Billy wrote:

University of Maryland Study Shows Watching Fox News Makes You Ignorant
A study conducted by the University of Maryland gives credence to the
view that Fox News is anything but, and is really a propaganda machine
meant to further a right wing agenda.

My entire family except me are strong fundamental Christians. I am an
atheist with strong ties to science. Almost everyone in my family believes
in the Ptolemaic system where I believe in the Copernican system. I would
ask them if the Sun was the center of the solar system, they all stated the
earth was the center because they could see the sun move. And the bible
states that the Sun stood still, so how could it be the center if it did
not move. They laugh at me and laugh at the scientific types as being
stupid... It is a sad world... I am also out numbered.

Religious people refuse to believe in global warming, because the bible
states that God would not destroy the earth with water again and refuse to
believe that the poles are melting. They dismiss pollution because they
believe God will create a new planet for them when Jesus Christ returns.

I have two minister nephews that went to Christian universities at have
PHD's in theology and they believe in the crap listed above! They believe
in the literal translation of the bible. They all watch Glen Beck and
believe in the crap he spews. Religious people have no concept of logical
reasoning, they believe in what the religious authorities tell them without
question.

They all belong to the so called "archery" classes. But in reality the
teach kids as young as six years old to use guns. They teach them
propaganda like the government is going to take away their second amendment
rights. The list goes on and they are not the few they are in the many, in
the thousands.

This is one reason why I want to be alone. I cannot stand my family or
others like them.

--
Enjoy Life... Nad R (Garden in zone 5a Michigan)

Nad R wrote:

My entire family except me are strong fundamental Christians. I am an
atheist with strong ties to science.

Just to check - When I read this what I see is you reject one actively
anti-rational religion and become an atheist without seeming to notice
that there are a ton of other religious options out there. How is that
a rational approach? It's the major weakness of many atheists than runs
like this -

1) Assume there is only one valid religion in the world. Ignore that
this is a false basic assumption that allows the claims of that one
religion to dictate the terms.

2) Find flaws in that one religion and thus reject all religions.
Become an atheist rather than even address that the competition exists.

3) Never notice that the question of addressing deity has little or
nothing to do with the question of which religion, if any, to use as a
framework for that. For that matter never notice that there are
religions that don't much care if you actually believe in deity or not.

There are only two religions out there that are actively irrational.
They happen to be the two with the largest populations but "eat crap, a
trillion flies can't be wrong" is false in pretty much every group other
than a gardening one with composters in it. If you have such objections
to Christianity I figure you're not going to convert to Islam in
reaction to the irrationality of Christianity.

Science addresses the how. Religion addresses the why. To go without
religion is to throw away ages of why and reinvent the wheel yourself.
To change to a different religion is to chose among why's that have
centuries or millinnia of working on specific why's.

They laugh at me and laugh at the scientific types as being stupid...

So look at the grillion other religions that have zero conflict with
science. This is a gardening group so consider one of the many nature
based religions. At one point I asked Thor if he cared how people
followed him. Thor is very good about being there but not so good at
paying attention to questions. After about a year of repeating the
question he finally came back with a shrugging "followers are good"
"have another ale". I conclude from that that it doesn't much matter
if you decide to follow his nature based system versus one of the many
others. But you don't seem to have noticed that options exist at all.

Religious people refuse to believe in global warming ...

This one I have trouble accepting. Century old photos and year old
photos of pretty much any glacier in the world make the conclusion so
trivial. What I have trouble accepting is the irrationality of the
stance of ignoring such simple and overwhleming evidence. On the other
hand I am also very slow about my stance on the degree of human
input. But my being behind the times on degree of human influence
changes little in how I would approach the issue.

I do have objections to how folks are reaction to the fact of climate
change. In the 900s cattle were ranched on Greenland so it's clear the
current records don't go very far back. But Greenland was settled in a
period of global warming that was clearly warmer than we are right now.
Exactly how bad was it to be able to ranch cattle on Greenland? This
matters on why I am slow to evolve my stance on the degree of human
contribution - There was not much human contribution in those centuries
compared to now.

Reading history books says it was a time of extreme social change. Ah
hah, there's the political motivation right there. Folks are grabbing
for power at a time near the beginning of extreme social change. They
want time to build momentum and use leverage. Clearly it's not about
whether global warming is happening but about who will be in power and
what they will do with that power. That means their degree of sincerity
is extremely crucial. Folks calling themselves environmentalists who
are anti-nuke, check, very low degree of rationality and thus very low
degree of sincerity.

Billy has dived face first into that political fray. What's wrong with
ranching cattle on Greenland? What's wrong with letting the social
change as it will as the USDA zones move? Why bother with an irrational
religion that battles with science when there are rational religions
with zero conflict with science that are nature based?

Doug Freyburger wrote:

There are only two religions out there that are actively irrational.
Another irrational statement from a religious person.

Science addresses the how. Religion addresses the why.
Science addresses the why. Engineering addresses the how.
Religion is just pure nonsense. Not needed at all.

So look at the grillion other religions that have zero conflict with
science.
Science and Religion is like oil and water, they do not mix.

I do have objections to how folks are reaction to the fact of climate change.
Of course you do, most religious people are, they believe god will protect
them and save us all. While destroying our environment until Jesus
returns... Oh Brother!

Folks calling themselves environmentalists who are anti-nuke.
Yea, yea, God will protect us all. I have no faith in Nukes or your God!

Why bother with an irrational religion that battles with science when
there are rational religions

"Rational Religions"? That is an Oxymoron statement like "Pretty Ugly".

