No, I don’t think you were being abrasive, and no, I’m not excusing anyone from critical thinking. I’m just saying you can equally blame all people for the same failing. But you seem to be going out of your way to point the finger at LDS who do the same thing that everyone does.

Are we guilty? Of course. We’re human. Are we any worse than others? I really don’t think so. Not after all the people I’ve met from many different walks of life. The things people state as fact!!! Ugh.

As for the comment about the Church NOT going out of their way to PROMOTE critical thinking is interesting. I’m not sure. Sometimes I feel stimulated intellectually as well as emotionally and spiritually by some talks I hear in General Conference. Ditto for things I hear in church talks, lessons, testimony meetings. (And please don’t “do testimonies” again. I find fast-and-testimony meetings annoying enough as it is. No need to parody it). Obviously there are times I don’t.

When I gave lessons in various levels I found out I did things that others did not. I read the manual. I studied all the scriptures in the lesson. I cross-referenced with other scriptures. I asked myself the questions at the end of the chapter and held a debate with myself. Etc. Etc.

The interesting thing is — all those things (except for the self-debate) were items that were outlined in the manual. Those items do promote critical thinking. And people would often tell me how much they got out of my lessons (pat myself on the back).

The leaders of the Church put all these tools into the manuals. It was the deficiency on the part of the instructors who DON’T follow the manual that fails to promote critical thinking.

Faith. I believe we have different definitions of faith. In this context let us look at a belief system as the picture on the box of a large jigsaw puzzle. Gathering and organizing the pieces are like gathering evidence. Being able to see those areas of the picture (from the box) when we don’t actually have the piece in place–that ability is faith.

Faith in the generic sense is not just about some supernatural being. It is about being able to see what is missing and “visualize” (for lack of a better word) what should be there, even when we don’t have the piece in hand. We look for the piece. We have patience that in that massive pile, we can find it.

My sister had a malicious tendency to hide two or three pieces of the puzzle to the end so that she could be the one to finish the puzzle. I don’t know. She got some kind of thrill out of it. — just a side note.

And this is what evolutionists do. I count myself in that camp too. I can see that there should be additional species in between. And I await patiently where we can find some fossils to fill those gaps in eventually (we’ve already found many). But I also allow the possibility that there will be some areas that will not be filled in during my lifetime. Is this not some version of faith? Is my sister hiding those pieces too? :)

It is not “counterfactual” belief. It is faith in the not yet discovered. I readily accept that the CURRENT fossil record does not show horses here during the time of the BoM. But it is a lot harder to swallow that we will NEVER find such evidence.

PROOF/TESTS:

I have had numerous discussions with the local atheist of my office. He sounds an awful lot like Eyore. So, that’s his nickname. His primary reason for not believing in God or any religious system is that it isn’t testable. He holds that there is a difference between “testable” and “proveable”.

Technically he’s right. But the end result is the same. We hold tests to hopefully prove or disprove something.

While I believe in the scientific method for much of human knowledge, I have two problems here.

1) The testability of something is limited by our current understanding and technology. Imagine cavemen trying to test whether electons and protons were oppositely charged particles. First why would it even occur to them? Second, how are they even going to be able to perform any kind of test?
2) It is the rare test indeed (nowadays) that provides data that no reasonable, informed person could not refute wth some reason why the test was flawed. And we are now at the level of human knowledge where we are aware of so MANY variables that it is really impossible to isolate things to truly test for those items without recognizing that there were many variables we simple could not account for or preclude from the experiment.

Is it not possible that the things of God are so advanced and complicated that they are simply beyond our current ability and understanding to perceive of the experiment? Is it not possible that His methods of proving things are different than OUR method of proving things?

Could it not be that His logic and critical thinking is different than ours?

One day we will discover that time and space are simpler than the Human Equation.

Instead, the two main characters, an atheist scientist, and a “new age pastor” were both held up as characters to be held in high esteem.

At the same time there were two supporting characters, an atheist politician, and a religious scientist who were both made out to be the bad guys.

Based on one of the last lines spoken by the pastor, I believe the movie’s point was that we all seek proof in our own way. We choose to be satisfied in our beliefs in our own way.

Often times, it is not the method of choosing the truth that is as important as the truth we choose.

MORMONS are particularly guilty of not looking at evidence that threatens their paradigm. Whatever mechanism you blame that on is your choice.

My examples show:

EVERYONE chooses to shelve (or entirely ignore in some cases) evidence that threatens their paradigm. Then they hold as HIGHER those evidences that support their paradigm. Everyone has their own mechanism by which they do this.

