45% of Americans are Morons

[Alexander's Horse]

you being a case in point

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Az
"Faith in science" is probably an oxymoron

I disagree. All belief systems (be they religions or spiritualities) are trying to explain the world for the human mind, to make out sense out of the world.

Science is the most modern, and the most satisfying method we devised so far to explain how our world works. Its great superiority over the other systems is its adaptability, and the lack of dogmatism among real scientists.

However, there can be a "vulgar" form of science, which basically believes that science has the potential to explain everything (though this potential is unreached as of yet). Among the holders of this belief, there is no skeptisicm toward science itself (even if this belief allows for skepticism toward specific scientific results).

When you believe that a system-explaining-the-world can find the absolute truth, when you don't doubt its ability to do so, you do have faith.

On 'Poly, I know that St Leo shares this faith, and I believe Kuci does too.

I agree that the word "faith" doesn't fit the current particular situation, where Odin supports the GMO (I have no idea whether Odin is a believer in Science, or whether he admits that science itself has its limits)

[Mr. Harley]

Odin

Thats the fault of the capitalist system, not the concept of genetic engineering itself. Thats like saying pharmacuticals are bad and shouldn't be used just because the greed of the drug companies.

We already have genetically engineered rice with added vitamins to fight the deficiencies so prevalent in parts of the third world. They are working to develop "vaccine plants" that would take the place of some of the standard vaccines that could save tens of thousands of poor children per year.

They are already spewing poisons, and unfortunately free trade and a lack of regulations has led to many introduced, agressive weed species around the world. For example - can you say "kudzu"? The ability to spray herbicides and not lose a years crop is very nice for farmers. Also, it permits no-till systems that produce less run-off, conserves the soil, and is generally helpful.

Now, there are problems. For example, many of the herbicides and perticides that are used by American farmers today require special liscensing. The idea is to prevent these from getting into the environment. Properly done it largely works. But in the abscence of effective sanctions, some rural politician will run on "freeing small businesses and farmers from all that pesky regulation" and prevent the rules from having any teeth, i.e. penalties. That is NOT the fault of the agribusiness, but of the involved farmers, who are only a small subset of farmers in general.

The superweed problem is legit, and so is the problem of contamination of wild stocks, i.e. maize. However, those can be worked around, and the potential of biotech crops is huge. Now Monsanto's ties to the government, preventing effective regulation - that is a major problem.

[MOBIUS]

Originally posted by Alexander's Horse
you being a case in point

Er no, apparently I am a whacked out hippy luddite for having the temerity to question GM foods...

I'm just the guy in the middle who thinks that both Religious people and Scientists can be as fanatic as each other - but at least the religious nutters aren't able to blow up the planet without their scientific 'brethren'...

[MOBIUS]

Originally posted by Spiffor

I disagree. All belief systems (be they religions or spiritualities) are trying to explain the world for the human mind, to make out sense out of the world.

At least he covered his ass by saying 'probably'...

Quite apt considering his avatar.

[Alexander's Horse]

Originally posted by MOBIUS


Er no, apparently I am a whacked out hippy luddite for having the temerity to question GM foods...

I'm just the guy in the middle who thinks that both Religious people and Scientists can be as fanatic as each other - but at least the religious nutters aren't able to blow up the planet without their scientific 'brethren'...

Nup - you're a typical Welsh non conformist .

[Az]

The fact that you have sought to argue against its use when talking about science in a thread about religion shows why it is the correct word to use in the first place..

witty saying etc. etc. - I thought that 'faith' was used instead of 'blind faith' or 'almost blind faith' - and 'science' was used in the form of 'findings and accomplishments of the scientific method in modern times' - Thus making it an oxymoron, because the scientific method is about getting as close to the truth as possible, but never thinking that you've undoubtably got the full picture.

I disagree. All belief systems (be they religions or spiritualities) are trying to explain the world for the human mind, to make out sense out of the world.

The fact that all belief systems are "trying to make sense of the universe", doesn't mean that all mental constructs and/or algorithms that try to make sense of the universe are belief systems.

Science is the most modern, and the most satisfying method we devised so far to explain how our world works. Its great superiority over the other systems is its adaptability, and the lack of dogmatism among real scientists.

"science" is nothing more than the only genuine attempt to realize the truth by looking at the world so far. Even the cruder attempts of the ancients were science, and although they didn't perfect the "algorithm" of processing reality into theory, they were also doing science.

It's like the silly "what's outside the universe" question - with the universe defined as everything, the question carries a false assumption - Just the same, science isn't "another method of attempting to make sense of the world", but the definition of attemting to make sense of the world by observing it neutrally.

Again, BY DEFINITION, If you're not trying to observe the world neutrally, You're not observing the world, but the world+ your emotions. This is where religions, and many philosophical schools of thought are separated from science - the major body of their work is words and human emotions. This is also a problem of the social sciences.