I see I cannot escape the religious nuts even on Usenet. This is last of
this religious debate and will i not respond further as a waste of time.

--
Enjoy Life... Nad R (Garden in zone 5a Michigan)

In article ,
Nad R wrote:

Billy wrote:

http://www.associatedcontent.com/art...y_of_maryland_
study_shows.html?cat=9
University of Maryland Study Shows Watching Fox News Makes You Ignorant
A study conducted by the University of Maryland gives credence to the
view that Fox News is anything but, and is really a propaganda machine
meant to further a right wing agenda.

My entire family except me are strong fundamental Christians. I am an
atheist with strong ties to science. Almost everyone in my family believes
in the Ptolemaic system where I believe in the Copernican system. I would
ask them if the Sun was the center of the solar system, they all stated the
earth was the center because they could see the sun move. And the bible
states that the Sun stood still, so how could it be the center if it did
not move. They laugh at me and laugh at the scientific types as being
stupid... It is a sad world... I am also out numbered.

Religious people refuse to believe in global warming, because the bible
states that God would not destroy the earth with water again and refuse to
believe that the poles are melting. They dismiss pollution because they
believe God will create a new planet for them when Jesus Christ returns.

I have two minister nephews that went to Christian universities at have
PHD's in theology and they believe in the crap listed above! They believe
in the literal translation of the bible. They all watch Glen Beck and
believe in the crap he spews. Religious people have no concept of logical
reasoning, they believe in what the religious authorities tell them without
question.

They all belong to the so called "archery" classes. But in reality the
teach kids as young as six years old to use guns. They teach them
propaganda like the government is going to take away their second amendment
rights. The list goes on and they are not the few they are in the many, in
the thousands.

This is one reason why I want to be alone. I cannot stand my family or
others like them.
It is strange, once progressive, Kansas is now part of the "Bible Belt".
I'm happy that they are consoled by their faith, but dismayed that they
disregard science, also in the name of faith.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/15/op...t.html?pagewan
ted=1
Believe It, or Not
By Nicholas D. Kristof
New York Times, Friday, August 15, 2003

Today marks the Roman Catholics' Feast of the Assumption, honoring the
moment that they believe God brought the Virgin Mary into Heaven. So
here's a fact appropriate for the day: Americans are three times as
likely to believe in the Virgin Birth of Jesus (83 percent) as in
evolution (28 percent).

Then the 'faithful" take a huge flying "leap of faith".



Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free
by Charles P. Pierce

http://www.amazon.com/Idiot-America-...e/dp/076792615
3/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1299029037&sr=1-1
(Available at better libraries near you.)


INTRODUCTION

Dinosaurs with Saddles (August 2005)

There IS some art—you might even say design—in the way
southern Ohio rolls itself into the hills of northern Ken-
tucky. The hills build gently under you as you leave the
interstate. The roads narrow beneath a cool and thickening can-
opy as they wind through the leafy outer precincts of Hebron, a
small Kentucky town named, as it happens, for the place near
Jerusalem where the Bible tells us that David was anointed the
king of the Israelites. This resulted in great literature and no lit-
tle bloodshed, which is the case with a great deal of Scripture.

At the top of the hill, just past the Idlewild Concrete plant,
there was an unfinished wall with an unfinished gate in the mid-
dle of it. Happy, smiling people trickled in through the gate on
a fine summer's morning, one minivan at a time. They parked
in whatever shade they could find, which was not much. They
were almost uniformly white and almost uniformly bubbly.
Their cars came from Kentucky and Tennessee and Ohio and
Illinois and from as far away as New Brunswick, in the Cana-


2 Introduction

dian Maritimes. There were elderly couples in shorts, suburban
families piling out of the minivans, the children all Wrinkle Re-
sistant and Stain Released. All of them wandered off, chattering
and waving and stopping every few steps for pictures, toward a
low-slung building that seemed to be the most finished part of
the complex.

Outside, several of them stopped to be interviewed by a
video crew. They had come from Indiana, one woman said, two
impatient toddlers pulling at her arms, because they had been
homeschooling their children and they'd given them this adven-
ture as a field trip. The whole group then bustled into the lobby
of the building, where they were greeted by the long neck of a
huge, herbivorous dinosaur. The kids ran past it and around the
corner, where stood another, smaller dinosaur.

"Which was wearing a saddle.

It was an English saddle, hornless and battered. Apparently,
this was a dinosaur that performed in dressage competitions
and stakes races. Any dinosaur accustomed to the rigors of
ranch work and herding other dinosaurs along the dusty trail
almost certainly would have worn a sturdy western saddle. This,
obviously, was very much a show dinosaur.

The dinosaurs were the first things you saw when you en-
tered the Creation Museum, the dream child of an Australian
named Ken Ham, who is the founder of Answers in Genesis, the
worldwide organization for which the museum is meant to be
the headquarters. The people here on this day were on a special
tour. They'd paid $149 to become "charter members" of the
museum.

"Dinosaurs," Ham said, laughing, as he posed for pictures
with his honored guests, "always get the kids interested."

AiG is dedicated to the proposition that the biblical story
of the creation of the world is inerrant in every word. Which


Dinosaurs with Saddles (August 2005) 3

means, in this interpretation, and among other things, that di-
nosaurs co-existed with humans (hence the saddles), that there
were dinosaurs in Eden, and that Noah, who certainly had
enough on his hands, had to load two brachiosaurs onto the
Ark along with his wife, his sons, and his sons' wives, to say
nothing of the green ally-gators and the long-necked geese and
the humpty-backed camels and all the rest.