All my examples were of people who are NOT LDS. The only one that wasn’t was the BoM manual that showed we’re NOT guilty of the accusation.

It was not a matter of UPDATING information. For instance, the Book of Mormon manual updated just fine. And it essentially said,”we’ll keep looking”.

Instead each instance was a matter of resistance that ANY human being has to changing their paradigm. The gardener that KNEW nectarines were citrus. This was not an updating issue. It was complete resistance to changing his definitions. The same was true of the kid with the AC/DC.

Your selection of the fossil record is a good example. You find one fossil in the middle and one side declares now there are two gaps. The other side claims that is proof there are intermediate species. Who’s right? In my mind, they’re both right. Each side chooses that portion that supports their side and ignores the arguments of the other side.

Notice that I did not say (as you did) that there are NO intermediate fossil records. I said there are not SUFFICIENT. This is why I do believe in evolution to a point. As far as there is evidence, I believe in it.

You actually have more faith than I do.

I say,”If we have evidence of B, we’ll accept B as a truth for now and go with it. But we are still skeptical of A & C. We’ll keep looking and see what we find.

You say,”See here is evidence of B, therefore, A & C must also be true.” While this can be true a lot of the time. It is also false a lot of the time. That is why we do two things: 1) Remain skeptical & 2) Keep looking for further evidence and asking questions about what we find.

I’ll explain why I say it is not sufficient evidence. In order to truly see the change, we need to have dozens of subspiecies to go from one species to another. There are selected spieces that can successfully mate with others. But that is very rare.

The best man at my wedding and his wife were having trouble getting pregnant. They went to two fertility doctors who said there is nothing wrong with either of them. They went to a third who confirmed this, but decided to try all the tools in his toolbox for increasing their chances.

They got pregnant three times and miscarried each time. The doctor finally showed them an article from some fertility journal that said that humans actually have several subspecies that cannot successfully mate. Even though we all appear human in every obvious detail, this one issue is really the determining factor for defining species.

I didn’t get all the details. But what they were being told was essentially, these two were so far apart on the genetic spectrum that they couldn’t have a baby. They were both even of similar ancestry.

You can argue that the article was not thoroughly researched and was obviously lacking whatever . . . I don’t know. I didn’t read it myself. But we have two people who were healthy in every respect. They were both looked at by three fertility doctors who didn’t find anything wrong with their ability to procreate.

If humans have this much difficulty within their own species, how close to other species have to be in order to successfully mate? We can talk about Lucy or the archaeoptryx. But how close are they to their closest known species? Could they have successfully mated?

Resistance to change is both good and bad. It is the maintaining a healthy balance that enables mankind to progress while protecting ourselves from harm by the unknown.

If you haven’t seen Contact, I really think you would enjoy it. If you saw the context of the exerpt I refer to, you would see that your argument doesn’t really fit. I mean, I see what you’re saying and you have a pont. I just don’t think it would fit in that setting. It was that setting that I was trying to impress upon you. But you’d have to see the movie.

Now I’ll have to go read the book. Great. Thanks a lot (sarcasm intended).

I have a friend at work that is highly against modern medicine. He’s always talking about what they’re doing wrong.

As examples, he points out some things that German doctors refuse to do that American doctors do habitually. Then other times he finds support for his positions by looking at some report from an American doctor that German doctors have failings in.

My question to him was,”Why is it, when you find a doctor that disagrees with you, he’s a quack. But when you find a doctor that agrees with you, he obviously knows what he’s talking about?”

I went to a nursery and found one of the lead caretakers there. Remember he’s an expert in the field.

Me: Do you carry any species of nectarines?
Him: Citrus fruits won’t grow in Colorado.
Me: Nectarines aren’t citrus.
Him: Yes, they are.
Me: Do you know what citrus are?
Him: Yes, it’s my job. They’re warm weather fruits.
Me: No. (I then explained to him the definition of citrus).
Him: Yah, we don’t carry citrus.

Everyone does this when it is something they believe they know anything about. Science is no different.

There was a kid in college who somehow got the definition of AC and DC backwards as a kid. And this kid was pretty bright. By the time he was in college, he KNEW it as a fact. He was having trouble in physics class. His parents knew I was an engineer and asked me to help him.

When I explained to him what was wrong, he told me I was wrong. It didn’t matter what the textbooks said, he found some other way of interpreting things that would support his paradigm. Even though he considered me an authority, he still didn’t accept my explanation.

It took me a month of two hours a week with him to get him to change his understanding.

You think that believeing we’re the only true Church makes us more stubborn in our beliefs? That may be true of religion. But for me and many I know, it instead says we only know truth because of revelation. Most of the time revelation only comes about religious things. Anything else — you’re on your own (usually).

