execution of an innocent man, and his efforts in preventing an investigation into that matter, reveal a man who puts ideology before reality. In utilitarian terms, it's just one dead man, but one man executed by the state is a much greater moral atrocity than one man dying in a car crash or even murdered in his home. And he said openly that he thinks there's a conspiracy of scientists on climate change, which I think is crazy. (I should note that I believe "Climate-gate", to which he is almost certainly referring, is a manufactured scandal.) I don't see his ability to confidently believe whatever he wants, reality be damned, in both cases to be a coincidence. Neither of those cases are religious, but one does involve "ignoring science", and it would be easy to get into examples that are more directly related to religion with him.

I don't agree with the death penalty but I understand why it exists. I also don't like injustice to be done but I know injustice exists. It should be avoided at all costs and maybe someday it will be eliminated, but I doubt it.

Climategate is not manufactured. Those emails were sent but the incident has certainly been used for political purposes. I doubt Perry knows much about climate science and I also doubt that most people who have a 'side' in the controversy know much about climate science either. People are passionate about something they have little grasp of. This is typical of the way we as a society operate.

It depends on what kind of trace you're asking about. If Jesus really performed miracles in front of large groups of people, that's a trace that leaves its mark in written and oral records. Yet we have no way of showing those traces have supernatural origins. If we're talking about the hypothetical creation of a universe with the appearance of age, then no, not necessarily. If we're talking about (for example) God doing some small violation of the laws of nature tomorrow (say making some rocks fly around in circles before dropping on the ground), then it leaves its trace but not in a way that would be testable as "supernatural". If we're talking about the ID stuff, it seems in principle possible to me that there would be something that biologists would be forever at a loss to explain. But as I said earlier, it's outside of the purview of science to call that "supernatural". It's just unexplained.

As I said, I don't know the ID line. Are they saying that the things they are finding are supernatural? Or are they simply saying there are alternate explanations for certain phenomenon? I know they like to point to the eye for some reason.

The trace I was talking about is say something like a volcano God decided to have erupt so that it would kill some enemies of the Jews. Certainly, if that volcano didn't have the necessary condition for eruption there would be evidence that the eruption was supernatural.

We "sort of" do. One might argue that we technically only know what the present day evidence says. That is, it's possible to imagine a universe in which there's an "Earth" identical to ours at this very moment, but which was created by a god yesterday, as in my earlier example. The scientists on this "Earth" would be thinking, observing, and claiming the same things as scientists on our Earth. Do they "know" that certain processes must have taken place in the same way that we do?

My imagination doesn't work that way. When you say an earth identical to ours for me it is impossible to admit the existence of an earth identical to ours without it having gone through the same process to get to be identical to ours.

[badhatharry]

Originally Posted by AemJeff

This has little or nothing to do with "tolerance" or your particular view of anybody's ideas. What we're talking about is how ideas are to be treated in the public sphere. Once someone has tried to encode their particular belief system in legislation, then it becomes a legitimate, indeed a mandatory, subject of public debate and is therefore subject to open critical scrutiny and hard-edged analysis.

I presume you are talking about teaching creation hypothesis in the public schools. I agree this shouldn't be allowed beyond saying that there are various theories in existence which fail scientific scrutiny. But I see nothing wrong in people doing the work of trying to explore alternate ideas for the way things are. If they want to put the time and effort in and then try to convince others that their ideas are worthy, let 'em. If they can get some university to hold a class laying out their ideas, let 'em. If they want to come on Bloggingheads and talk about their ideas, let 'em. The scrutiny and hard edged analysis will follow.

I remember the brouhaha about ID people coming on BHTV and how people were so very offended. It was silly.

[Unit]

Originally Posted by eeeeeeeli

All this worry about the idea of state funding certain industries is missing a key point: these industries are vital to the national interest. The most obvious example of this is military contracting. No one ever argues that military industries shouldn't be supported by the state. The same logic applies to things like environmental, health or infrastructure industry. There are many area of life in which there exists no natural market.

Aside: the upset of the auto and bank bailouts was wrongly assumed to be another example of the government interfering in the market. Yet these were highly unusual cases in which the market had broken down, and the government had a national interest to uphold. In neither case was the government interested in entering these markets more than temporarily - a fact proved shortly thereafter. You can argue the counterfactual that it was bad policy, creating moral hazard and we would have been better off. But as it stands the interventions stabilized both areas in which we intervened. Will automakers and bankers be more reckless, assuming that they might get bailed out in the future? I see no evidence of this. Automakers have gotten severe concessions from unions, and banks have tightened lending considerably.