(Faced with the obvious question of how Noah kept his
300-by-30-by-50-cubit Ark from sinking under the weight of
the dinosaur couples, Ham's literature argues that the dinosaurs
on the Ark were young ones, who thus did not weigh as much
as they might have.)

"We," announced Ham, "are taking the dinosaurs back from
the evolutionists!" And everybody cheered.

This was a serious crowd. They gathered in the museum's
auditorium and took copious notes while Ham described the
great victory won not long before in Oklahoma, where city offi-
cials had announced a decision—which they would later reverse,
alas—to put up a display based on Genesis at the city's zoo so
as to eliminate the discrimination long inflicted upon sensitive
Christians by the statue of the Hindu god Ganesh that deco-
rated the elephant exhibit. They listened intently as Ham went
on, drawing a straight line from Adam's fall to our godless pub-
lic schools, from Charles Darwin to gay marriage. He talked
about the great triumph of running Ganesh out of the elephant
paddock and they all cheered again.

The heart of the museum would take the form of a long
walkway down which patrons would be able to journey through
the entire creation story. The walkway was in only the earliest
stages of construction. On this day, for example, one young art-
ist was working on a scale model of a planned exhibit depicting
the day on which Adam named all the creatures of the earth.


4 Introduction

Adam was depicted in the middle of the delicate act of nam-
ing the saber-toothed tiger while, behind him, already named, a
woolly mammoth seemed on the verge of taking a nap.

Elsewhere in the museum, another Adam, this one full-sized,
was reclining peacefully, waiting to be installed. Eventually, he
was meant to be placed in a pool under a waterfall. As the figure
depicted a prelapsarian Adam, he was completely naked. He
also had no penis.

This seemed to be a departure from Scripture. If you were
willing to stretch Job's description of a "behemoth" to include
baby Triceratops on Noah's Ark, as Ham did in his lecture, then
surely, since he was being depicted before his fall, Adam should
have been out there waving unashamedly in the paradisiacal
breezes. For that matter, what was Eve doing there, across the
room, with her hair falling just so to cover her breasts and her
midsection, as though in a nude scene from some 1950$ Swedish
art-house film?

After all, Genesis 2:25 clearly says that at this point in their
lives, "the man and the woman were both naked, and they were
not ashamed." If Adam could sit there courageously unencum-
bered while naming the saber-toothed tiger, then why, six thou-
sand years later, should he be depicted as a eunuch in some
- family-values Eden? And if these people can take away what
Scripture says is rightfully his, then why can't Charles Darwin
and the accumulated science of the previous hundred and fifty-
odd years take away the rest of it?

These were impolite questions. Nobody asked them here
by the cool pond tucked into the gentle hillside. Increasingly,
amazingly, nobody asked them outside the gates, either. It was
impolite to wonder why our parents had sent us all to college,
and why generations of immigrants had sweated and bled so
that their children could be educated, if not so that one day we


Dinosaurs with Saddles (August 2005) 5

would feel confident enough to look at a museum full of dino-
saurs rigged to run six furlongs at Aqueduct and make the not
unreasonable point that it was batshit crazy, and that anyone
who believed this righteous hooey should be kept away from
sharp objects and their own money. Instead, people go to court
over this kind of thing.

Dinosaurs with saddles?

Dinosaurs on Noah's Ark?

Welcome to your new Eden.

Welcome to Idiot America.

» » »

THE title of this book very nearly was Blinking from the Ru-
ins, and it very nearly was merely a tour of the extraordinary
way America has gone marching backward into the twenty-first
century. Unquestionably, part of the process was the shock of
having more than three thousand of our fellow citizens killed by
medievalist murderers who flew airplanes into buildings in the
service of a medieval deity, and thereby prompted the United
States, born of Enlightenment values, to seek for itself the me-
dieval remedies for which the young country was born too late:

Preemptive war. Secret prisons. Torture. Unbridled, unaccount-
able executive power. The Christian god was handed Jupiter's
thunderbolts, and a president elected by chance and intrigue
was dressed in Caesar's robes. People told him he sounded like
Churchill when, in fact, he sounded like Churchill's gardener.
All of this happened in relative silence, and silence, as Earl Shor-
ris writes, is "the unheard speed of a great fall, or the unsounded
sigh of acquiescence," that accompanies "all the moments of the
descent from democracy."

That is why this book is not merely about the changes in


6 Introduction

the country wrought by the atrocities of September 11, 2001.
The foundations of Idiot America had been laid long before. A
confrontation with medievalism intensified a distressing pa-
tience with medievalism in response, and that patience reached
beyond the politics of war and peace and accelerated a momen-
tum in the culture away from the values of the Enlightenment
and toward a dangerous denial of the consequences of believing
nonsense.

Let us take a tour, then, of one brief period in the new cen-
tury; a sliver of time three years after the towers fell. A federally
funded abstinence program suggests that the human immuno-
deficiency virus can be transmitted through tears. An Alabama
legislator proposes a bill to ban all books by gay writers. The
Texas House of Representatives passes a bill banning sugges-
tive cheerleading at high school football games. And the nation
doesn't laugh at any of this, as it should, or even point out that,
in the latter case, having Texas ban suggestive cheerleading is
like having Nebraska ban corn.

James Dobson, a prominent Christian conservative spokes-
man; compares the Supreme Court of the United States with the
Ku Klux Klan. Pat Robertson, another prominent conservative
preacher man, says that federal judges are a greater threat to the
nation than is Al Qaeda and, apparently taking his text from
the Book of Gambino, later sermonizes that the United States
should get on the stick and snuff the democratically elected
president of Venezuela. And the nation does not wonder, audi-
bly, how these two poor fellows were allowed on television.

