Thog's Science Masterclass #7

[realthog]

Yes, folks, it's your Nut-of-the-Month Club Main Selection! Butch Dallmann writes a letter to his local online journal, the Fargo-Moorhead In-Forum, to explain to the rest of us unenlightened souls what global warming's all about. Sit back and pay attention, children:

Published Thursday, September 04, 2008

Well, folks, here we go again.

First they try to make us believe in the “big-bang” theory; then the “millions of years” theory; then the “we all came from monkeys” theory or even the “sea” theory.

Let’s get into the real solution as to what happened and read the Bible. Genesis will explain how it all was created.

Now for the global warming story Al Gore and others are pushing on us; it’s time to read Genesis to Revelation in the Bible.

When God sent the rain on this Earth for 40 days and nights, all this water had to go someplace so the Earth would be dry again.

Remember, God is the Creator and controls the universe.

God tilted the Earth from its original position and caused all the excess water to rush to the poles, and there he instantly froze the water into the ice formations that exist today.

Time is ticking down on God’s time clock. With all the nuclear bombs that are made and stored for the fast-emerging last battle, this Earth would burn up when these nuclear bombs are set off.

We are not creating global warming – God is tipping the Earth back to its original position on its axis and thus getting all this ice to get ready to move and extinguish the nuclear destructive fires man will create.

Time is running out, folks. Jesus is coming soon. Do you know him as your personal Savior?
 

Comments

[scottakennedy.livejournal.com]

At least that nut isn't running for Vice-President.

“A changing environment will affect Alaska more than any other state, because of our location. I'm not one though who would attribute it to being man-made,” Palin said.

*sighs*

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"At least that nut isn't running for Vice-President."

But I'd guess millions like him will be voting to inflict her ignorance and bigotry on the rest of us -- that's the base the McCain campaign's aiming for.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

No one ever lost money assuming people were intelligent.

[quietselkie.livejournal.com]

*raises hand to contribute to farce*

Me, me, pick me! I was told in church that God put the dinosaur bones in the earth for man to find, be confounded and have his faith tested.

But from this fine proof you've shown me here, I can see they're all just whale bones sloshed there in the last big flood.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

Both of those "theories" are well established in the Creationist literature, depressing as it might be to know there are people so deluded.

Third time lucky posting this, I hope. LJ's software is being a bit disconcerting tonight.

[quietselkie.livejournal.com]

All three copies made it to my email, regardless of what LJ was showing (or not showing) you. *spanks LJ for you*

This theory was the beginning of my split with the Baptists lo these many years ago, and was finalized by the repeated hypocrisy of multiple pastors. Intelligent people just didn't voice these sorts of crackpot theories without disclaimers or caveats.

[hefngafr.livejournal.com]

In my experience, intelligence isn't necessarily what's lacking. Strange but true. I know some very smart people who are True Believers, including my sister and my primary care physician (I'm in Kentucky, what can I say). What's lacking is that ingredient of personality or temperament, or psychological balance, that requires you to believe what science/history/Biblical scholarship demonstrates to be true (or at least highly probably, or more true than not). It's an absence of interest in being informed, and a powerful need to feel happy, comfortable, and virtuous. Anything that threatens that need gets thrown out unexamined. As they used to tell us: "God said it, I believe it, that settles it."

I have to add that I didn't encounter hypocrisy among the Baptist preachers I knew. I did encounter megalomania once. But on the whole they were nice, decent people whose minds were locked shut.

[quietselkie.livejournal.com]

Anything that threatens that need gets thrown out unexamined

*nod*

And this was exactly why the church I attended was insupportable for the rational empiricist my parents raised. That's part of the hypocrisy I spoke of. I have yet to find a religion (other than rational empiricism itself, for which there doesn't seem to be pastors) that satisfies my need to reconcile science and faith.

To be balanced about it, I also find having unquestioning faith in science a bit misplaced.

:-)

So this is one reason I write fiction, LOL.

[hefngafr.livejournal.com]

You're lucky your parents raised a rational empiracist. Mine raised a Baptist goody-goody who loved the security and virtuous feelings that went with the package, and lost a world (and, by the way, a family) when the rational empiracist inside the Baptist costume encountered evolution.

[quietselkie.livejournal.com]

Oh, dear.

While iconoclasm has its joys, it's a blade with two edges.

[hefngafr.livejournal.com]

Empiricist.

Too traumatized to spell it right! (Actually I left the church 47 years ago, but the melody lingers on...)

[quietselkie.livejournal.com]

My mother-in-law had a sampler hanging on her wall. It read:

Belief in God unites us
Belief about God divides us

And yes, I too still hear the music, decades later.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"lost a world (and, by the way, a family)"

My sympathies.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"I also find having unquestioning faith in science a bit misplaced"

Unusual use of the word "faith" here.

[quietselkie.livejournal.com]

Maybe...but for me it seems the appropriate word. There are times when science appears to be its own religion. We have (or had, depending on how much one has read of newer physics) "faith" in the atomic theory as the ultimate answer, yet the more we probe, the more things we find, the more we learn. We have faith that science can bring us answers.