However, there can be a "vulgar" form of science, which basically believes that science has the potential to explain everything

If anything can explain everything to us, it's only science - maybe in a different from from the questions we ask today, it's possible, but it still will be science, because looking for rules of existance in the universe neutrally is the definition of science. This is true, again, by definition, because it's scope of vision is much less self-oriented. It's looking where you need to look in order to understand the unverse - it's looking at the universe. Not at yourself.

When you believe that a system-explaining-the-world can find the absolute truth, when you don't doubt its ability to do so, you do have faith.

This is a boring deconstructivist attempt to place science together with other "attempts to understand the truth", again, for the Nth time, because science is qualitatively different - it looks at the things it's trying to explain.

[MOBIUS]

Originally posted by shawnmmcc
We already have genetically engineered rice with added vitamins to fight the deficiencies so prevalent in parts of the third world. They are working to develop "vaccine plants" that would take the place of some of the standard vaccines that could save tens of thousands of poor children per year.

Absolutely.

I applaud anything that is positive in the GM 'field' - as long as the procedures in question are properly regulated. However I bet those crops are patented meaning that those farmers are now beholden to the GM companies for their crops.

Too often they are not though, and the utter farce of the British trials is a case in point. Right from the beginning it was obvious it would **** up and **** up it did...

Sure we had plenty of 'don't worry, everything is perfectly safe' from the GM companies but without proper regulation it was only a matter of time that things might go wrong...

Weed discovery brings calls for GM ban

The GM industry needs to be regulated at least as much if not more than the Pharmaceutical industry!

As for Kudzu. Well actually that was really a form of environmentally aesthic GMing in the 19th century...

Just like any number of introduced species all over the world that are seriously damaging their respective environments (our kudzu equivalent are rhododendrons)

Perhaps my favourite story of introduced species going wrong is the introduction of the mongoose to Hawai'i for the sheer stupidity of it.

Apparently they were having such a bad rat problem (also introduced) that they'd heard that the mongoose had been introduced in the caribbean to combat rats.

But instead of waiting for the results, the powers that be introduced them into Hawai'i!

Now the major problem is that the rat is noctural, whereas the mongoose is diurnal - so they basically didn't encounter each other and instead of curing the rat problem they now also had a mongoose problem!!!

Which would be hilarious if it wasn't so damaging to Hawai'i's birdlife...

There are countless stories of man ****ing up his environment - if we are going to develop GM we need to do it properly!

[Mr. Harley]

As I said - the weeds are a good point. So is BT - it turns out that the farmers DO NOT follow the protocols for planting it, they are a bit of a pain, and now we have maize insect pests developing resistance. We agree the problem is regulation, and sadly the environment in the US is a trifle, shall we say, inadequate (as I mentioned about Monsanto getting to write the regs due to bribery, oops, I mean access to the Bush administration. The Dems are only slightly better - as in sl*ts instead of wh*res). Feeding antibiotics to chickens for cheaper weight gain - now that qualifies as moronic.

[MosesPresley]

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Az

However, there can be a "vulgar" form of science, which basically believes that science has the potential to explain everything

If anything can explain everything to us, it's only science - maybe in a different from from the questions we ask today, it's possible, but it still will be science, because looking for rules of existance in the universe neutrally is the definition of science. This is true, again, by definition, because it's scope of vision is much less self-oriented. It's looking where you need to look in order to understand the unverse - it's looking at the universe. Not at yourself.

And you have faith in this statement.

[Robert]

There was a Russian disident (during the communistic years).
He said that during school he was teached that oftenly that God does not exist that he concluded that God must exist since there's no reason to talk that oftenly about something that doesn't exist.

If I read all those qualifications give by people to creationists I must conclude that creationism must be right since there's no reason to bash something that often and that hard if it doesn't exist at all.

MOBIUS: 45% of Americans are Morons

MOBIUS: Well someone who believes in a "young earth" is even more of a mug IMHO...

Guynemer: I have to serve the kids. So I can at least teach them and hope it gets through.

Their parents and ****ing hopeless.

Japher: Florida has baptist idiots, old morons caught in their ways, and catholic nuts from cuba

Sava: creationists = retards

Dis: But I certainly don't believe in creationism. That's just whacko

My father always teached my sister and me, when we were arguing, that the one who was yelling and insulting most obviously was wrong.
He appeared to be right most of the times.

I don't believe in evolution, well, I don't believe that the current living organisms have evolved from one first living cell or whatever.

I'm not sure if I'm a creationist.
I believe that God may have created the earth 6000 years ago. Might have been much longer ago though. In fact I'm sure that the earth's not younger then 6000 years

[Kuciwalker]

I don't believe in evolution, well, I don't believe that the current living organisms have evolved from one first living cell or whatever.

1) The two are not equivalent.

2) There's sigificant evidence that that is not the case, but rather all life evolved from a community of protocells.

[Kidlicious]

What 'significant' evidence Kuci?

[Mr. Harley]

Mitochondria, different types of DNA structures (bacteria versus protozoa, for example), chloroplasts, plus various other organelles in various kinds of independent, non-bacterial cells. Plus some of the weird crap out there, like ricketsia (did I spell that right after almost 30 years?), etc. I suspect Kuci is even more up to date than I am, he's been in school alot more recently.