The Congress of the United States intervenes to extend into
a televised spectacle the prolonged death of a woman in Florida.
The Majority Leader of the Senate, a physician, pronounces a
diagnosis from a distance of eight hundred miles, relying for his
information on a heavily edited videotape. The majority leader


Dinosaurs with Saddles (August 2005) 7

of the House of Representatives, a former exterminator, argues
against cutting-edge research into the use of human embryonic
stem cells by saying "An embryo is a person. . . . We were all
at one time embryos ourselves. So was Abraham. So was Mu-
hammad. So was Jesus of Nazareth." Nobody laughs at him, or
points out that the same could be said of Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot,
or the inventor of the baby-back rib.

And finally, in August 2005, the cover of Time—for almost
a century, the clear if dyspeptic voice of the American estab-
lishment—hems and haws and hacks like an aged headmaster
gagging on his sherry and asks, quite seriously, "Does God have
a place in science class?"

Fights over evolution—and its faddish camouflage, "intel-
ligent design," a pseudoscience that posits without proof or
method that science is inadequate to explain existence and that
supernatural sources must be studied as well—roil through
school boards across the country. The president of the United
States announces that he believes that ID ought to be taught
in the public schools on an equal footing with the theory of
evolution. And in Dover, Pennsylvania, during one of these con-
troversies, a pastor named Ray Mummert delivers the line that
ends our tour and, in every real sense, sums it up.



"We've been attacked," he says, "by the intelligent, educated
segment of our culture."



And there you have it.

Idiot America is not the place where people say silly things.
It is not the place where people believe in silly things. It is not
the place where people go to profit from the fact that people
believe in silly things. That America has been with us always—
the America of the medicine wagon and the tent revival, the
America of the juke joint and the gambling den, the America
of lunatic possibility that in its own mad way kept the original

8 Introduction

revolutionary spirit alive while an establishment began to cal-
cify atop the place. Idiot America isn't even those people who
believe that Adam sat down under a tree one day and named
all the dinosaurs. Those people pay attention. They take notes.
They take time and spend considerable mental effort to con-
struct a worldview that is round and complete, just as other
Americans did before them.

The rise of Idiot America, though, is essentially a war on
expertise. It's not so much antimodernism or the distrust of the
intellectual elites that Richard Hofstadter teased out of the na-
tional DNA, although both of those things are part of it. The
rise of Idiot America today reflects—for profit, mainly, but also,
and more cynically, for political advantage and in the pursuit
of power—the breakdown of the consensus that the pursuit of
knowledge is a good. It also represents the ascendancy of the
notion that the people we should trust the least are the people
who know best what they're talking about. In the new media
age, everybody is a historian, or a scientist, or a preacher, or
a sage. And if everyone is an expert, then nobody is, and the
worst thing you can be in a society where everybody is an expert
is, well, an actual expert.

This is how Idiot America engages itself. It decides, en masse,
with a million keystrokes and clicks of the remote control, that
because there are two sides to every question, they both must
be right, or at least not wrong. And the words of an obscure
biologist carry no more weight on the subject of biology than
do the thunderations of some turkeyneck preacher out of the
Church of Christ's Own Parking Structure in DeLand, Florida.
Less weight, in fact, because our scientist is an "expert" and,
therefore, an "elitist." Nobody buys his books. Nobody puts
him on cable. He's brilliant, surely, but no different from all the
rest of us, poor fool.

Dinosaurs with Saddles (August 2005) 9

How does it work? This is how it works. On August 21,
2005, a newspaper account of the intelligent design movement
contained this remarkable sentence:

"They have mounted a politically savvy challenge to evolution
as the bedrock of modern biology, propelling a fringe academic
movement onto the front pages and putting Darwin's defenders
firmly on the defensive."

"A politically savvy challenge to evolution" makes as much
sense as conducting a Gallup poll on gravity or running some-
one for president on the Alchemy party ticket. It doesn't matter
what percentage of people believe that they ought to be able to
flap their arms and fly: none of them can. It doesn't matter how
many votes your candidate got: he's not going to be able to turn
lead into gold. The sentence is so arrantly foolish that the only
real news in it is where it appeared.

On the front page.

Of the New York Times.

Consider that the reporter, one Jodi Wilgoren, had to com-
pose this sentence. Then she had to type it. Then, more than
likely, several editors had to read it. Perhaps even a proofreader
had to look it over after it had been placed on the page—the
front page—of the Times. Did it occur to none of them that
a "politically savvy challenge to evolution" is as self-evidently
ridiculous as an "agriculturally savvy" challenge to Euclidean
geometry would be? Within three days, there was a panel on the
topic on Larry King Live, in which Larry asked the following
question:

"All right, hold on, Dr. Forrest, your concept of how you can
out-and-out turn down creationism, since if evolution is true,
why are there still monkeys?"

And why, dear Lord, do so many of them host television
programs?
-----

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...02/15/AR200802
1502901.html?hpid%3Dopinionsbox1&sub=AR

The Dumbing Of America
Call Me a Snob, but Really, We're a Nation of Dunces
By Susan Jacoby
Sunday, February 17, 2008; Page B01

"The mind of this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon
itself." Ralph Waldo Emerson offered that observation in 1837, but his
words echo with painful prescience in today's very different United
States. Americans are in serious intellectual trouble -- in danger of
losing our hard-won cultural capital to a virulent mixture of
anti-intellectualism, anti-rationalism and low expectations.