Of course there is always individual guidance. But there is NO reason to believe that because you’ve had some individual guidance, you should then project that on others.

Many times (even on this blog) people have either openly stated or hinted that they’ve received personal revelation that X is true. Thus everyone should believe it as well. My response in each case has been:

1) I find this to be true as well. Yey us!

2) I have received no such revelation for me. So let your peace be yours. But I’ll keep looking for mine.

Please don’t go off on another tangent regarding personal revelation. I think we’ve jacked this thread enough already.

I think it’s a relatively trivial and uncontroversial assertion that the LDS Church (to put it mildly) does not go out of its way to promote critical thinking. I have mentioned a very specific example of a meme which is explicitly promoted in the LDS Church, with an explanation of how that meme might play out in other areas. In response, you have asserted:

1) that the LDS Church is not responsible for the promotion of this meme, and instead that it represents a human cognitive failing.

A human cognitive failing it may be, but one that the Mormon Church benefits from, and expressly teaches. What’s wrong with calling this spade a spade? It doesn’t mean you can’t be a very good Mormon and reasoner. Just be aware that this meme helps you feel good about ignoring scientific consensus, which is a good tool for finding good answers. If you didn’t pick up that meme in church, that’s fine. As my Mom might have said, I don’t care where you got that thing, just don’t bring it in the house!

2) that other people besides Latter-day Saints have trouble with critical thinking.

Of course they do, but what of that? If non-Mormons are rotten critical thinkers (and they are), it doesn’t give Mormons (or anyone else) an excuse to cling to bad memes.

It is interesting that they decided to include the discussion about horses in the Book of Mormon manual. But a Latter-day Saint who knows about the lack of evidence, and then keeps believing that there actually were horses in America then, hoping that someday they find fossils is doing the wrong thing. You don’t cling to a counterfactual belief, hoping that someone will find evidence for it someday. That’s like a Scientologist sticking with their belief that Xenu really did blow all those thetans up with hydrogen bombs, and then waiting for someone to find radioactive traces near volcanoes (or something). Or a fundamentalist Hindu who believes that Sanskrit has existed in its current state for a million years, ignoring linguists who talk about sound change and Proto-Indo-European, figuring that someday those linguists will discover what they already ‘know’. It’s just a way to hold on to a comforting religious belief. I don’t blame anyone for doing it, because I guess people need to feel comfortable. But I think there’s value in knowing what’s really going on even if it’s a bit abrasive, and I don’t really see self-deception as helpful.

As to evolution, I think your discussion of it is not quite correct. No one needs to have faith in evolution. I don’t have faith that evolution is true, and I don’t even particularly hope it’s true. Evolutionary biologists do not get together every month and say, “I would indeed feel ungrateful if I didn’t stand here before you today and tell you… that I know… that the theory of evolution is true. I just know it.” If something else explains the complexity of life on earth better, and conforms to the facts better, fine. I’ll go with that. Scientists will happily rewrite the books.

As it turns out, though, Darwinian Evolution is a theory that’s backed up by mountains of physical evidence. As to the example you mention, you may be interested to know that there’s no lack of intermediate fossils in the fossil record. Creationists like to claim that there are huge gaps, and then when someone finds a fossil that fits right in the middle of the gap, they say, “Well, now there’s two gaps.”

I suppose it is fitting, however, that you’ve mentioned evolution, because both climate change deniers and evolution deniers (and 9/11 truthers and holocaust deniers*) use precisely the same tactic: search for any ambiguity or uncertainty in the theory, and then claim that these gaps represent a victory for their side.

I never saw Contact. If the fictional atheist ‘just knew’, she wasn’t doing science. We don’t ‘just know’ things. They need to be confirmed by evidence, and if we don’t have it, we don’t believe it. Anything else is wishful thinking.

* Not to say that these are all equally bad.

Again, I think you are pointing at a fault in members of the Church and failing to recognize that it is not just the Church. It is a HUMAN failing. Think about it. Of all the people you’ve met personally, how many of them really practice critical thinking? In my experience, staggeringly few (and I work in a field where it is a REQUIREMENT). Now in the Church, how many? Staggeringly few. I don’t think it has anything to do with the Church. EVERYONE does this. It is merely YOUR projection that blames this on the Church.

Whatever the specific mechanism (like the wicked world) every group or individual has SOMETHING that excuses critical thinking. Don’t just blame the Church. Blame humanity. This is my point.