Why is it in the national interest to fund the private interest of some individuals at the expense of other individuals? If solar panels are really so vital, the US could buy them from Germany or Canada, why is it so important to bank-roll some private individuals just because they are fellow countrymen?

Typically the distinction between national defense and solar panels/automobiles is that national defense can be enjoyed by an unlimited amount of people (once it is achieved). Since solar panels and cars are sold at a profit to some people and not others, you can't say that they're in the national interest. Maybe some of the benefits of a green technology are a national interest, but then subsidize the buyers of such technology instead of rewarding whoever pretends to want to profit from selling it.

[AemJeff]

Originally Posted by badhatharry

I presume you are talking about teaching creation hypothesis in the public schools. I agree this shouldn't be allowed beyond saying that there are various theories in existence which fail scientific scrutiny. But I see nothing wrong in people doing the work of trying to explore alternate ideas for the way things are. If they want to put the time and effort in and then try to convince others that their ideas are worthy, let 'em. If they can get some university to hold a class laying out their ideas, let 'em. If they want to come on Bloggingheads and talk about their ideas, let 'em. The scrutiny and hard edged analysis will follow.

I remember the brouhaha about ID people coming on BHTV and how people were so very offended. It was silly.

That's sort of cock-eyed, I think. Behe's ideas have suffered deeply under scrutiny - they fail on their own terms and have done so repeatedly, since he keeps repeating the same argument in a shifting context. He's a laughingstock whose ideas should have been subjected to withering skepticism by any serious interlocutor. McWhorter made a damned fool of himself throwing softballs and pissed off a lot of people who care about these things, affording Behe's discredited manure undue dignity.

[badhatharry]

Originally Posted by AemJeff

That's sort of cock-eyed, I think. Behe's ideas have suffered deeply under scrutiny - they fail on their own terms and have done so repeatedly, since he keeps repeating the same argument in a shifting context. He's a laughingstock whose ideas should have been subjected to withering skepticism by any serious interlocutor. McWhorter made a damned fool of himself throwing softballs and pissed off a lot of people who care about these things, affording Behe's discredited manure undue dignity.

See how repeated exposure works! I didn't ever watch Behe so I don't know what happened. But can't you just enjoy the spectacle, the human drama of it all? I used to watch Jimmy Swaggart for his entertainment value. And it's good to be aware of what's out there.

[AemJeff]

Originally Posted by badhatharry

See how repeated exposure works! I didn't ever watch Behe so I don't know what happened. But can't you just enjoy the spectacle, the human drama of it all? I used to watch Jimmy Swaggart for his entertainment value. And it's good to be aware of what's out there.

I don't think so. Behe and his like serve to decrease the signal to noise ratio and make the markerplace of ideas run a bit less efficiently. Once an idea has been convincingly discredited it's time to shut up about it. If you can't do that, then you've ceased to be doing science. That's ultimately what McWhorter's mistake was. (But not Behe's. It's hard to believe he doesn't understand that he's peddling nonsense.)

[badhatharry]

Originally Posted by AemJeff

I don't think so. Behe and his like serve to decrease the signal to noise ratio and make the markerplace of ideas run a bit less efficiently. Once an idea has been convincingly discredited it's time to shut up about it. If you can't do that, then you've ceased to be doing science. That's ultimately what McWhorter's mistake was. (But not Behe's. It's hard to believe he doesn't understand that he's peddling nonsense.)

Maybe McWhorter didn't know enough to push back about what Behe was saying. Maybe McWhorter was inspired to learn more based on that experience.
I don't think the marketplace of ideas runs less efficiently because of false beliefs but maybe you can explain to me why you think it does.

[AemJeff]

Originally Posted by badhatharry

Maybe McWhorter didn't know enough to push back about what Behe was saying. Maybe McWhorter was inspired to learn more based on that experience.
I don't think the marketplace of ideas runs less efficiently because of false beliefs but maybe you can explain to me why you think it does.

I think I did explain why. Once an idea has been shown to be false (and ID has been refuted thoroughly) it's time to put it aside and make room for other ideas. That's why we don't talk about the "aether" anymore or allow people to file patents on perpetual motion machines. There's essentially finite room in the public space. Fighting off attempts to insert ID into school curricula, or provimg that it's based on fallacies - again and again - means wasting enrgy and time that can be fruitfully used on other more salient issues.