I have faith in science's infinite nature because I believe humankind is more or less infinite. And I'm one of those fence-sitters. While I believe in science and firmly believe religions as we know them are crap, pap and pointless except for organizing society, I also think there's a greater force Out There Somewhere. I have faith in knowledge. Faith in learning.

Oh, stop me, I can blather on like this forever. I'd better go outside and worship a maple tree or six.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"There are times when science appears to be its own religion."

I'm not sure that's true. Some of the paradigms hang around a bit longer than they should (I don't know what you mean by "atomic theory", so can't comment specifically), but that's not usual.

(Hm. Let me rephrase that. In a sense, you want paradigms to hang around "a bit longer than they should" because you want to be reassured that whatever replaces them is pretty damn' good, not just the latest fad. But some have hung around longer than needed for that investigatory process to work its way through.)

Examining evidence in light of the currently accepted paradigm doesn't strike me as a matter of faith, or even as a faithlike activity. It's just a matter of making sure the advance of scientific knowledge actually is an advance.

[quietselkie.livejournal.com]

Now's when we need to have a discussion over pizza and beer (or brose and decaf tea...) so we can actually thrash this out. I just can't verbalize these topics sufficiently in a little text box. I need to be able to wave my hands and look you in the eye. :-)

[lilithsaintcrow.livejournal.com]

That makes two of us. All in favor of going over to Thog's, getting slightly tipsy, and hashing out all the world's problems, say AYE!

*grin*

[quietselkie.livejournal.com]

You can get tipsy; I'll have to stay sober so I can drive when Thog and Pam kick us out.

:-)

[lilithsaintcrow.livejournal.com]

Surely they wouldn't be that uncharitable? (And if I get tipsy enough I'm told I'm a lot of fun. Besides, I could sleep in the yard.)

Hee.

[quietselkie.livejournal.com]

You don't want to sleep in the yard in New Jersey. Think of the sea gulls.

[lilithsaintcrow.livejournal.com]

Point. Maybe there is a lovely covered porch in the area?

God help me, I've invited myself to Thog's and am merrily considering vagrancy and drunkenness. He's going to kick me off his LJ for sure.

[quietselkie.livejournal.com]

We'll take oatmeal and fabric as bribes.

[lilithsaintcrow.livejournal.com]

Check. I make a mean oatmeal cookie and you can sew.

We make a welcome addition to any home.

[quietselkie.livejournal.com]

LOL

Thog eats brose and Pam quilts. I was thinking more of hostess gifts, but your method would probably work just as well.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"You don't want to sleep in the yard in New Jersey. Think of the sea gulls."

You hardly ever sea a seagull around here. Your main nocturnal problem would be bears (and owls, deer and raccoons).

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"You don't want to sleep in the yard in New Jersey. Think of the sea gulls."

You hardly ever sea a seagull around here. Your main nocturnal problem would be bears (and owls, deer and raccoons).

[quietselkie.livejournal.com]

Oh, you must live in the Not NYC portion of NJ. A friend of mine lives out near...what was it, Hell Neck? Salem? I can't remember, but she called it Hicksville with Woods.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"I didn't encounter hypocrisy among the Baptist preachers I knew . . . [O]n the whole they were nice, decent people whose minds were locked shut"

I'd regard that as hypocritical of them: to act as if informed when in fact one isn't.

Oh, I see Selkie's posted a similar point. Oh, well.

[hefngafr.livejournal.com]

Well, they believed what they were saying. Willfully ignorant, yes; hypocritical, not according to my understanding of what hypocrisy is, a form of lying. Televangelists who pocket the public's contributions are hypocrites. Billy Graham, who may have been unique in this regard, was not one. I think it's important to split these hairs as scrupulously as possible. There are more than enough bad names to call Fundamentalist whack jobs like Dallmann without borrowing one that doesn't really fit. (Though it may fit him for all I know.)

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"There are more than enough bad names to call Fundamentalist whack jobs"

Didn't Arthur C. Clarke write a story about this? It was called something like "The Nine Billion Names for Fundamentalist Whack Jobs" . . .

[nick-kaufmann.livejournal.com]

Butch Dallman, Ph.D.!

[realthog.livejournal.com]

Thank you for this correction. PhD = Doctor of Phoolishness, I assume?

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

So god is a practical joker and a jerk?

[realthog.livejournal.com]

Certainly the god portrayed by this particular nitwit is exactly that.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

That's definite.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

And his god's activities with the earth remind me irresistably of those plastic domes you can buy that you shake up to make snow fall all over the White House or Buckingham Palace or whatever tourist trap you were at when you bought the thing.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

Hmm.

[possumqueen.livejournal.com]

Are we thinking more clearly yet? ;) Zen has a lot going for it, all in all. *cough* So to speak.

It embraces both what we see, as well as the possibility that we don't see everything. Because of the lenses of our eyes. There's room for realization. It's process.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

Or trial and error?

[possumqueen.livejournal.com]

In actual practice, I regard process and trial/error as two inextricably connected sides of the same scale of knowledge, with the fulcrum of a plausible working hypothesis in between.

Many a great discovery has come by accident while someone was studying something else. ;)

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

That's true.

[quilterbear.livejournal.com]

btw, you and pam should go to punditkitchen.com as it is hilarious!

[realthog.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the tip -- I'll check it out!