Mr. McCain Picks a Woman for V.P. Mate

[darrianation]

Delete Delete

[darrianation]

Delete Delete

[treelizard]

I want purple!

[Tant01]

Good to go!

I especially like how when you hover your cursor over the red boxes it simply says "Jubaji".

Or at least it used to. What's with the green??

Some bone head moderator must be playing with administrative functions!

It was supposed to say "Jubaji is infamous around these parts"...

A row of RED boxes was something I've wanted to see under his name for a long time. (FUNNY< HUH?) LOL

His (REAL) reputation level has been restored.

Thanks for noticing!

[aseepish]

I especially like how when you hover your cursor over the red boxes it simply says "Jubaji".

Or at least it used to. What's with the green??

[Tant01]

About time someone noticed your new found infamy! LOL

[treelizard]

Yeah, that is pretty ridiculous.

Hey how did you get all those little red dots by your name?

[jubaji]

Joe Biden has so little respect for the presidency of the United States that he's willing to put him on the ticket, and that he has so little respect for the average American voter that he thinks thinks this reckless and cynical ploy will work .

Yeah, that is pretty ridiculous.

[treelizard]

McCain's experience argument doesn't hold water anymore due to his VP pick and the fact that he is as old as dirt and has had four bouts with cancer and is far more likely to die in office than Obama is. If he cared about experience, he may have gotten an experienced VP candidate. Again, watch the video I first posted.

As far as racism, it is McCain who didn't want MLK Day to be celebrated, who has publically stated that he "hates gooks" and will hate them as long as he lives, and the same man who was "very proud to have Pastor Hagee's support" unless it interferes with people who he thinks will vote for him.

Here's a compilation of McCain's racist jokes:
McCain: racist, bigot & homophobe | Capitol Hill Blue

And are you seriously comparing Jimmy Carter to Sarah Palin? I think graduating 59th in a class of 820 at the Naval Academy is a teeny bit different than being an "average" student in 5 schools before finally getting a degree in journalism from the University of Idaho, a school which only requires a 2.0 GPA for transfer students.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aYY9hiQdr5E4&refer=home

Transfer Student Admission Requirements

[treelizard]

I stand corrected. I just read that Karl Popper contended that "the central question in the philosophy of science was distinguishing science from non-science." Creationism is "non-science." Saying that non-science has to be debated with science in a classroom is a cop-out answer to try to appease both sides. I much prefer Obama's take on it:

I’m a Christian, and I believe in parents being able to provide children with religious instruction without interference from the state. But I also believe our schools are there to teach worldly knowledge and science. I believe in evolution, and I believe there’s a difference between science and faith. That doesn’t make faith any less important than science. It just means they’re two different things. And I think it’s a mistake to try to cloud the teaching of science with theories that frankly don’t hold up to scientific inquiry.

Anyway, I see that you'd rather argue over semantics than over the fact that Sarah Palin is a totally unqualified and poorly educated woman, not to mention a Creationist wacko who thinks the world is 6000 years old... or even more important, that John McCain has so little respect for the presidency of the United States that he's willing to put her on the ticket, and that he has so little respect for the average American voter that he thinks thinks this reckless and cynical ploy will work (as Sam Harris put it in the LA TImes).

[treelizard]

I took science classes and philosophy classes in college. What I learned was that scientific models which purport to answer the questions of what the world is made of began with ancient Greek philosophy ("the idea that matter is composed of Thales' one element or Empedocles' four elements, and ends with Mendeleev's periodic table of some ninety-odd elements ordered in terms of weight") and evolved beyond that to an actual theory of scientific explanation, including theories such as gravitation, light, electromagnetic forces, relativity, etc. We actually discussed what constitutes a satisfactory explanation without ever touching upon religion.

The concept of evolution provides enough groundwork for inquiry into biological organization (both the generally theoretical and the biologically precise) without having to throw religion or random theories in there.