The classic work on this subject by Columbia University historian
Richard Hofstadter, "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life," was
published in early 1963, between the anti-communist crusades of the
McCarthy era and the social convulsions of the late 1960s. Hofstadter
saw American anti-intellectualism as a basically cyclical phenomenon
that often manifested itself as the dark side of the country's
democratic impulses in religion and education. But today's brand of
anti-intellectualism is less a cycle than a flood. If Hofstadter (who
died of leukemia in 1970 at age 54) had lived long enough to write a
modern-day sequel, he would have found that our era of 24/7 infotainment
has outstripped his most apocalyptic predictions about the future of
American culture.
(cont.)
----

If you like weekends, thank a union.

--
--
---------
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYIC0eZYEtI
http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2011/3/7/michael_moore
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZkDikRLQrw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyE5wjc4XOw

In article ,
"FarmI" ask@itshall be given wrote:

"Billy" wrote in message
"David Hare-Scott" wrote:
Bill who putters wrote:
http://www.emmitsburg.net/gardens/ar...roclimates.htm

or http://thurly.net/148z

Just some ideas on how to protect or enhance or inhibit plant growth.
In a way your home can save energy using similar info.

Some good basic information there but as is so often the case the author
fails the international community by not considering which hemisphere the
garden is in.

David

Having a bad day?

So much for critical analysis...............

How about constructive analysis?

Enlighten me. What is different for antipodials, except that they want a
northern exposure, whereas we want a southern exposure (unless you're a
painter, then it is just the inverse). After that, East is still East,
and West is still West.

Or were you referring to the cursory exposition of the microclimates?

Or were you referring to the type of habit where a person says things
like,"a gardener would be more efficient, if he . . ."?

Or all, or none of the above?

Inquiring antipodals want to know.
--
- Billy
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the
merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_vN0--mHug
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyE5wjc4XOw

In article ,
Doug Freyburger wrote:

Nad R wrote:

My entire family except me are strong fundamental Christians. I am an
atheist with strong ties to science.

Just to check - When I read this what I see is you reject one actively
anti-rational religion and become an atheist without seeming to notice
that there are a ton of other religious options out there. How is that
a rational approach? It's the major weakness of many atheists than runs
like this -

1) Assume there is only one valid religion in the world. Ignore that
this is a false basic assumption that allows the claims of that one
religion to dictate the terms.

2) Find flaws in that one religion and thus reject all religions.
Become an atheist rather than even address that the competition exists.

3) Never notice that the question of addressing deity has little or
nothing to do with the question of which religion, if any, to use as a
framework for that. For that matter never notice that there are
religions that don't much care if you actually believe in deity or not.

There are only two religions out there that are actively irrational.
They happen to be the two with the largest populations but "eat crap, a
trillion flies can't be wrong" is false in pretty much every group other
than a gardening one with composters in it. If you have such objections
to Christianity I figure you're not going to convert to Islam in
reaction to the irrationality of Christianity.

Science addresses the how. Religion addresses the why. To go without
religion is to throw away ages of why and reinvent the wheel yourself.
To change to a different religion is to chose among why's that have
centuries or millinnia of working on specific why's.

They laugh at me and laugh at the scientific types as being stupid...

So look at the grillion other religions that have zero conflict with
science. This is a gardening group so consider one of the many nature
based religions. At one point I asked Thor if he cared how people
followed him. Thor is very good about being there but not so good at
paying attention to questions. After about a year of repeating the
question he finally came back with a shrugging "followers are good"
"have another ale". I conclude from that that it doesn't much matter
if you decide to follow his nature based system versus one of the many
others. But you don't seem to have noticed that options exist at all.

Religious people refuse to believe in global warming ...

This one I have trouble accepting. Century old photos and year old
photos of pretty much any glacier in the world make the conclusion so
trivial. What I have trouble accepting is the irrationality of the
stance of ignoring such simple and overwhleming evidence. On the other
hand I am also very slow about my stance on the degree of human
input. But my being behind the times on degree of human influence
changes little in how I would approach the issue.

I do have objections to how folks are reaction to the fact of climate
change. In the 900s cattle were ranched on Greenland so it's clear the
current records don't go very far back. But Greenland was settled in a
period of global warming that was clearly warmer than we are right now.
Exactly how bad was it to be able to ranch cattle on Greenland? This
matters on why I am slow to evolve my stance on the degree of human
contribution - There was not much human contribution in those centuries
compared to now.

Reading history books says it was a time of extreme social change. Ah
hah, there's the political motivation right there. Folks are grabbing
for power at a time near the beginning of extreme social change. They
want time to build momentum and use leverage. Clearly it's not about
whether global warming is happening but about who will be in power and
what they will do with that power. That means their degree of sincerity
is extremely crucial. Folks calling themselves environmentalists who
are anti-nuke, check, very low degree of rationality and thus very low
degree of sincerity.

Billy has dived face first into that political fray. What's wrong with
ranching cattle on Greenland? What's wrong with letting the social
change as it will as the USDA zones move? Why bother with an irrational
religion that battles with science when there are rational religions
with zero conflict with science that are nature based?

Somebody call?

It's called arrogance to say you know something, when you have no proof
one way, or the other. A theist claims certainty. An atheist claims
certainty. We agnostics see no proof one way or another. Theism, and
atheism are both a matter of faith.

As far as global warming goes, I'm down with dairy ranching in
Greenland, but when California's Central Valley floods because of rising
sea levels, where are you going to get your produce then?
--

And then there is living(?) with Global Warming.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?cha...eID=00037A5 D
-A938-150E-A93883414B7F0000

October 2006 Scientific American Magazine

Impact from the Deep

Strangling heat and gases emanating from the earth and sea, not
asteroids, most likely caused several ancient mass extinctions. Could
the same killer-greenhouse conditions build once again?

