moth

If i understand your analogy, Laura can show her wrinkled pennies; She can't show her feelings about anything. She can describe her feelings, and i might think i feel the same thing. but do i? how do you standardize feelings?

So, it's definitely not cheese-nips per moderator day. didn't know if i should be concerned or impressed.

Nothing unscientific about abstinence. What is unscientific is ignoring the failure rate of preaching abstinence to slow the spread of STD's.

It's good to be king. That is a goal I wish more people shared.

There are observations to support all that. just like science, religion saw the ill effects of promiscuity,gluttony, and I can't remember what the bible says about drugs. Unlike science, religion says don't do it or burn. I'm not trying to deny faith is powerful, in the faithful. So screw everybody else?

Thank you for reinforcing my point about the unscientific foolishness of condom use being discouraged? If "don't have sex because you can regret it for the rest of your possibly short unhappy life" does not convince people to abstain, "because i say so" is hopeless.

Because it only seems to increase, but what is that mystery number that appeared next to "most online" counter on the front page of the forum?

Don't have sex, because god says, might prevent the HIV in people who can deny their basic biology because somebody told them that is what god wants. All the sexually deviant (in their church's view) mega preachers in the evangelical community might be a sign that it causes desperate unsafe behavior. And believe me, I'm not rubbing it in. Celebacy is not always a choice.

The fact is people have sex. The response "they should not do that" is not helpful. Scientific evaluation of the data says if people use a condom when they have sex, they will be less likely to catch an STD. Insisting that the use of condoms be suppressed is an anti-science based judgement some people want to force on others. seems pretty simple.

Green-cheeked, affectionate, little tormentor and poop-machine Conures. Inherited from a long lost roomie. I tried to come up with a reason god was not a satisfying hypothesis, but it was an emotional appeal about a shrinking god of the gaps who seems incompatable with most diests claims of everywhere, always. and my brain hurts, maybe tomorrow.

We still seem to agree for the most part, I think natural selection due to replication with errors and environmetal pressures is enough to explain the cat. Maybe not my biirds though, only some supernatural trickster could have thought up Conures;-).

My impression is that the objection to evidence of intelligent design is the evidence is, at it's heart, an argument from ignorance, we don't know how this could happen so God. Same for bigfoot or ufos, the argument is: i've never seen this before so it could be X. if its evidence at all, it's pretty weak.

If you look at other professions (as much as i hate calling lawyers professionals) like law, there are standards of evidence. Like a preponderance of the evidence as opposed to beyond a reasonable doubt. If it is more usefull to progress using "scientific evidence", and i think it is, wouldn't that be the best way forward?

I don't want to get in too far over my head, yesterday was the first time I've seen Hempel's raven paradox. I think i agree with you, it seems like a not black non-raven could be part of a negative definition of a black or green raven, but it supports them both equally and not much. Hopefully, John Cuthber or somebody will stop by and let us know where we lost the track.

If a pink cadillac is an example of something that is not a black raven, have you really learned nothing about black ravens?

It was more about not checking which color the alledged cadillac was. But we seem to understand each other.

But the evidence about the statement "all ravens are black" is inside the "figure" of the ravens who's color I've tested, so caddys and such are ground. Maybe the two are equivalent when you have tested everything else besides ravens and found all the "ground". If so, then maybe a black cadillac is a tiny bit of anti? evidence that all ravens are black.

is there a paradox? if I think of figure and ground, the statement all ravens are black has the "shape" of every raven who's color I've checked, and ground is everything else. the ground only tells you the shape of the figure by its absence, so the only knowledge we can get about figure is "this piece of ground, a red apple, is not a raven".

can "evidence" be considered to be the attributes of an event or object? attributes including things like affects,effects,repeatability... I'm not sure if there could be a one-size-fits-all list of attributes to suit every argument

I don't think they are being ill treated as much as I think they are being duped. I think one reason athiests and non-christians are getting grief is the people the authoritarians seek need an enemy, any enemy. It certanly seems possible to me that enough anti-knowledge resonating in the right wing media reinforces the view that the christains ARE being attacked and of course only Don can save them.

By right wing authoritarians. Mock preachers who pretend God told them to run for office to do god's will. Singled out for their gullability Not at all. I think this is why they believe they don't need to justify their actions, they have picked a side and they'll stick with it right or wrong..

I've been wondering this myself. It seems to me that it is not religion being picked on, it's the religious. The same fear of different attitudes and ideas that packs the pews also crams the ballot box. Maybe the same blind faith that smothers rational thinking also works the other way, irrational plans, especially ones that punish "the others" for their apostasy cause blind obeisance to the high priests of right wing athoritarianism.

Khan academy has good videos about algebra. Have you tried looking at any of those?

Or it might be cheap insurance agaist de-terraforming the entire planet. You sound like one of those funny-looking guys from "They Live". So do the executives at exxon/mob. Their climate scientists predicted this current warming in the arctic will make the oil there cheaper and easier to get to market at least 25 YEARS AGO. With their obvious attempts to keep the public devided on accepting the science linking climate change and fossil fuels, I wonder if you can still get those Roddy Piper shades?