[treelizard]

Science is not philosophy
John Moore, National Post Published: Monday, June 23, 2008

You have to admire the integrity of conspiracy theories. They're great Mobius strips of self-contained false reasoning and evidence able to contort to meet any external challenge to the perfection of their closed loops. Sept. 11 deniers will insist a lack of plane wreckage on the apron of the Pentagon is proof the building was struck by a missile. Show them a photograph of an engine lying on the lawn and they'll exclaim "Aha! That was planted!"

And so it is with the conspiracy laid out in the new movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed hosted by the droll economist/actor/game show host/Republican Ben Stein. Expelled posits that the entire scientific establishment is enslaved to the theory of evolution, and in order to protect the Darwinian temple it engages in an ongoing campaign to crush all challenges to its "religion." The principal victim of this rearguard action is the would-be challenging theory called Intelligent Design (ID).

ID is often referred to as Creationism light. In fact it's more Creationism in drag. Though its proponents claim scientific neutrality, they are usually overtly religious people affiliated with overtly religious institutions. They have written essays and books about why ID is science. And yet when all the sophistry is boiled down, the theory amounts to "living things are complicated. Some-one must have made them."

It may be a sublime idea worthy of religious and philosophical contemplation, but it fails to meet the definition of science. It can't be proven and it can't be tested. Complaining that science won't take ID seriously is like grieving the fact that mathematicians won't consider a flower pot to be a number.

The denial of the imprimatur of science on ID is the source of its proponents' assumed victimhood and the wellspring from which most of Ben Stein's movie draws its inspiration. We're introduced to a half-dozen individuals whom he contends were "destroyed" for promoting ID. A deeper probe into their cases reveals that far from wide-eyed innocents most of them set out to stir up trouble.

Professor Richard Sternberg is famous for having ensured the first ever publication of an Intelligent Design paper in a scientific journal. He claims he was fired and defamed in retaliation. The evidence reveals Sternberg is an active promoter of ID, the paper had no business being in the journal and he was never fired. He and other proponents of ID did get a lot of nasty e-mail. Welcome to the modern world. Mother Theresa got hate mail.

Journalist Pamela Winnick tells Stein, "If you give any credence to Intelligent Design, you are finished as a journalist." Winnick says she was sacked from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette over a news item that gave favourable treatment to ID in 2000. In fact she continued to publish in the Gazette and is found in the pages of respected newspapers to this day. She also wrote and had published a book titled, A Jealous God: Science's Crusade Against Religion.

The natural reaction of any reasonable person to these persecutions (were they true) is "this is terrible. Why doesn't anyone do anything to help these people?" Which brings us to the closing of the conspiracy loop. Expelled maintains the containment of ID is the concerted action of scientists, academic journals, the courts and the media. Yes, this column is further proof of the conspiracy.

Expelled is at its most risible when it tries to establish a direct line from Darwin to eugenics and genocide. Stein quotes from a passage in Darwin's writing that appears to endorse the notion that for a species to thrive the infirm must be culled. He omits the part where Darwin insists this would be "evil" and that man's care for the weak is "the noblest part of our nature." When I asked Stein about this on my radio show he deadpanned, "If any Darwin fans are listening and we have misquoted him we are sorry … we don't mean to diss Darwin."

The core of the religious complaint against evolution rests on a false syllogism: Darwin leads automatically to atheism which leads to a world without moral order; therefore science is the enemy of God.

It's a maddening false supposition because while scientists are free to believe in God (and an estimated 40% do) science itself remains neutral. Expelled cribs from the Michael Moore school of documentary film making, masking advocacy journalism as neutral storytelling deviously transforming science's neutrality into hostility.

It is often observed that just because you're paranoid doesn't mean everyone isn't out to get you. It is equally true that when everyone insists you are wrong about something it doesn't necessarily mean they're engaged in an elaborate conspiracy. You could just be wrong. - John Moore is the drive home host on Toronto's Newstalk 1010 CFRB. Outside of Southern Ontario he can be heard at Home Page | CFRB.

[treelizard]

I believe global warming is caused by the Sun

Way to evade the question.

[treelizard]

P.S. Science is not a philosophy. It is a methodology.

[treelizard]

True colors?

Science is a philosophy, I am showing my education.

Do you believe global warming is caused by man?