[tom]

Originally Posted by badhatharry

This thing all started when I replied to a post calling out the litany of Obama missteps with the sarcastic comment that to my knowledge he believes in evolution. This was meant to convey what I think is the ridiculous idea that whether or not you believe in evolution is some measure of the man.

I don't think anyone meant to suggest that belief in evolution is a safeguard against poor judgement, or even that denial of scientific fact necessarily leads to poor judgement in other matters. Instead, denial of science is an indication that someone's judgement is more likely to be immune to evidence and factual correction, and at times (Perry being a perfect example here) of a predisposition to view the opposition in conspiratorial terms.

Originally Posted by badhatharry

Climategate is not manufactured. Those emails were sent but the incident has certainly been used for political purposes.

I don't believe that the emails were faked. I believe that the whole "scandal" consisted of sifting through a decade or more of hacked emails to find examples of sentence fragments that, when taken out of context, appear to mean something very different from what they meant in their original context, followed by right wing propaganda outlets like Fox reading the same few tiny resulting soundbites - freshly cherry picked from the enormous document dump, and even then with their meanings deliberately changed - hundreds of times on the air and then telling their audience that the previous decade or more of peddling politicized junk science is thereby vindicated, and the hard work of an entire field of actual science is thereby debunked. The kind of thing that can only even seem true in an information cocoon where 99.999% of real information is filtered out and a spotlight is put on the .001% of information that, when appropriately misconstrued, supports their narrative.

Here is a video that does an excellent job of substantiating that position by looking at the actual examples touted by right wing media as proof of fraud.

Originally Posted by badhatharry

I doubt Perry knows much about climate science and I also doubt that most people who have a 'side' in the controversy know much about climate science either. People are passionate about something they have little grasp of. This is typical of the way we as a society operate.

I agree that it is typical. And I can't blame the average person for lacking the interest to become informed about scientific issues. But it's unfortunate when people develop strong opinions and then vote based not just on lack of information, but on deliberate campaigns of misinformation. And it is a completely different kind of problem when someone who is trying to convince us he should be president openly rejects the evidence and accuses scientists of being involved in a conspiracy in front of millions of people in a formal debate.

Originally Posted by badhatharry

As I said, I don't know the ID line. Are they saying that the things they are finding are supernatural? Or are they simply saying there are alternate explanations for certain phenomenon?

The idea of "irreducible complexity" is that certain biological systems are too complex to be the result of natural selection and therefore must have been designed. This entails an extremely high burden of proof, and almost no one with any expertise in the field thinks that people like Behe have successfully met that burden (or come anywhere near it).
But to keep this relevant to our earlier thread: even if Behe was successful, the strongest scientific claim he could make is that at least some biological systems did not arise from natural selection. A reasonable conclusion would be that the science warrants a higher probability for the notion that a supernatural designer played a role, but that last part would not be "science", strictly speaking. It would be a sort of philosophical or speculative interpretation of the scientific evidence.

Originally Posted by badhatharry

My imagination doesn't work that way. When you say an earth identical to ours for me it is impossible to admit the existence of an earth identical to ours without it having gone through the same process to get to be identical to ours.

I didn't mean for it to be something difficult or even that counter-intuitive. When I say "identical", I don't mean "having an identical history", just "every single molecule is in the same exact place, moving in the exact same way". Surely God, hypothetically, could create an exact replica of Earth as it exists at this moment in some parallel universe. New-Earth would lack our history, but no one (other than a hypothetical omniscient being) could tell the difference between the two.

[badhatharry]

Originally Posted by AemJeff

I think I did explain why. Once an idea has been shown to be false (and ID has been refuted thoroughly) it's time to put it aside and make room for other ideas. That's why we don't talk about the "aether" anymore or allow people to file patents on perpetual motion machines. There's essentially finite room in the public space. Fighting off attempts to insert ID into school curricula, or provimg that it's based on fallacies - again and again - means wasting enrgy and time that can be fruitfully used on other more salient issues.

Is anyone standing in the way of you putting these refuted ideas aside? I don't see finite room in the public space but I do see that bad ideas generally fall away and fall into disrepute just on their own after time. I think people spending time fighting off things like inserting ID into school curricula is time well spent. People get off their couches and participate in the public space defending positions they believe in. They organize. They meet like minded people. They test their mettle and improve their knowledge about the things they are passionate about.

