Dogmatic “deniers”

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The problem with many people (deniers) who have arguments on any issue is that they are not looking for facts to establish their own viewpoints. This becomes obvious when they, not content to say, “I strongly disagree with [idea] and believe [counter-idea],” but bluntly say, “[counter-idea]” and then proceed with that premise regardless of what anyone else says. Once that happens, those who reject the counter-idea find themselves becoming dogmatic in return to avoid appearing weak, thus degrading the general content of the discussion. The deniers rely on ingrained prejudices they know exist in many other people in order to build a following.

The opposition to evolution is entirely based on religious prejudices supported by semantic ploys, and nothing else. A lot of the “evidences” used to attack evolution are things that are exceptional in nature and when the Creationists see them, they say, “We do not know how these things could have happen, so we may safely assume that God did it.” That attitude totally denies scientific thinking. Evolution is scientific precisely because it is consistent with physical and chemical laws that were previously established via the scientific method. That Creationists do not note this obvious fact discredits them from the start.

As for the global warming issue, people have a natural tendency to deny facts that make them uncomfortable, because they know that then they will have to make great sacrifices to undo the damage that is being done and prevent more damage. The corporations and the politicians who support them play on this laziness to give excuses for not doing anything to change things. For example, the statement that increased solar output is a factor behind global warming only adds to the urgency that we keep the emissions of greenhouse gases at a low levels in the future; it does not negate our responsiblity to deal with the problem. That a few areas in the world are colder than normal is a result of warmer atmospheric conditions causing greater evaporation of water, resulting in greater cloud coverage and precipitation in areas that are prone to them, and of course this causes temperatures in those areas to fall. But the deniers forget one thing: The DESERT regions, which make nearly a third of the land area of Earth, are NOT affected by this trend and the temperatures there will remain high, resulting in great instabilities in the atmosphere, producing a greater frequency of storms.
 
Natural reality is complex, and science is supposed to measure that reality in all its forms. Those who attempt to reduce it to a simple formula via “logical” arguments are in fact the worst enemies of science.

Global warming deniers’ claims about a conspiracy driving the concern about global warming are a classic attempt to “turn reality upside down”. In fact, the real conspiracy is between the rich executives of the fossil fuel corporations and the conservative politicians whose servicies are paid for by the executives. Some scientists also side with the deniers, but that only indicates the extent of corruption that may exist in any profession, as well as the tendency of even people who should know better to decieve themselves.

The “chain of reason” in the global warming issue

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There are four links in that chain, and all must be solid for the man-made global warming issue to be valid. Nothing else matters.

  1. Has CO2 levels in the Earth’s atmosphere been increasing over the past century? Scientific reports indicate that is the case.
  2. Is CO2 a gas that causes heat to be retained in an atmosphere, thus making it a “greenhouse gas”? Scientific reports indicate that is the case.
  3. Does human industrial and transportative processes produce vast quantities of CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere? Scientific reports indicate that is the case.
  4. Has the average global temperature actually increased over the past few decades? Scientific reports indicate that is the case.

Those who throw around issues like nuclear power, questionable reports of exceptional weather, recent solar output, or natural climate changes in ancient or prehistoric times, only seek to cloud the issue. Unless and until you deal directly with the four central issues at the heart of the global warming issue, you have no real case.

The chain of reason remains unbroken.

The ultimate solution to environmental problems

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Any discussion about environmental problems that does not include an effort to stop human population growth and ultimately reduce the population to levels far less than that of today is a waste of time. There are 6 1/2 billion humans on Earth now, and that alone is a serious cause of pollution, habitat destruction, loss of biodiversity, and wars.In addition to this, we must reeducate the people not to be so materialistic, and make sure that multi-national corporations no longer have so much political influence around the world!