As an example of where we do NOT state a fact is merely a distortion by the wicked world: The student manual for the Book of Mormon states that archaeological evidence has shown no horses in the Americas during the time of the Book of Mormon. Yet the BoM talks about horses being in use. The manual acknowledges it as a fact (that nothing has been found yet). But it also says there must be an explanation. We just haven’t found it YET. Does it mean we can forget it? No, but we have patience and we keep looking and keep asking questions.

This sounds very much like how the lack of SUFFICIENT intermediate species in the fossil record does not detract from your (and my) belief in evolution. It just means we either haven’t found them yet, or there is some reasonable explanation. We just haven’t come across it yet. We actually have FAITH in evolution. That it will eventually vindicate itself. We keep looking and we keep asking questions. Our belief in things that we DO know supports us through those things we DON”T know.

Back to your point. I’ve given you an instances where a FACT would be detrimental to our beliefs (one in theology, one in atheism). Yet, we acknowledge it as FACT. And our faith is not threatened by it.

Yes, I’ve seen many Evangelical Christians and atheists do the same thing.

NOW, here is WHY humans do this.

1) Everyone has multiple elements of their belief system. If not, they are generally considered a simpleton. Often these elements come in conflict.

2) There is SO MUCH to human knowledge that we simply don’t have sufficient time to learn everything about everything that WE ourselves believe in, let alone what others believe in.

3) There will always be things in our beliefs that are dangling threads. For every why there is a because and every because creates another why. There is NEVER a simple end to a complex idea.

It is the blind men and the elephant. I believe in the leg. I believe in the ears. But if I don’t even know about the body how can I reconcile these two beliefs? I can’t.

To truly answer all the questions you really need to know everything. Obviously, this is impossible. So, we satisfy ourselves with patience and (gasp) faith.

Consider the trial at the end of the movie “Contact”. Even the atheist had to admit she simply didn’t have evidence for or even a logical way of explaining things to others. She simply knew it. In essence, she had faith. Only LATER was the omnicient audience privy to the bit of evidence that was required to back up her faith. But she herself went on in faith alone.

About the church thing: no, I don’t think that religious people are stupid. I certainly wasn’t when I was religious (at least, no more than now). It’s just that religious belief systems promote memes that are antithetical to critical thinking. Let me explain.

Scientific consensus is often a useful shortcut to finding good answers to big questions. That’s because more heads are better than fewer, and no one has the time to replicate all the findings in the world all by themselves.

But in Mormondom (and possibly other religions), scientific consensus doesn’t matter much. That’s because of a meme in Mormonism that I call the ‘Wicked World’ meme. As a Mormon, you’re basically one of a tiny minority among the world’s believers, but the ‘Only True Church’ meme tells you you’re right and they all aren’t (or, in more charitable moments, they are less right). How can that be? Well, the world has gone astray. So the ‘Wicked World’ meme helps you feel okay about that minority status.

Unfortunately, once the ‘Wicked World’ meme takes hold in someone’s mind, it tends to bleed over into non-religious areas, as we see all over this blog. Why isn’t everyone a constitutional conservative? Why do scientists not think the same things I do? The wicked world. Everyone is wrong (or ‘less-right’) except us.

And so, with scientific consensus safely neutralised, you can believe what you like, perhaps even take on the role of ‘fearful and persecuted minority’, if you like. Not that you would, of course.

Mind you, it is possible for you to be right and everyone else wrong, but it is staggeringly unlikely.

This does not malign church members. It merely shows how a meme can create a blind spot. I get them all the time. Take it for what it’s worth.

“Scientists want to kill us”

I never said anything of the kind. I DID say that there were environmentalists in the UK who have stated publicly that the population of the UK needs to cut its population in half.

A quote:

Rapley, who formerly ran the British Antarctic Survey, said humanity was emitting the equivalent of 50 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere each year.

“We have to cut this by 80%, and population growth is going to make that much harder,” he said.

Such views on population have split the green movement. George Monbiot, a prominent writer on green issues, has criticised population campaigners, arguing that “relentless” economic growth is a greater threat.

Many experts believe that, since Europeans and Americans have such a lopsided impact on the environment, the world would benefit more from reducing their populations than by making cuts in developing countries.

This is part of the thinking behind the OPT’s call for Britain to cut population to 30m — roughly what it was in late Victorian times.

Christopher Rapley is the director of the UK’s science museum and a former head of the British Antarctic Survey, hardly a man on the fringe.

Here is a report by the Optimum Population Trust, a think tank in the UK that is specifically organized to study population’s effect on environmental issues, that has begun a “Stop at Two” campaign, which introduces a pledge for couples to take to limit their families to two or fewer children.