[Sulla the Dictator]

Originally Posted by miceelf

YOu realize you were responding to carkrueger, right?

I wasn't calling him a member of the left. I'm just saying that kind of defeatism is a meme put out by the left every time. I don't remember any election in my lifetime where the campaign from the Democrats was, "My opponent is a moderate, well tempered respectable sane person. But you should vote for me because I'm slightly better."

It is always a rabid loon the Democrats claim they are combating.

[Sulla the Dictator]

Originally Posted by Don Zeko

So you don't think those Social Security comments will be a touch embarrassing come next November?

I think that his comments on Social Security are true. I don't care about what the elites think should be embarrassing. I am not interested in "winning", I am interested in Restoration.

[sugarkang]

Originally Posted by Sulla the Dictator

I am not interested in "winning", I am interested in Restoration.

Me too. I'm partial to that Hunstman guy who has no chance. Can you tell me why Republicans don't like him? He seems like a bona fide fiscal conservative, unlike Romney. He also seems to speak honestly without giving off a crony capitalist vibe the way Perry does.

So, why do people dislike him? Is it because he isn't representing the right's anger enough? Or is it because they see Huntsman as another fake like Romney?

[Sulla the Dictator]

Originally Posted by sugarkang

Me too. I'm partial to that Hunstman guy who has no chance. Can you tell me why Republicans don't like him? He seems like a bona fide fiscal conservative, unlike Romney. He also seems to speak honestly without giving off a crony capitalist vibe the way Perry does.

So, why do people dislike him? Is it because he isn't representing the right's anger enough? Or is it because they see Huntsman as another fake like Romney?

Hmmm....the one big, legitimate policy reason is his support for Cap and Trade. The others are for smaller, more symbolic stuff. His work and early praise for the Obama administration, combined with that cap and trade support, gives the odor of a Romney like opportunist. Romney has shown a remarkable....flexibility...with his positioning on issues, and Huntsman has shown a similar flexibility, though not as bad.

Then there is this tendency he has to join in with the media in insulting the Republican base. It is no great thing to disagree with the GOP base. It is VERY problematic if you join their enemies in insulting them. His global warming jab was a big mistake. You notice that Huntsman, like Perry, is a "moderate" (Though I would actually say left of center) on the issue of immigration, and no one is annoyed by that with either candidate. Because they are sincere, and the positions don't help them politically.

But his MSNBC like commentary on the GOP base regarding global warming and evolution were insulting. And his campaign manager went even farther than he did; and he hasn't walked it back. I'd say the damage is done; I can't see him getting any traction as the media's favorite Republican. He doesn't seem interested in strong attacks against the President or the Democrats, and with the advantage the party has in this election, it is possible to press the attack on a wide front of issues and secure a legitimate mandate in the election.

Ezra Klein also had an article which I am a little skeptical about, but prophetic if true. He suggests that the next President is likely to have a natural, cyclical economic rebound, and the party of that President could possibly enjoy a New Deal Democrat type political dominance for twenty years. Big stakes, it could allow the completion of the Goldwater-Reagan project and a recapturing of the American bureaucracy, where the true power of the state lies.

[sugarkang]

Originally Posted by Sulla the Dictator

Then there is this tendency he has to join in with the media in insulting the Republican base. It is no great thing to disagree with the GOP base. It is VERY problematic if you join their enemies in insulting them. His global warming jab was a big mistake.

Was he really insulting? I only know that he said something to the effect of the GOP not having a future by being anti-science. Did he say anything a lot worse?

But his MSNBC like commentary on the GOP base regarding global warming and evolution were insulting. And his campaign manager went even farther than he did; and he hasn't walked it back.

Do you have some links? I've been MIA somewhat for the last week or two.

He doesn't seem interested in strong attacks against the President or the Democrats, and with the advantage the party has in this election, it is possible to press the attack on a wide front of issues and secure a legitimate mandate in the election.

Does his non-attack of the President create suspicion about him? Since he was asked by the President to serve as ambassador, wouldn't harsh rhetoric against the President make him disloyal? I think he's sorta stuck on this one.