Questions Israel-bashers need to answer

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If Israel is so evil, and the Palestinians are merely its innocent victims: 

  • Why did the Arabs, and not the Jews in Palestine, reject the UN offer in 1947 to divide the land between the two groups so both peoples could have separate states side by side?
  • Why did six Arab states declare war on Israel as soon as it declared its Independence from the British Mandate in 1948?
  • Why was Israel at its founding the only democracy in the Middle East, while its Arab enemies were either absolute monarchies or military dictatorships?
  • Why does Israel maintain within its borders an Arab minority that lives in peace with their Jewish neighbors?
  • Why, when the Arabs failed to destroy Israel through conventional warfare, did some of them resort to terrorism, including suicide bombers?
  • Why is it OK for Arabs to have several nations of their own in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Kuwait, Yemen, Oman, Qatar, and Bahrain, but it is not OK for the Jews to also have a state of their own there?
  • Why did Egypt and Jordan sign peace treaties with Israel?
  • Why, during the war between Israel and Hezebollah in the summer of 2006, did Hezebollah shoot so many rockets at the city of Haifa, which is well known as a place where Jews, Christians, and Muslims live together in peace, as well as the location of the World Center of the Baha’i Faith?

I find it strange that Israel bashers never want to address these issues.

What makes an empire fall?

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Throughout history, great empires have risen and fallen and fought each other over land, resources and people. It seems like a vicious cycle that these empires build themselves over several centuries only to fall later. The Romans, the Babylonians, the Egyptians, the Persians, the Ottomans, the Mongols, the British, the French and now the Americans have all been known as great powers in the world. What is it that causes the disruptions that occur later to destroy great empires?

First, I think it is contentment of the people with the status quo instead of seeking the best possible way to govern a people. “It worked for our ancestors, so it must be good for us too!” we say. Without progress and reform of the government, expansion of an empire can create many problems. The Roman Empire grew from a small city-state into controlling the entire Mediterranean region in a few hundred years. Likewise, the United States of America has grown from 13 small states along the Atlantic coast of North America into 50 states and several territories stretching from Puerto Rico in the Caribbean Sea to Guam in the western Pacific Ocean and from Alaska in the far north to Florida in the south, yet the same government designed for 13 states is still being used for all of them!

Second, we may consider the frog in boiling water concept. If you toss a frog in water that is already boiling, it will immediatly jump out. But the same frog placed in cool water that is then sssssssllllllloooooooooowwwwwlllllyyyyyy heated will end up dead because it will not jump out, it’s cold blooded body “adapting” to the heat until it gets too hot to live. Likewise, I would suggest that if George W. Bush was doing the kinds of things 50 years ago that he is doing today (like starting a war in Iraq under false pretenses, or trying to give away our wildlife refuges to exploitation by oil companies), he would have been IMPEACHED by now or at least he would not have been reelected by the people. Sadly, it seems that the Bush administration thinks we are all frogs, but we are PEOPLE and we know what corruption and hypocrisy is, so we must fight it! Tolerance of corruption in government is another reason why empires fall.

Third, empires break up or are destroyed because of one people seeking to impose their will on other peoples. Eventually, the other peoples rebel leading to violence, destruction, hatred, killing, and ruin. While powerful military forces may build up an empire, the rebellious subjects inevitiably learn how to build up their own military, causing splits in the empire.

Today, we see evidence of all three of these tragic trends in present day American society. Ironically, the very principles of freedom and democracy that we are supposed to treasure have become so twisted that it is hard to see the difference now between America as it is now and the British colonial empire that Americans originally broke away from. With that in mind, I would recommend a second American Revolution to save ourselves from the fate of the empires that came before us!

Was our Solar System Intelligently Designed?

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The concepts of “young-Earth” Creationism and Intelligent Design, which may seem halfway plausible in the field of biology, completely fall apart when attempts are made to apply them to the field of planetary astronomy. The very structure of the Solar System casts doubt upon the notion that an Intelligent Designer created it only a few thousand years ago.

