There has been once a voting system here which focused on agreement rather than on disagreement and I thought it could be a good idea. It has been ditched quickly and prematurely (for me), but anyway agreement means nothing more than numeric consensus, and numeric consensus isn't exactly a measurement of reliability.
I think Becky's misunderstanding of the nature of science effectively killed this part of the debate, which is unfortunate since it could have gotten more interesting.
While I'm with Albieg 99% of the way here, I think it's important not to entirely dismiss Becky's argument, which is (I think) not really that environmentalism is a bad thing, but that "environmentalism" is being wielded/molded/generally misused by forces that don't entirely understand it, and that these forces are corrupting it and generally ruining its credibility among those who won't bother to dig to find its true roots.
While this might not affect those of us who are willing to do a bit of research, it does have the potential to turn the popular tide against environmentalism via backlash, rather than increasing awareness.
edit: I think it's pretty clear that the majority of anti-environmentalism people are against it for tangential reasons like Becky--they get annoyed by what they feel to be propaganda and begin to look around for similarly annoyed voices, which in turn give them half-formed theories to explain away climate change. In part, I think it's a refusal/aversion to accept personal blame for larger forces at work, and in part I think it's part of a pathological mistrust of handed-down authority, and in part I think it's a result of being intimidated and out-of-depth when it comes to the academic/intellectual resources required to actually make sense of what's going on.
I know I feel all three of those things, anyway, despite finally believing that environmentalism is a necessary concern.
This is in my opinion absolutely true, and that's why I wanted to avoid a dangerous confusion between ideals and implementations that seems to plague many persons.
Edit: of course I also agree on your edit, but given my individualistic/heterodoxical stance on political matters I think that you could already have guessed it
Religion is just form of scam, where individual is lured to believe in fairy tales and such to get personal gain from such individual.
But also as side effect it brings often good, it builds individual self confidence they would lack otherwise and thus helps them achieve more than they would otherwise in life, some religions also serve safety net and also keep people from killing each other.
However in every religion at some point certain individuals, that are hugry for power and control, will get to lead and after that killing each other begins again. All in name of religion of course.
Then is science religion?
Science is not about worshipping some subjects, it is about learning truth and how things work, in science every day some old facts are replaced with new ones as we learn more from our world.
In science you question existing and find proof to back your statement, which is then tested by others and if statement is fail proof it becomes fact.
Those that stick to existing and believe that world is flat are not scientist or part of science.
So I can't really see that science is religion in that way, imo.
Maybe one can call it 'religion' but it does not quite fit to definitions of common religion.
well yea it's not just plain stupidity alone - it's more complicated and you have to take people's living conditions into mind too for example. People with a lot of problems (of any kind) will be more susceptive to believing in something that would make them happy.
I know it's not fair to call them stupid. People are people afterall (so i guess i should've said, people are flawed )
Wow, one thread, so many discussions. Hard to make a choice.
Naww. Cruise looks like the kind of guy who hasn't yet grasped the concept of humor. And never will.
Then your belief failed at the first hurdle. If you are "true believer" material, you can keep your faith against all factual evidence. You can even say that it's easy to see there's no Santa Claus, yet that the Lord's existence is unquestioned.
You failed the test. Congrats, and welcome to Skeptics Anonymous.
Then things have improved lately.
In the 70s it was said we'd die of poverty because we used up Earth's resources, in 20 years' time.
In the 80s folks believed that "they" would drop the bomb soon, and the radiation would kill us all within 10 years.
Now mankind's life expectancy has risen to 25 years. Things are looking up.
Dam no santa too eh? - explains a lot.
I'll comfort myself with the Fairy's, they have to exist cos they make up all the Fairy story's.
Taking an overview, everything is just a bit behind schedule but definitely well in progress.
Sea levels rising, Ice caps and glasiers disappearing faster than David Blane can make a London bus disappear, Extraordinary weather conditions around the globe breaking records year on year.
Unlike religious folk, I really hope that I am wrong - for the sake of my grandkids, and all our kids.
But you can't get away from what is real and happening right now 24/7 and at a constantly accelerating rate.
Curiously enough, here in Udine we've had the record temperature (from beginning of measurements, of course) for January with a +2.5 celsius compared to previous record. Oh, the previous record was set last year.