Ezra Klein also had an article which I am a little skeptical about, but prophetic if true. He suggests that the next President is likely to have a natural, cyclical economic rebound, and the party of that President could possibly enjoy a New Deal Democrat type political dominance for twenty years.

I don't see this happening at all. The country has never been this divided. We are divided culturally, not politically.

Ezra's great with micro, but not with macro. He knows the exact nuts and bolts about everyone and everything in Congress, but that's about it. He hasn't been prescient about anything larger than his city. He said that ObamaCare would poll better after they jammed it through. As it stands, it's possible that ObamaCare could be completely neutralized before it goes into effect. The progressives' greatest achievement could be completely undone and that historic effort could be a big reason that Obama loses next year.

[badhatharry]

Originally Posted by tom

I don't think anyone meant to suggest that belief in evolution is a safeguard against poor judgement, or even that denial of scientific fact necessarily leads to poor judgement in other matters. Instead, denial of science is an indication that someone's judgement is more likely to be immune to evidence and factual correction, and at times (Perry being a perfect example here) of a predisposition to view the opposition in conspiratorial terms.

I just saw this and now I only have a little while before I need to leave. Bottom line is that the new meme is that Republicans don't believe in science. It's just short-hand and meaningless but it will probably stick in some's minds and that's all that matters I'm not buying the denial of scientific facts=poor judgement thing, but I have to go pretty soon and I'd love to read anything else you have on this. I just don't think anyone has all that much respect for science except for a nod at cocktail parties. (that may be a bit overstated )

I don't believe that the emails were faked. I believe that the whole "scandal" consisted of sifting through a decade or more of hacked emails to find examples of sentence fragments that, when taken out of context, appear to mean something very different from what they meant in their original context, followed by right wing propaganda outlets like Fox reading the same few tiny resulting soundbites - freshly cherry picked from the enormous document dump, and even then with their meanings deliberately changed - hundreds of times on the air and then telling their audience that the previous decade or more of peddling politicized junk science is thereby vindicated, and the hard work of an entire field of actual science is thereby debunked. The kind of thing that can only even seem true in an information cocoon where 99.999% of real information is filtered out and a spotlight is put on the .001% of information that, when appropriately misconstrued, supports their narrative.

I didn't realize there was a decade of emails. I need to look into that. The idea is that the data was tortured. They thought it was fine to hide the decline and not inform anyone that they did so .That calls into question pretty much all of their work product. People will tell you 'everybody does this' and that it's not a problem. But that's just them saying that. Plenty of people have a problem with it. The right wing media is just regurgitating. If you want the real story about anything you need to dig a little.

I agree that it is typical. And I can't blame the average person for lacking the interest to become informed about scientific issues. But it's unfortunate when people develop strong opinions and then vote based not just on lack of information, but on deliberate campaigns of misinformation. And it is a completely different kind of problem when someone who is trying to convince us he should be president openly rejects the evidence and accuses scientists of being involved in a conspiracy in front of millions of people in a formal debate.

I presume this is Perry you are talking about. He should have been more circumspect but I do believe this thing has got some people behind it who aren't either. Al Gore comes to mind.

The idea of "irreducible complexity" is that certain biological systems are too complex to be the result of natural selection and therefore must have been designed. This entails an extremely high burden of proof, and almost no one with any expertise in the field thinks that people like Behe have successfully met that burden (or come anywhere near it).
But to keep this relevant to our earlier thread: even if Behe was successful, the strongest scientific claim he could make is that at least some biological systems did not arise from natural selection. A reasonable conclusion would be that the science warrants a higher probability for the notion that a supernatural designer played a role, but that last part would not be "science", strictly speaking. It would be a sort of philosophical or speculative interpretation of the scientific evidence.

So is he saying it has to be God?

I didn't mean for it to be something difficult or even that counter-intuitive. When I say "identical", I don't mean "having an identical history", just "every single molecule is in the same exact place, moving in the exact same way". Surely God, hypothetically, could create an exact replica of Earth as it exists at this moment in some parallel universe. New-Earth would lack our history, but no one (other than a hypothetical omniscient being) could tell the difference between the two.

Gotta think about this some more.

[stephanie]

Originally Posted by badhatharry

What sort of political talking points would those be? My point has always been, in a very non-political talking point sort of way, that everyone who believes in God is essentially in the same boat. Some of the details differ. You may believe in evolution while another person may believe that the earth began 6000 years ago but it's the same belief boat, in my estimation.