  1. The orbits of the planets do not exist as circles, but as ellipses. In ancient times until the 17th Century, most astronomers insisted that the planets moved in circles because circles were held to be “perfect”.
  2. The surfaces of most solid bodies in the Solar System are battered with craters, indicating a violent and chaotic process of formation.
  3. As the recent controversy over the (dwarf) planet of Pluto showed, it is almost impossible to consistently categorize the various bodies of the Solar System.  Several moons of the gas giant planets, for example, are bigger than Mercury.
  4. The space between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter are filled with thousands of rocky masses known as asteroids. They serve no practical purpose and even pose a serious threat to life on Earth. The extinction of the dinosaurs, for example, is thought to have occured due to the impact of an asteriod 65 million years ago. Many asteriods even have orbits that take them dangerously close to Earth.
  5. The Earth’s rotation period (the basis of our “day”), the moon’s revolution period (the basis of our “month”), and the Earth’s revolution period (the basis of our “year”) do not match up precisely, making the formulation of calendars a very complicated business.
  6. There is no consistency to the rotational period of the planets. Earth and Mars have 24 hour days, but a day on Jupiter is less than 10 hours long, while a “day” on Venus is 243 times longer than that of Earth. In addition, Venus rotates BACKWARDS!
  7. Venus itself is a planet so hostile to life that astronomers, including the late Carl Sagan, have compared it to the Judeo-Christian vision of Hell.
  8. Far beyond the orbit of Neptune, there exist millions of tiny comets, some of which are drawn close to the Sun, resulting in a spectacular display as its ices sublime, producing the comet’s “tail”. But these comets could also collide with Earth, posing another threat to life on that planet.
  9. All four gas giant planets have rings, but there is no consistent pattern to them. 
  10. Most of the planets have an axal tilt, but Uranus and Pluto are turned more than 90 degrees from the vertical.

If I were an Intelligent Designer, would I have made the Solar System only a few thousand years ago in such a chaotic way as to fool scientists into thinking that it had formed billions of years ago of entirely naturalistic forces?

Certainly not!

We need a scientific, not religious, approach to ethics!

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For thousands of years, people have created for themselves societies to live in and have expressed moral codes to both define those societies and to recommend improvements to them. Because all human beings are imperfect, the moral codes they create are also imperfect, but the principles of free inquiry, experimentation, and empiricism enable us to determine those ethical codes that work better than others in creating and maintaining societies that work for the good of the most people.


The danger comes when misguided people attempt to impede one or more of these processes. They suppress free inquiry though censorship, they cut off social experimentation through political tyranny favoring the status quo, and/or they deny empiricism by invoking religious dogmatism to claim without proof that a certain moral code from ancient times is as applicable today as it was when the moral code was first formulated. The results have been clearly shown repeatedly throughout history: social stagnation leading to violent revolution, leading again to social stagnation. Various forms of bigotry and extremism expressed by people either favoring one group of people over all others, or attempting to be “consistent” with a narrow point of view that itself cannot be supported empirically, result in social divisions that lead to violence when those impulses are not restrained.Science by itself cannot dictate ethics, but it can and should test ethical standards and rules that originate from religion and philosophy to either support or falsify them. The best rules are those that provide for the welfare of the most people over the longest period of time, rather than those that help a group of people in the short term.

The Curse of Urban Sprawl

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In recent years, much has been said in America about the phenomenon of urban sprawl, the expansion of cities and their suburban regions into areas that were formerly rural or natural, crowding out wildlife. If it were a matter of population growth in the cities, this would be happening at a much slower rate, since the population of the United States has been increasing at “only” a few percent each year, yet the cities seem to be EXPLODING, almost like squid stretching out their tentacles to grab more and more land until, in some areas, giant cities are starting to blend into one another and there is little or no natural land between them. WHY?   Here’s a fictional story to illustrate why:

Many of the people of Giant City were getting fed up with the pollution, the heavy traffic, the crime rate and the corruption there, as well as the feeling they were little more than sardines in a can. Desperate for relief, many of them took frequent vacations to the Country, where they felt at peace, but only for a short time. Eventually, some of the residents of Giant City decided to move to the Country permanently. In doing so, they built Small Town. With natural beauty, many wild animals, and fresh air and water, the people were happy….for a while.
But later, the new residents of Small Town began to miss some of the conviences of life in Giant City such as shopping malls, movie theaters, and fancy restaurants. They would go to Giant City for such things, but after a year or two they grew tired of having to go so far back and forth. Then the mayor of Small Town had an idea: “I will being revenue to Small Town by having new businesses establish themselves here!”
So a tiny shopping mall was built, with a few business moving into it, and it DID bring much money into the coffers of Small Town. Over many years, the mall grew, adding a small movie theater and several restaurants. More and more people moved from Giant City to Small Town, and more and more businesses came to establish themselves and compete with businesses already there.
After about 50 years, the council of Small Town voted to build a highway network in and around their land to make the movement of traffic easier and increase still further the flow of business in the town. Only by the time they were done, Small Town was no longer small. It had grown into Big Suburb, with air and water pollution now rampant there and with the wildlife disappearing. The older residents who remembered Small Town lamented the loss of the peaceful, quiet life they had known, but the younger ones didn’t care. They were just obsessed with the latest fashions, trends, and junk, which the businesses moving into Big Suburb were all too happy to provide. Instead of the people escaping from Giant City, they had merely recreated it in a different place!Of course, there is a moral to this story: IF YOU WISH TO LEAVE THE CITY AND ENJOY THE BEAUTY OF COUNTRY LIFE, FORSAKE EVERYTHING ASSOCIATED WITH THE CITY! AS LONG AS YOU ARE TIED TO URBAN LIFE, YOU CAN’T JUST MOVE INTO THE COUNTRY AND EXPECT IT NOT TO CHANGE! EITHER LEARN TO LIVE OFF THE LAND LIKE A FARMER OR A CAVE MAN WOULD, OR STAY IN THE GIANT CITIES WHERE YOU BELONG! NO MATTER WHERE YOU LIVE, YOU SIMPLY CAN’T HAVE IT ALL!!!

How to Make Enemies and Irritate People

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As much as I enjoy debates in the internet, I have noticed that certain people tend to engage in tactics that cause the debates to degenerate into slugfests instead of allowing them to end on a civil note. Here are some examples of what they do:

  1. Lie constantly. It does not matter if what you say has no basis in fact whatsoever. As long as you can make a counter to any statement of fact or logical argument that someone makes, you will appear to be on an equal level with your opponent.
  2. Never bother to provide a basis for your assertions by linking to a credible source of information or providing a reference regarding a matter that is not common knowledge. Of course, if you are already doing No. 1, then No. 2 comes naturally.
  3. Engage in the practice of what I call “parroting and nitpicking” constantly: Making an exact copy of your opponent’s arguments and answering them point by point exactly instead of stating a new point of your own to move the debate forward. This has two effects: It makes you appear equal to your opponent, no matter how dumb your statements turn out to be, and it encourages your opponent to respond to you in the same way, taking the debate into an endless circle.
  4. When you are accused of lying, just call your opponent a liar as well.
  5. Engage in frequent sarcastic insults to annoy your opponent.
  6. When your opponent complains that your tactics are unfair or dishonorable, accuse him of not really wanting a debate.
  7. If you know your opponent has a short temper, wait until his patience has run out and he has gotten angry and then take advantage of the situation to torture your opponent still more!
  8. Never admit you are wrong about anything. Always accuse your opponents of not thinking or of being stupid, brainwashed, ignorant, mindless, etc.
  9. Use religion as a excuse to justify your extreme position. If your opponent is not of the same religion, use that fact against him.
  10. Keep the debate going as long as possible until your opponent gives up in frustration, allowing you to claim “victory” later.
  11. Last. but not least, CREATE NEW PROFILES TO INFILTRATE AND THEN DISRUPT GROUPS YOU WERE PREVIOUSLY BLOCKED FROM, THUS VIOLATING THE GROUP OWNER’S PROPERTY RIGHTS!

If you use these tactics repeatedly, you may appear very successful in debates. But you will also gain the contempt of most people who have a sense of honor and ethics. And that contempt for you personally may also lead to a rejection of your position as well, even if the position has some truth in it.