I was merely making the point that CO2 regulation can lead to a situation in which policies that are politically untenable right now, would be accepted, even demanded.

Perhaps the euthanasia example may have gone a little further out there, but remember, I specifically said I was using my imagination. The world as I see it could realistically stoop to such a level as to refuse to waste precious resources on the seriously ill. The term “useless eater” comes to mind. Cutting population for the purpose of reducing CO2, would be a convenient excuse for a despot to use. Why not?

To clarify, it is the politicians I am concerned about, not the scientists.

Re: your comment about “community”. This is actually one reason why I frequent this blog a lot more than others. There are enough individuals with differing opinions to make for lively discussion.

I especially appreciate that there are not clearly drawn lines every time (e.g. — Everybody against Daniel-although it may seem like it sometimes) :).

Other blogs I visit from time to time have so many people talking over each other, it is difficult to even have much of a discussion. Or there are so few people who are infrequent visitors, that you don’t really get to know them or you don’t have much of a discussion.

Over the year or two? that I’ve been coming here I’ve felt like I’ve gotten to know most of the common visitors. I like most everyone on a personal level whether we’re on a topic we agree or disagree on.

You can’t agree on everything. And I believe I’ve switched sides enough to know what it feels like to be on both the attacking and receiving end of lots of the more heated issues. But that is what makes blogging fun.

On more than one occasion I’ve been shown the obvious folly of some of my arguments. Of course it didn’t feel good. No one likes a blow to their ego. But in the end one has to admit when another makes a good point. At least we’re learning.

Yes, I second your characterization of this blog as a community. And kudos to Connor.

1) It looks like we agree in principle, just not in application. We agree that pointing out what has not been gone over is welcome. What we disagree on is recognizing when something is truly new.

Also, as a layman, I have to stick my nose into things when what others believe to be true starts to interfere with my every day life. If any expert is going to state something that will cause me to make lots of changes, it had better be pretty concrete. So far, I’m not getting that about global warming.

2) Just a little different focus. It is not just the scientific community at play here. Many scientists are genuinely listening to alternative points of view. They are real scientist. Unfortunately politicians and the media have overrun their otherwise more scientific methods and replaced it with science by mandate rather than science by consensus through scientific method. It is this perverting of the scientific method by politicians and media that is in question here.

A good example is of pellagra. Dr. Joseph Goldberger did an extensive study to determine that the diet fed in the poor south lacked certain nutrients. At the time he couldn’t isolate the nutrient, but he did identify certain foods that would cure it. But because he showed the poor Southern diet was the culprit, the media twisted this otherwise good find and defamed him for criticizing the poor.

It took over 20 years to bring the truth back to light when Niacin was discovered as the missing nutrient. This, because the media had their own agenda and twisted the scientific method into a social commentary. Do you really believe the media to have learned anything since then? If anything I’ve learned that they’ve gotten worse.

3) I agree with this principle as well. But we only have one generation of scientists mostly controlled and muted by politicians and media. Around the time of the industrial revolution, we had global warming alarmism in the media backed up by some scientific research. It was getting warmer after all. The American people just didn’t accept it and it went away. In the 1970s global cooling was the consensus. We all thought we were going to lose all our heat. It went away–no one cared. Now we’re back to warming again. And I guarantee (as evidenced by the change in language to “climate change”) that it will go back to cooling again.

4) I will only partially agree with you on this one. I have met many contractors who never graduated high school (much less college) that could put engineers to shame with their knowledge of structures and construction especially. You’d probably agree that someone with years of experience in a field (in lieu of a piece of paper) would also qualify as an expert.

And the other side of the coin: In the past year I’ve met three engineers who got high marks from prestigious schools who couldn’t calculate the strength of a beam!!!

I’ve noticed a pattern (again go back to education these days) that people graduating from high school as well as Universities simply don’t get basic concepts in their chosen field. ACI (American Concrete Insititute) has said that they are reformatting their entire CODE because they have gotten too many complaints from students and recent graduates stating the code is “too complex to understand”. Come on people!!! We’re engineers. Codes are what we live by.

What. Are they going to do away with calculus for engineers now? How ’bout trig identities? That was something that gave ME headaches.

AND FINALLY: This is the third time (that I’m aware of ) that you’ve blamed your idea of a false premise, logic, or conclusion on being a member of the Church (three different articles on this site). With my usual cynicism, I could easily fall into that trap. But I don’t.

I recognize that pretty much ANY human being is stupid, ignorant, & unable to discern the difference between the three sides of every story. The joke I often repeat is,”We know how stupid the average person is. Now remember that half the people are stupider than that!”