I was actually referring to people who think their portion of the belief boat is better than other portions and go to great lengths trying to distinguish themselves from their shipmates.

It's not about being better. It's about the implications of the argument. It's also, of course, true that the direction of the attacks tend to be the other way around.

I don't really think people would care if others believed in creationism or ID or whatever if they weren't trying to teach those things in school and, related to that, claiming that acceptance of evolution, teaching evolution in school, is inherently anti-religious. This is obviously not true, and I think it's an idea that is encouraged by some on the right to try and create this false impression that there is a war on the religious by the left.

Related to this, and worrying to me, is the extent to which the attacks on evolution take the form of attacks on science itself or scientists -- it seems problematic to decide that scientists can't be trusted, that they are fundamentally trying to serve some negative cause. Obviously, I'm not saying scientists are always right.

Now, merely having a belief in a God who created the world does not implicate either of these problems.

I mentioned a while back that I was friends while growing up with a girl whose family (and religion, I assume) took the position that the evidence for evolution was planted by God to test our faith. As a result, they had no problem with her learning science and would not have been interested in the Behe type approach. I'm not actually sure if this kind of approach avoids what bothers me about creationism. It might, although it does seem to me a problematic approach to the world in general -- the idea that we can't trust the evidence, essentially, that we are being lied to. But this may really just be a theological argument, and not something relevant outside that realm. I am currently undecided.

[piscivorous]

Well that answer goes a long way in explaining why you feel the need to be taken care of by the nanny state.

[kezboard]

Do you think that athiests or enlightened Christians are better people than those who think that the earth started spinning six thousand years ago?

Uh, yes, in the sense that people who believe that God created the world 6,000 years ago are demonstrating either a massive inability to face facts that don't agree with their preconceived notions, or a seriously disturbing degree of ignorance, and neither of these things are nice traits in a human being.

[tom]

This is a slightly hurried reply, as well, but there are a few things i wanted to get to before I head out.

So is he saying it has to be God?

Behe refuses to comment on the nature of the "designer" he believes must be responsible for the "intelligent design". He just argues that the science shows that a designer is necessary; evolution could not possibly have produced certain mechanisms. A charitable interpretation is that he's sticking to the science and not relying on religious preconceptions. A cynical interpretation is that he's just thinly veiling the religious motives behind his junk science.
But the question of which interpretation is correct is probably not very interesting so long as Behe continues to lose the argument this badly on the scientific merits.

Originally Posted by badhatharry

I didn't realize there was a decade of emails. I need to look into that. The idea is that the data was tortured. They thought it was fine to hide the decline and not inform anyone that they did so .That calls into question pretty much all of their work product. People will tell you 'everybody does this' and that it's not a problem. But that's just them saying that. Plenty of people have a problem with it. The right wing media is just regurgitating. If you want the real story about anything you need to dig a little.

You've taken care to express modesty here and disclaim any close knowledge of this subject, so this is in no way a personal attack, but your stated beliefs here are a perfect example of what I claimed the right wing propaganda effort has done on this issue. What you wrote is wrong on a few levels, so I need to unpack it a bit.

The quote you refer to - "hide the decline" - is one of several soundbites that in play when right wing media outlets, as I put it earlier:

...find examples of sentence fragments that, when taken out of context, appear to mean something very different from what they meant in their original context (then read) ...the same few tiny resulting soundbites - freshly cherry picked from the enormous document dump, and even then with their meanings deliberately changed - hundreds of times on the air and then (claim that) ...the hard work of an entire field of actual science is thereby debunked.

Your beliefs about this soundbite, and the conclusion you draw about the whole of climate science, could not have illustrated my claim more perfectly.

The phrase "hide the decline" does not refer to a decline in temperatures. We already know the temperatures for the period in question (1960 on; they're not talking about hundreds or thousands of years ago); they're a matter of clear, uncontroversial record.

Instead, they're discussing tree ring growth, which normally tracks directly on to temperature changes. However, in certain high-latitude areas, the tree ring data diverges from what we know to be the real temperatures over just the past few decades. So it falls to scientists to understand why that is the case: why does the tree-ring data in a few places, considered in isolation, show us a decline in temperatures during a period that we know saw an actual temperature increase? This is not something that thousands of climate scientists have labored to keep secret. It is a well known, openly discussed issue called the Divergence Problem.
When a scientist has a candidate explanation for what is causing the false appearance of decline in tree ring data, he will plug that variable into a model and see if the result properly compensates for the discrepancy. This is what the climate scientist was discussing when he said that he was able to "hide the decline": if you can properly hide the apparent (but false) decline in tree-ring temperature reconstruction so that it matches actual recorded temperatures, you've got a potential candidate for what's causing the divergence in your models.