By Peter D. Ward

. . .
In today's oceans, oxygen is present in essentially equal concentrations
from top to bottom because it dissolves from the atmosphere into the
water and is carried downward by ocean circulation. Only under unusual
circumstances, such as those that exist in the Black Sea, do anoxic
conditions below the surface permit a wide variety of oxygen-hating
organisms to thrive in the water column. Those deep-dwelling anaerobic
microbes churn out copious amounts of hydrogen sulfide, which also
dissolves into the seawater. As its concentration builds, the H2S
diffuses upward, where it encounters oxygen diffusing downward. So long
as their balance remains undisturbed, the oxygenated and hydrogen
sulfide-saturated waters stay separated, and their interface, known as
the chemocline, is stable. Typically the green and purple sulfur
bacteria live in that chemocline, enjoying the supply of H2S from below
and sunlight from above.

Yet calculations by geoscientists Lee R. Kump and Michael A. Arthur of
Pennsylvania State University have shown that if oxygen levels drop in
the oceans, conditions begin to favor the deep-sea anaerobic bacteria,
which proliferate and produce greater amounts of hydrogen sulfide. In
their models, if the deepwater H2S concentrations were to increase
beyond a critical threshold during such an interval of oceanic anoxia,
then the chemocline separating the H2S-rich deepwater from oxygenated
surface water could have floated up to the top abruptly. The horrific
result would be great bubbles of toxic H2S gas erupting into the
atmosphere.

Their studies indicate that enough H2S was produced by such ocean
upwellings at the end of the Permian to cause extinctions both on land
and in the sea. And this strangling gas would not have been the only
killer. Models by Alexander Pavlov of the University of Arizona show
that the H2S would also have attacked the planet's ozone shield, an
atmospheric layer that protects life from the sun's ultraviolet (UV)
radiation. Evidence that such a disruption of the ozone layer did happen
at the end of the Permian exists in fossil spores from Greenland, which
display deformities known to result from extended exposure to high UV
levels. Today we can also see that underneath "holes" in the ozone
shield, especially in the Antarctic, the biomass of phytoplankton
rapidly decreases. And if the base of the food chain is destroyed, it is
not long until the organisms higher up are in desperate straits as well.

Kump and Arthur estimate that the amount of H2S gas entering the late
Permian atmosphere from the oceans was more than 2,000 times the small
amount given off by volcanoes today. Enough of the toxic gas would have
permeated the atmosphere to have killed both plants and
animals--particularly because the lethality of H2S increases with
temperature. And several large and small mass extinctions seem to have
occurred during short intervals of global warming. That is where the
ancient volcanic activity may have come in.

Around the time of multiple mass extinctions, major volcanic events are
known to have extruded thousands of square kilometers of lava onto the
land or the seafloor. A by-product of this tremendous volcanic
outpouring would have been enormous volumes of carbon dioxide and
methane entering the atmosphere, which would have caused rapid global
warming. During the latest Permian and Triassic as well as in the early
Jurassic, middle Cretaceous and late Paleocene, among other periods, the
carbon-isotope record confirms that CO2 concentrations skyrocketed
immediately before the start of the extinctions and then stayed high for
hundreds of thousands to a few million years.
(cont.)
----

The above article refers to CO2 in the 1000 ppm range. We are coming up
on 400 ppm presently.
---

If you like weekends, thank a union.

===
--
---------
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYIC0eZYEtI
http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2011/3/7/michael_moore
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZkDikRLQrw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyE5wjc4XOw

In article ,
Nad R wrote:

Doug Freyburger wrote:

There are only two religions out there that are actively irrational.
Another irrational statement from a religious person.

Science addresses the how. Religion addresses the why.
Science addresses the why. Engineering addresses the how.
Religion is just pure nonsense. Not needed at all.

So look at the grillion other religions that have zero conflict with
science.
Science and Religion is like oil and water, they do not mix.

I do have objections to how folks are reaction to the fact of climate
change.
Of course you do, most religious people are, they believe god will protect
them and save us all. While destroying our environment until Jesus
returns... Oh Brother!

Folks calling themselves environmentalists who are anti-nuke.
Yea, yea, God will protect us all. I have no faith in Nukes or your God!

Why bother with an irrational religion that battles with science when
there are rational religions

"Rational Religions"? That is an Oxymoron statement like "Pretty Ugly".

I see I cannot escape the religious nuts even on Usenet. This is last of
this religious debate and will i not respond further as a waste of time.

In the introduction to Cat's Cradel, Kurt Vonnegut says,"If you can't
understand how a perfectly good religion can be based on a pack of lies,
then you probably shouldn't read this book".

Let me assure you, Nad, that Doug is one of the "good guys".

If you haven't already listened to it, you'd probably enjoy the last URL
below.


If you like weekends, thank a union.

==
--
---------
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYIC0eZYEtI
http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2011/3/7/michael_moore
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZkDikRLQrw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyE5wjc4XOw

"David Hare-Scott" wrote in message
FarmI wrote:
"Doug Freyburger" wrote in message
...
FarmI wrote:

LOL. As a result of wandering round the Net, I've become convinced
that Geography is either ineffectively taught, or not taught at all
in USian schools.

I vote for taught but completely forgotten after the test by the
majority of students. Consider the TV show "Are you smarter than a
fifth grader?" to see how much most forget.

How much school stuff should be retained? Vastly more than is by
most. How much effort should be spent at imporoving the median
retention? I have no idea. I remember enough of the material that
I am amazed at what folks don't know.

:-)) I'm amazed too - and especially that so much of the compulsory
subject matter didn't seem to penetrate some skulls.