Not that I want to assume such evidence in itself could be considered valid to support climate change theories anyway. I thought it was just... curious, and as such well worth investigating.
That's often argued, but that generally isn't the case.
There's a whole chapter in The God Delusion (great book, I really*10^99 reccommend that those who haven't read it do regardless on wether you agree with Richard Dawkins or not) about how religion is not that connected to morality.
Basically, there is a higher percentage of religious people in prisons compared to those outside of them. Whilst US political affiliation isn't a true barometer of religiosity, more than three quarters of the USA's most dangerous cities Republican states.
US is war against one group, US uses religion as it's justification as does this group they are at war, would there be war without religion? I doubt that there would be.
I have witnessed how in business one buyer bought services from some instance that was owned by certain religion members as buyer was member of same religion, better offer did not win as it should by law, they made up reasons to full fill law.
So much unfairness it causes, but as in every evil also in religion has some good things.
Very violent and sick person finds religion and stops committing crimes, he does good things to others rest of his life.
Poor homeless people are common in even here at Finland, church feeds them as our 'perfect society' is not doing it.
There is always other colours than black and white, even religion is overall bad thing from my opinion there is always good things in it too, which cannot be declined just because of it being overall bad thing.
It would not be very scientific approach to label religion to be only bad thing and not accepting good in it, that would be religious approach
What do you mean on topic Viktor? Do thread titles apply on the second page too?
I know I hold the unpopular view on science - but in a way I'm still agreeing, I just simplified it. I simplify everything so that I can understand it, its a great way of not learning long words . See we can all agree that scientific theories are subject to change, religions also change ( gay priests in the Anglican church ... ), what we don't seem to agree on is that a lot of people take science as fact (refers to an earlier post in this thread) in the same way fervent religious people do.
Don't get me wrong I believe in a lot of scientific theories, but I am also open to change.
I don't hold with the. If bang, mostly because we'll never figure out where the universe came from anyway so why bother theorising without either evidence or fully accurate supporting sciences... We now have 'proven' dark matter in an effort to explain the big bang, but the results of that experiment don't add up, far more likely that the macro level continues to get smaller spheres orbiting around stuff than an alternative pattern of matter exists.
I can't explain my view using long words because I don't like using them, i am not an academic and don't revel in the act of understanding complex things. Instead I like to simplify things down to my level. Sorry if this clouds the debate. I'm not an academic.
I don't think that in current level our science is enough to handle 'where all universe came from?' type of questions, who knows, maybe we are dust in giant's toe? Well, that is then work of philosophers I guess.
Maybe some day, when we have visited in another galaxy or few, science is advanced enough so that such questions can be made.
And furthermore the big bang is hardly meant as an answer to that big'ol question.
It's more like we observed galaxies and stars moving away from each other originating in a single point in space and the only theory fitting that observation (and a million others) was that they all exploded into existence from that point. If you have a better explanation, that also fits all available evidence, please have at it and I'm sure the scientists will listen.
We were taught in school that everything seem to be moving away from single point and slowly movement is slowing down, but I have read after that, that movement is actually speeding up. Haven't really been really interest from such anyway as there are so much more interesting and more meaningful problems to be interested from
There's too little data to solve the problem and I don't know what a scientist would do, but a person who doesn't want to look silly would ask himself first if the remaining two pairs are really matched or not. I hope you already know it.
Evolutionary theory says that any stable characteristic that is found in a species must be beneficial to its survival, or has been in the past. Religion has been around for a long time, so it must have given an advantage.
Caveats:
This does not imply that it is beneficial for you as an individual. You can use the same reasoning on some other phenomena, such as infanticide, cannibalism and rape.
Nor does it imply that religious views are factually correct. (Phew!)
And neither does it mean that it will continue to be an advantage to us in the future. (So it might still be a good idea to get rid of it.)
Richard Dawkins has argued that religion could be merely a side-effect of some other trait, and that it's the other trait that brings the advantage for survival. But I found his arguments weak, and they have been countered by David Sloan Wilson here. (Other interesting discussions on the topic can be foundhere.)
Just keep wearing the remaining two. Sooner or later they will lead you to the place where the others hide.
Congrats, and welcome to Skeptics Anonymous.