Everyone is part of some group that is a minority. You should know what that’s like. Does that mean their entire zeitgeist is based on that identifier? For some, yes. For most, I sure hope not. And I don’t believe that is true of most of the people who frequent this site.

And no matter what group we are talking about or how stupid or ignorant an individual, almost EVERY one I’ve ever met has taught me something valuable about life and understanding my place in it.

Maybe you’ve answered my question without answering it. I take it you had these faults you now criticize while you were active in the Church? Now you blame others for the same faults?

Daniel, I don’t want to get into a pissing match over the Church’s truth or (in your opinion) lack thereof. I would just like to ask that if you have a disagreement, disagree with the argument or evidence, etc. Don’t just attack the character of the messenger–especially based on a person’s faith. I don’t recall anyone who has characterized any of your arguments because you were an atheist.

The guidelines from the article are good guidelines (not rules) because science is self-correcting in the long term. Many many scientists are always poring over the body of current knowledge, looking to overturn it.

This is why I reject loquaciousmomma’s claim that scientists are somehow in a conspiracy to ignore the facts because they need funding. If someone could demonstrate conclusively that anthropogenic climate change was a myth, they’d cause a revolution in the field. They’d be famous forever. And grant money would come pouring in. I don’t think scientists are these noble individuals with a thirst for truth, although some are. No, they stick to the facts because if they don’t, someone else will eat their lunch. That’s how it works.

Compare that to the other approach, where the goal is to protect the belief system (have faith in it, perhaps), and glom onto anything that helps the cause, no matter how tenuous or disingenuous.

Now maybe these so-called denialists (or ‘mavericks’ if you like) are right. If that’s the case, they’ll bring the evidence, others will confirm it, more scientists will come around, and their view will (long term) become the dominant paradigm. I think it’s good that smart people have other views — it shows that other views are not really being suppressed — but they’ve got some work to do.

Allow me to address your summaries.

1) If someone points out an argument that no one has brought up before, you should ignore them.

No — as I’ve said, we laymen are unlikely to come up with something that’s gone unnoticed by the vast majority of experts. Very little is new.

2) EVERYONE in the scientific community has ample opportunity to be heard and NEVER is dismissed.

Yes — fringe views do get aired, and one person can change the field. But there are a lot of cranks out there. It’s very common for people to claim a conspiracy when the consensus is against their view, but this is a weak response. It’s more often what they do when they can’t provide the evidence for their view.

3) Anyone who points out major holes in current theories should be discredited.

No — but generations of scientists are unlikely to have missed elementary flaws in the dominant paradigm. (This one is a bit of a repeat, isn’t it.)

4) If you’re not a papered, certified expert in the particular field at hand, you’re an idiot with regard to that field.

No, there’s lots of room for enthusiastic newcomers if they bring the facts — but people who have done the hard yards in that field are more likely to be right. As a linguist, I’ve already heard lots of the naïve mistakes that non-linguists make about language, so it would be fitting to listen to me or other linguists. And I’d best accept your expertise on matters of oil and gas engineering.

Can I just say that if Connor and others on this blog have one problem, it’s that they’re terrible at picking reliable sources. They just seem to pick the fringiest people as the most reliable, as long as those sources confirm what they already think. This is probably baggage from being in a minority religion (‘Through erring schemes in days now past, The world has gone astray’ etc.). I wish I could get this one thing across: The best approach we have to getting closest to the truth on an issue is to find the consensus from people working in that field. Over the long term, they’ll end up being the closest to the right answer. Of course, we live in the short term, so we need to realise that our current understanding may change. So we need to be ready to change and not be dogmatic about what we think we know. It’s hard.

If you truly believe in these four rules, why did you leave the Church?

Boy! Have you swallowed a big one.

Take a real hard look at those four principles again and use that cognitive brain you’re so proud of touting as the source of critical thinking. Do you honestly believe these are accurate guidelines?

Let me rephrase them into more plain English.

1) If someone points out an argument that no one has brought up before, you should ignore them.

2) EVERYONE in the scientific community has ample opportunity to be heard and NEVER is dismissed.

3) Anyone who points out major holes in current theories should be discredited.

4) If you’re not a papered, certified expert in the particular field at hand, you’re an idiot with regard to that field.

RESPONSES:

1) If they TRULY are new (and not just old ones that has been disproven so much that no one talks about them anymore) then they should be researched even if it comes out of the mouth of a three year old. The test should be whether we’ve already looked at this question or not.

2) While I agree that the scientific community tends to listen to reasonable arguments, when politicians and corporations run the show, it is quite a different story.