I was listening to a radio quizz the other night and the question
asked was: What was the relationship between Ophelia and Laertes and
give the name of the Shakespearian play in which they appeared?

The answers astounded me. In the end the compere had to give so many
hints about the realtionship that he effectivley gave the person the
answer, but then she couldn't manage to produce the name of the play.
She said Grapes of Wrath. Another guess was something just as equally
impossible and by an another American author although that guess was
actually a play rather than a novel.

Of the actual Shakespearean plays the offerings were Romeo and Juliet,
Othello (at least there was one tragedy mentioned), Much ado about
nothing, Midsummer's Night Dream and a couple of others. It was
gobbsmackingly depressing that it took so long and that so many
people couldn't answer or bowed out and even attempt to answer.

There is a difference between not knowing your Shakespeare and voting for
candidates who want to invade a country that you cannot find on a map and
know nothing about.

Indeed, but then we had moved to discussing retention of skool larned
material.

"Nad R" wrote in message

My entire family except me are strong fundamental Christians. I am an
atheist with strong ties to science. Almost everyone in my family believes
in the Ptolemaic system where I believe in the Copernican system. I would
ask them if the Sun was the center of the solar system, they all stated
the
earth was the center because they could see the sun move. And the bible
states that the Sun stood still, so how could it be the center if it did
not move. They laugh at me and laugh at the scientific types as being
stupid... It is a sad world... I am also out numbered.

Religious people refuse to believe in global warming, because the bible
states that God would not destroy the earth with water again and refuse to
believe that the poles are melting. They dismiss pollution because they
believe God will create a new planet for them when Jesus Christ returns.

I have two minister nephews that went to Christian universities at have
PHD's in theology and they believe in the crap listed above! They believe
in the literal translation of the bible. They all watch Glen Beck and
believe in the crap he spews. Religious people have no concept of logical
reasoning, they believe in what the religious authorities tell them
without
question.

Are you kidding?

FarmI wrote:
"Nad R" wrote in message

My entire family except me are strong fundamental Christians. I am an
atheist with strong ties to science. Almost everyone in my family
believes in the Ptolemaic system where I believe in the Copernican
system. I would ask them if the Sun was the center of the solar
system, they all stated the
earth was the center because they could see the sun move. And the
bible states that the Sun stood still, so how could it be the center
if it did not move. They laugh at me and laugh at the scientific
types as being stupid... It is a sad world... I am also out numbered.

Religious people refuse to believe in global warming, because the
bible states that God would not destroy the earth with water again
and refuse to believe that the poles are melting. They dismiss
pollution because they believe God will create a new planet for them
when Jesus Christ returns. I have two minister nephews that went to
Christian universities at
have PHD's in theology and they believe in the crap listed above!
They believe in the literal translation of the bible. They all watch
Glen Beck and believe in the crap he spews. Religious people have no
concept of logical reasoning, they believe in what the religious
authorities tell them without
question.

Are you kidding?

Sadly no. The fundamentalist/creationist bible belt of the USA is way
beyond anything that that you or I are likely to meet in the flesh. Think
of the child of Pauline Hanson and Fred Nile on crystal meth. I am not
having a go at religion or Christianity in general but this particular mob
are crazy, ignorant and would love to see the world made into a theocracy,
with them in charge of course - Christian Taliban.

We are way OT so I think I will stop now.

D

In article ,
"David Hare-Scott" wrote:

FarmI wrote:
"Nad R" wrote in message

My entire family except me are strong fundamental Christians. I am an
atheist with strong ties to science. Almost everyone in my family
believes in the Ptolemaic system where I believe in the Copernican
system. I would ask them if the Sun was the center of the solar
system, they all stated the
earth was the center because they could see the sun move. And the
bible states that the Sun stood still, so how could it be the center
if it did not move. They laugh at me and laugh at the scientific
types as being stupid... It is a sad world... I am also out numbered.

Religious people refuse to believe in global warming, because the
bible states that God would not destroy the earth with water again
and refuse to believe that the poles are melting. They dismiss
pollution because they believe God will create a new planet for them
when Jesus Christ returns. I have two minister nephews that went to
Christian universities at
have PHD's in theology and they believe in the crap listed above!
They believe in the literal translation of the bible. They all watch
Glen Beck and believe in the crap he spews. Religious people have no
concept of logical reasoning, they believe in what the religious
authorities tell them without
question.

Are you kidding?

Sadly no. The fundamentalist/creationist bible belt of the USA is way
beyond anything that that you or I are likely to meet in the flesh. Think
of the child of Pauline Hanson and Fred Nile on crystal meth. I am not
having a go at religion or Christianity in general but this particular mob
are crazy, ignorant and would love to see the world made into a theocracy,
with them in charge of course - Christian Taliban.

We are way OT so I think I will stop now.

D

Remember, we didn't just get criminals, we got the religious wackos too.
--
- Billy
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower, 16 April 1953
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_vN0--mHug
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyE5wjc4XOw

Billy wrote:

In the introduction to Cat's Cradel, Kurt Vonnegut says,"If you can't
understand how a perfectly good religion can be based on a pack of lies,
then you probably shouldn't read this book".

I always thought you were a hobokenist! It must have been the 250,000
cigarets, 2000 quarts of booze or your three wives that made you say that
Billy or your getting confused with Mark Twain with the Bible "being a pack
of lies".

Let me assure you, Nad, that Doug is one of the "good guys".

I am not saying he is or isn't. He did seem to confirm my suspicions. He
seemed to support a belief in a God, questioned global warming as being man
made and seemed to think nuclear energy is not that harmful to the
environment.