I would just further note that the talk of "hiding the decline" was not something that finally "came out" when these emails were hacked. This is something scientists discuss openly in papers, lectures, symposiums, etc. available to everyone. If they're attempting to secretly conspire, they've got a very odd way of going about it.

So: this was presented to you by whatever media source as though the hackers had uncovered secret evidence of climate scientists attempting to falsify the record of actual temperature trends. All three bits that I italicized there are false.

This further created in you a (perfectly reasonable, once you accept the false premises) belief that none of the work done by climate scientists is really trustworthy: even legitimate work is tarred by this conspiracy, and everything they produce must be viewed with skepticism. I won't speculate on your media sources, but I will say that this incorrect belief of yours was the intended political outcome of Alex Jones, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Fox News (both "news" and opinion), and countless websites.

The idea that, as you put it

"The right wing media is just regurgitating."

is wrong. They are creating an alternative reality, and they are doing it on purpose. It would have taken about 15 minutes for any of them to completely debunk the narrative that the right wing media pushed for months: just read the relevant passages in the hacked emails and check what they actually said, and then maybe check Wikipedia to learn if the Divergence Problem was a real phenomenon discussed openly in venues accessible to the public. (There's no way that multibillion dollar media conglomerates with tens of millions of viewers didn't do this. But the easily discernible truth didn't fit their politically and financially remunerative narrative.)

I would reiterate my recommendation to check out this video for a quick overview of some of the other soundbites that have been handled in the same way by right wing outlets.

Look again over my explanation and contrast it with the stated beliefs that you took away from their coverage of this phony "scandal", and you'll see why I think the right wing media is a disgusting propaganda machine (for the record, I make the same criticism of some lefties, though I don't think the problem is as severe, or systemic in the same way), and why I would call the movement surrounding it "anti-science".

[uncle ebeneezer]

Sorry to pile one but: if the young earthers in this hypothetical are content to hold their beliefs personally, than I see no problem with them. However, as soon as they try to indoctrinate their children and influence school curricula, then yes, they are crossing the line. The problem is that for all the "to each their own" verbiage that ID/Creationists love to spout, they don't want to sit idly by and let science education proceed. They want to muddy the educational waters at every turn.

It's like believing in angels. Alot of people do. It's ridiculous. But nobody is demanding that it be taught to children in science or history classes, so I could care less. The problem is, with ID/Creationism, the goal IS to get them into the classrooms. As we have seen time and time again.

[badhatharry]

Quoting Tom: You've taken care to express modesty here and disclaim any close knowledge of this subject, so this is in no way a personal attack, but your stated beliefs here are a perfect example of what I claimed the right wing propaganda effort has done on this issue. What you wrote is wrong on a few levels, so I need to unpack it a bit.

You're taking quite a bit of liberty with what I said. It was that I didn't know that there were ten years of emails. I actually have read quite a bit about this.

The quote you refer to - "hide the decline" - is one of several soundbites that in play when right wing media outlets, as I put it earlier:
Your beliefs about this soundbite, and the conclusion you draw about the whole of climate science, could not have illustrated my claim more perfectly.

Um, It was Phil Jones, Mann's cohort, who coined the phrase, not FOX News. They report, you decide.

Proffesor Robert Muller (as well as a host of other scientists) were not so understanding as you apparently are. I don't think he got anything from Fox News. If you watch the video, he was aghast that they didn't reveal their methods. Sounds reasonable to me. Although I haven't been keeping up with his project, he has vowed to rerun the numbers. I'll have to look into his progress.

The phrase "hide the decline" does not refer to a decline in temperatures. We already know the temperatures for the period in question (1960 on; they're not talking about hundreds or thousands of years ago); they're a matter of clear, uncontroversial record.

Based on their models and proxy data they got from tree rings, etc as you say below...they tortured the data until it said what they wanted it to say. They relied on the tree ring data up until the point that it didn't match up with observable data. They kept what could have been inaccurate data from tree rings because they liked what it said until a certain point and then hid the decline it showed...ooops. What about the absence of the medieval warming period which shows current temperatures to be lower or the little ice age which anticipates the current warming trend? Why don't they appear in Mann's models? A skeptic might think he didn't want to show that these events occurred...or not, I don't really know.