When the IPCC report first came out, every major news outlet was stating that we now KNOW that man is the culprit behind the HUGE crisis of global warming.

My first reaction (remember, I’m somewhat on or near the fence on this) was,”OK. So, now we know. HOW or WHY?” It took me several days to find out that NO ONE was asking this question–even skeptics.

Skeptics just came out with the same old arguments. But they didn’t really need new ones. As I later found out, there were no new arguments by the alarmists.

There WAS NO WHY OR HOW. They simply got a big report together that stated that there are still a lot of unanswered questions. But the politicians came up with an executive summary that didn’t even match the paper itself.

The media, not daring to question the politicians on a subject the media was well prepared to use for their own agendas, perpetuated the statement.

When the issue at hand fundamentally divides the population (like evolution or global warming) even scientists tend to dismiss things on an emotional basis rather than a logical one.

3) Do I really have to talk about this? First I’ll point out that this is essentially the same as #1. It’s just applied slightly differently. So, we have these all-important rules and they’re like: 1) don’t eat sugar 3) Don’t eat candy with sugar in it. Thanks for that.

What. Did he run out of criteria and so had to fudge one?

Christopher Russell, a professor of geophysics and space physics at the University of California?Los Angeles said, “Three of us who work on Earth, Venus and Mars got together and compared notes,” Russell told Discovery News.

What did they discover? A long held consensus (older than global warming–this time around) was that Earth’s magnetic field protected us from losing our atmosphere due to solar wind. After comparing notes, they realized the earth was losing more atmosphere than Mars or Venus.

4) I once saw a legislative proceeding where the legislators were talking about failures of a new piece of technology the body had bought for government use. When they described to the vendor the unacceptable failures that were occurring, the vendor’s “experts” said,”That’s impossible. The system . . .” Cut short by the irate legislator.

“Don’t tell me it’s impossible! I saw it with my own eyes.”

SOMETIMES (hear me? SOMETIMES) common sense is more important than scientific theories.

Have you ever read “A Brief History of Time?” I thought it was wonderful. But he started talking about time-travel and completely missed what time itself is. Here is probably the smartest man on Earth who is so caught up in theoretics and high level quantum mechanics that when he talks about something as basic as time, he puts theory over definition.

If you’re going to put forth a new theory that defies not only conventional wisdom, but current definition, you have to at least provide the new definition and reasoning why. He never did that with time reversal at the implosion of the universe.

When doing a complex math problem, you have to step back and look at the final answer and ask,”Does this make sense?” If I don’t do that in my business, I could cause the death of millions of people. In theoretical science, there is no final responsibility. That is why common sense sometimes goes out the window.

Additionally, it is rather elitist to state that if you don’t have the right papers, you’re not an expert. Can’t anyone with appropriate intelligence and inquisitive mind read lots of reports and books on a subject and become an expert?

If not, what are we all doing here discussing ANYTHING?

Although I’ve never seen anyone try the “Scientists want to kill us” argument. That’s a new one. But then I’ve also never seen anyone try and link CO2 reduction to euthanasia, so you’re just full of surprises.

Have you ever considered running for governor of Alaska? I hear there’s an opening.

Sorry for the snark, but honestly. We were having such a good discussion, and then you had to go and do that.

I challenge your assertion that there is “near unanimity” on #3.

The Nasa paper said that it would probably have a good effect on the atmosphere to regulate carbon, but “at what cost”?

You keep saying that you want to see major organizations that disagree, rather than individuals. Given the current political climate, and that organizations need money, this is a tall order.

Take Michael Griffin, for instance. In 1997 as head of NASA on an NPR program he said:

I am not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with. To assume that it is a problem is to assume that the state of Earth’s climate today is the optimal climate, the best climate that we could have or ever have had, and that we need to take steps to make sure that it doesn’t change.”

He ended up having to apologize to NASA for creating a humongous controversy. He was called an idiot, and (my favorite) in denial. He didn’t apologize for his beliefs, but for saying anything in public. He, of course, was released when President Obama took office.

Another guy who was very successful that was marginalized for his opinion that

There’s a lot of hogwash in this.

is Professor Lawrence Solomon. He has seen his funding dry up, and is ignored by mainstream science, even though up until he said anything he was very successful and respected.

Basically, any organization that would want to question climate change and the need to regulate carbon would have to be very certain of their funding sources to do so. They certainly wouldn’t be able to expect funding from the government.

Remember what Joanne Simpson described in her letter as I pointed out in my post #26, the atmosphere in the scientific world around this issue is rife with conflict. It is not a good environment to get real science and truth out there to the decision makers who really want to know what the truth is.