These are common traits among people. Yes they are exceptions to the
rules. However, it is also in my nature to categorize people and their
beliefs. After a while when i get some basic information, I can almost
always surmise the rest of his or her views. We humans weather you like it
or not fall into a few categories therefore can be type casted.

--
Enjoy Life... Nad R (Garden in zone 5a Michigan)

"FarmI" ask@itshall be given wrote:
"Nad R" wrote in message

My entire family except me are strong fundamental Christians. I am an
atheist with strong ties to science. Almost everyone in my family believes
in the Ptolemaic system where I believe in the Copernican system. I would
ask them if the Sun was the center of the solar system, they all stated
the
earth was the center because they could see the sun move. And the bible
states that the Sun stood still, so how could it be the center if it did
not move. They laugh at me and laugh at the scientific types as being
stupid... It is a sad world... I am also out numbered.

Religious people refuse to believe in global warming, because the bible
states that God would not destroy the earth with water again and refuse to
believe that the poles are melting. They dismiss pollution because they
believe God will create a new planet for them when Jesus Christ returns.

I have two minister nephews that went to Christian universities at have
PHD's in theology and they believe in the crap listed above! They believe
in the literal translation of the bible. They all watch Glen Beck and
believe in the crap he spews. Religious people have no concept of logical
reasoning, they believe in what the religious authorities tell them
without
question.

Are you kidding?

No.

--
Enjoy Life... Nad R (Garden in zone 5a Michigan)

Billy wrote:
Doug Freyburger wrote:

Billy has dived face first into that political fray. What's wrong with
ranching cattle on Greenland? What's wrong with letting the social
change as it will as the USDA zones move? Why bother with an irrational
religion that battles with science when there are rational religions
with zero conflict with science that are nature based?

Somebody call?

Chortle. You and I disagree on politics. Part of the deal. It's what
people do.

It's called arrogance to say you know something, when you have no proof
one way, or the other. A theist claims certainty. An atheist claims
certainty.

And most atheists claim that certainty based on the errors of one
specific religion without even looking at others. That's letting the
opposition define the rules in your game. The rest of the religions
out there are dismissed out of hand on the false assumption they all
make the same mistakes - They don't. As if all other religions address
deity at all -They don't. As if all other religions expect their
members to believe in the existance of deity - They don't. As if all
other religions oppose science - They don't. As if all other religions
make the errors of biblical inerrancy or biblical literalism - They
don't. To base one's atheism on these points is like dismissing the
existance of mountains because you happened to grow up in a flat region
with no visible mountains. Or to conclude the world is flat because
you've never been high enough to see its curvature youreself.

We agnostics see no proof one way or another. Theism, and
atheism are both a matter of faith.

Going on the objective only, the agnostic approach is the best
supported. Until you consider my "They don't" points above. I
personally accept, for myself, subjective evidence, knowing full well
that by definition subjective evidence is only available to myself and
does not apply to others. So I'm not an atheist. Nonetheless I decided
to join a religion that does not care if its members are atheists or
not.

As far as global warming goes, I'm down with dairy ranching in
Greenland

It's an issue not handled in the currect discussion. While the fact of
global warming completely real it demonstrates that our current century
is not the warmest of recent times. It demonstrates that the records
cited do not go back as far as climate records in general. It also
demonstrates that degree of human causation is not the primary issue
because humans have done fine in centuries past that were warmer than
today. The primary issue is the social change triggered by climate
change and what to do about it. The history of Greenland makes it clear
that global warming has happened in the past without human input so it's
not about that. A point that Nad R hasn't gotten.

but when California's Central Valley floods because of rising
sea levels, where are you going to get your produce then?

Whew it would take a lot of sea level elevation to fill the San Joacin
valley!

A question for climate geologists - As climate has changed across the
last several tens of millions of years, how much has the amount of
arable land changed? As the glaciers receded towards the poles the
deserts near the equator grew. How close to parity was that change?
Right now the USDA zones keep north in the northern hemisphere. How
much of that is a reduction of total arable land and how much of that is
a change of where the arable land is? And how much of the change in
amount of arable land is from other causes of desertification like the
human caused ones of deforrestation and irrigation causing gradual salt
build up in the soil?

The discussion never does seem to address the net change in arable land
as the glaciers recede and the deserts grow. Until you start reading
Billy's material about building up new soil and that's an indirect
reference.

In article ,
Nad R wrote:

Billy wrote:

In the introduction to Cat's Cradel, Kurt Vonnegut says,"If you can't
understand how a perfectly good religion can be based on a pack of lies,
then you probably shouldn't read this book".

I always thought you were a hobokenist! It must have been the 250,000
cigarets, 2000 quarts of booze or your three wives that made you say that
Billy or your getting confused with Mark Twain with the Bible "being a pack
of lies".

Let me assure you, Nad, that Doug is one of the "good guys".

I am not saying he is or isn't. He did seem to confirm my suspicions. He
seemed to support a belief in a God, questioned global warming as being man
made and seemed to think nuclear energy is not that harmful to the
environment.

These are common traits among people. Yes they are exceptions to the
rules. However, it is also in my nature to categorize people and their
beliefs. After a while when i get some basic information, I can almost
always surmise the rest of his or her views. We humans weather you like it
or not fall into a few categories therefore can be type casted.

All analogies fall apart at some point.
-----


The garden suggests there might be a place where we can meet nature
halfway.
-- Michael Pollan

---

If you like weekends, thank a union.
--
---------
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYIC0eZYEtI
http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2011/3/7/michael_moore
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZkDikRLQrw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyE5wjc4XOw