When a scientist has a candidate explanation for what is causing the false appearance of decline in tree ring data, he will plug that variable into a model and see if the result properly compensates for the discrepancy. This is what the climate scientist was discussing when he said that he was able to "hide the decline": if you can properly hide the apparent (but false) decline in tree-ring temperature reconstruction so that it matches actual recorded temperatures, you've got a potential candidate for what's causing the divergence in your models.

key words, potential candidate. Again, why not submit all of your findings?...along with your plugged in data and make the explanation upfront?

I would just further note that the talk of "hiding the decline" was not something that finally "came out" when these emails were hacked. This is something scientists discuss openly in papers, lectures, symposiums, etc. available to everyone. If they're attempting to secretly conspire, they've got a very odd way of going about it.

From what I know it didn't come out until the emails were hacked. Links? It's been a long time since I read about all of this, so I'll have to refresh my memory. Suffice it to say, Muller was not amused nor did he think what they did was appropriate.

This further created in you a (perfectly reasonable, once you accept the false premises) belief that none of the work done by climate scientists is really trustworthy: even legitimate work is tarred by this conspiracy, and everything they produce must be viewed with skepticism. I won't speculate on your media sources, but I will say that this incorrect belief of yours was the intended political outcome of Alex Jones, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Fox News (both "news" and opinion), and countless websites.

I don't have the energy or the inclination to try to correct your impression of me. I understand that there are many who accept all the findings of all the climate scientists who agree with the IPCC and think that anyone who questions is a complete idiot who rejects science. When I get the chance I'll watch the video to see if it is a fair representation of the skeptic community, and by that I'm not talking about FOX news and Alex Jones. I doubt that it is. This whole thing has become ultra political.

PS. The main thing about all of this is trust. Few of us know what the models even say, much less whether they have been done with the utmost integrity. Now we have to trust what scientists are saying about climate sensitivity/forcings and that sensitivity magnifies the effects of CO2 in the atmosphere to a very certain(uncertain)extent.Then we must trust their predictions of the catastrophic consequences. That's asking for a lot of trust, so when Mann decides he wants to use so and so's 'trick' he's fooling around with people's trust to cover his ass. One of the posters here has submitted some predictions about how global warming will affect GDP in 2100. We can't say for sure what the economy is going to do next week. But we call this science? I call it chutzpah.

Why should we believe any of this when all of it depends on hypotheses and models and whether the input to these models is authentic? I would refer you to one of the reputable scientists who is improperly labeled a denier.
Judith Curry.She is working valiantly to address the credibility gap which was caused by the hockey stick drama and people like our old friend Al Gore (no more polar bears) and company. Hopefully science and integrity will win out.

[Starwatcher162536]

Originally Posted by tom

When a scientist has a candidate explanation for what is causing the false appearance of decline in tree ring data, he will plug that variable into a model and see if the result properly compensates for the discrepancy. This is what the climate scientist was discussing when he said that he was able to "hide the decline": if you can properly hide the apparent (but false) decline in tree-ring temperature reconstruction so that it matches actual recorded temperatures, you've got a potential candidate for what's causing the divergence in your models.

I agree with everything in your post with the exception of the above. That wasn't what was going on. There was a 17 page summary report commissioned by the WMO that was where this "hide the decline" thing happened. This was intended for non-specialists. Normally the instrumental readings are overlaid whatever proxies measurements are used and both are correspondingly labeled. This makes the divergence problem clear and the decision was made to combine the two readings in such a way that hides the divergence problem. As you note it this is a well known problem and it was only hid for this one report. When doing a 20 page report many things will have to be left out. Whether or not this is something that should have been is of course subjective. To claim it is a conspiracy or the decision contains any malfeasance strikes me as ridiculous. It's much like taking the view that teaching kinematics without air resistance to freshman is not a useful simplification to keep from overwhelming the students by showing them everything at once but instead a conspiracy.

I can see though how someone who for whatever reason feels uncertainties aren't being communicated enough would disagree with this decision. Of course this isn't what was being peddled by the right wing media as if people actually understood the real issue then they would rightfully not care about what happened in this one report no one ever heard of before climategate.