I have found at least two different stories of people who have come out against government reports that have included false information. I listed the first in post #9.

The second is Chris Landsea who works at the NOAA. He was furious when the IPCC came out in 2005 with a report that hurricanes would increase due to global warming, saying that scientists agreed. The reality was that no study had been done at the time that said such a thing. He refused to work with the IPCC again after they refused to listen to him when he raised objections.

The funny thing is, when a scientist disagrees with the “consensus” on global warming, he is called a “denier”. It sounds like a religion to me. I thought the scientific method was all about asking questions? Do we call scientists who retest Einstein’s theory of relativity deniers? No, we have always welcomed the challenge, hoping to learn something new from the research.

We can agree to disagree on this, Daniel. I don’t see how you can be sure that there is a consensus on the need to regulate carbon, but that is your prerogative. I realize that you have full faith in the institutions that we have always relied on for science.
I just happen to have lost trust as politics has taken an ever greater role in the funding and acceptance of scientific work.

As for my assertion that the power to regulate CO2 in the hands of the government is frightening. Carb has a good point. In fact, the concern about population reduction being seen as a solution is very real. Here is an article in the London Times in which green activists there are saying that the UK needs to cut it’s population in half. The link between CO2 and population has already been made.

As for allowing the ill to die, euthanasia is already legal in Oregon. That is the first step, toward acceptance of such an idea.

And, as Carb said, there is already considerable social pressure against large families. I was shocked to read in my developmental psychology textbook a vignette about a tragedy, in which a two year old was left in a bathtub alone and drowned. This was the youngest child of a family with several children, and the mom had stepped out of the bathroom to check on dinner. The person writing the story said the child would not have died if it was the wanted and only child of two loving parents, placing the blame squarely on the fact that the child was in a large family. Think about it! I was furious and sent an email to the author of the book, but I don’t think that vignette was in there by accident. It simply reflected the current view of the educated portion of our society. Large families are a problem, not a welcome part of society.

CO2 regulations can certainly be used to enact some horrible policies against large families, and the weaker segments of our population, which is just one reason to reject the cap and trade bill.

First, I never have seen how a system that allows you to buy credits so you can still pollute reduces pollution. It basically allows the larger, wealthier companies to keep polluting and forces the smaller companies to reduce emissions or go out of business. I suppose that would then lead to lower emissions, but it would also lead to fewer jobs and more monopoly interests in industry.

Second, the assumption on the site that people will adjust to be more energy efficient due to the increased costs forgets the plight of the poor, especially those on fixed incomes like the elderly or disabled. The recent changes in refrigeration usage dramatically increased the cost of refrigerators. This has forced people in this demographic to use older ones that they can find cheaply, which use more energy. When energy becomes more expensive due to cap and trade, these people will not be able to go out and buy newer energy efficient appliances in the hopes of lowering their bill. They will not be able to pay for a geothermal heat pump system, or a solar, or wind system to reduce their usage. They will be forced to rely on the government’s heat assistance program, or suffer with even less money to live on.

I agree with Carb. Taking the macro view of the economic effects of this bill is misleading. This bill will concentrate money in the economy in certain sectors, and take it from others. GDP might increase. However, before this recession started the income disparity in our country was at an all time high. We were prosperous in a macro sense, but the average american felt the squeeze long before the economy collapsed. Which led to the temptation to borrow to maintain their desired lifestyles, which expanded the effects of the downturn exponentially. Regardless, it does ultimately hurt the economy when we allow money to concentrate in certain sectors over others. Will the Waxman bill create an renewable energy bubble that will bust the system?

Food for thought.

If the government regulators would get out of the dark ages and realize that many of the restrictions on nuclear power are too strict, it would also be the cheapest.

The biggest thing I fear with this current bill is that it can give government the power to do pretty much anything. People breathing expel co2 into the air. If they can’t pay for an offset, then they can be put in prison. Yes, this is the extreme. But just look at what’s been happening the past century or so and we’re not too far from it.

What LQM said earlier is not fanaticism. What happens when people talk about OCTO-MOM? Everybody I hear except for Libertarians say,”there should be a law against having too many kids.”

Everytime I go anywhere with my family they ask,”Are you done yet?” or “Gee I hope you don’t have any more.” Never do they even ASK if I’m able to support them on my own. It seems that it is not just a matter of public assistance or not. People think it is a moral wrong to have a big family, period.

A bill like this in the wrong hands is lethal to Constitutional protections. After all, where in the Constitution does it guarantee the right to procreate?