USA Politics Thread - *No gun debate*

[Sophion-Black 0]

EDIT: nevermind, i was half right. LAW IS ALWAYS TRUE, that is why its not a LAW.

THIS set me stright

Did ya see this part?

Quote[/b] ]Some scientific theories include the theory of evolution, the theory of relativity, and the quantum theory. All of these theories are well documented and proved beyond reasonable doubt. Yet scientists continue to tinker with the component hypotheses of each theory in an attempt to make them more elegant and concise, or to make them more all-encompassing. Theories can be tweaked, but they are seldom, if ever, entirely replaced.

people are wrongfully imprisoned because the prosicution argued that the man was guilty beyond resonable doubt. just becuase its argued past resonible doubt doesn't mean its correct.

[SFWanabe 0]

If you've ever been in prison you'll be quick to find out that 90% of the people in there claim they were wrongfully inprisoned. (I did 6 months for being at the wrong place at the wrong time.)

[Moving Target 0]

nice way to start your out of home life, being sent straight to jail.

[Akira 0]

Quote[/b] ]people are wrongfully imprisoned because the prosicution argued that the man was guilty beyond resonable doubt. just becuase its argued past resonible doubt doesn't mean its correct.

Yes well they are also sent there by a group of their "peers" who usually don't have the foggiest notion about law or the court system, and only charge or acquit based on their gut reaction.

Scientific theories are tested a little bit more than that, and cross-tested by peers that are experts in the area. They just don't hand out the title "theory" to every idea that comes along.

EDIT:

Reminds me of a line from "Lost Skeleton Of Cadavera"...

"You know what this could mean for science? It could mean actual advances in the field of science!"

[miles teg 1]

I agree that comparing the legal system and the court system is a very bad comparison.  Juries are often pursuaded by emotion where as in science emotion does not enter into the picture very much.  What is more problematic is "experimenter's bias" and other issues where some scientists go out to prove that their theory is right rather then trying to disprove it.  However when it comes to the theory of evolution, there are PLENTY of scientists who are actively trying to disprove it, but so far, aside from attacking weak areas of the theory (such as successfully adapted point mutations as one cause for changes in species and new species), there is very little that they have done to refute the theory of evolution as a whole.

To me its a big stupid arguement about nothing.  "Intelligent divine design" to me is perfectly compatible with the theory of evolution.   I don't see why Christians are so hung up by the thought that the old testament was written by people thousands of years ago in a way people of that period could understand and that it should NOT be taken literally word for word.

But they just can't accept that and so they can't get past the whole "humans evolved from monkeys" thing despite the massive fossil, DNA, and primate research findings that clearly show otherwise.  Its like they close their ears and shout: "Lalalalalalalala!  I can't hear you! Lalalalalalala!!!"

If they don't like the theory, then they should work to scientifically research alternative theories rather then trying to get bits of archeological and scientific data taken out of context to prove the Bible.   Christian Archaeology in the field of Anthropology is widely considered to be a joke.  I've read Christian Archeological research articles and the methodologies they use and the conclusions they reach are just a joke.  They often ignore stratigraphy (and other archeological items found in that same strata), sometimes ignore geological data, and often also refuse to use conventional dating methods to cross verify their findings especially if they are items that may be older then they believe the Earth exhisted.

Even worse often they'll write articles about other legitimate archeological findings and totally leave out the facts and rather instead just pick and choose a few facts that verify their religious beliefs even though the actual original research project published in a secular archaeological journal had total opposite conclusions based upon all of the data from the site.  

For reasons like this and because Christian fundamentalists make so much noise and wield so much political power in America, most scientists in the field of biology and anthropology have very little respect for them and generally treat them like a bunch of uneducated hillbillys.

Personally I have nothing against hillbillys but they really should get their religion off of science and instead concentrate on raising good Christian children who follow the example of Jesus and who are educated enough to make up their own minds about what to believe or what not to believe from science and religion.

I can't tell you how many times I've been in an anthropology class in which a Christian fundamentalist student decides that its their duty to uphold creationism in a class that they shouldn't have even been taking if they didn't agree with evolutionary theory (like physical anthropology classes).

Personally I welcome the debate as I can argue from a theological perspective and from a scientific perspective as well when it comes to many things that Christian fundamentalists claim are "Christian beliefs" or "Christian Values".   But most scientists and academics can not so you end up with two sides who yell at each other because they are both talking to a wall that refuses to try and understand the beliefs of the other wall.

Chris G.

aka-Miles Teg<GD>

[Akira 0]

What really gets me is the instistance that if evolution is correct, then God is dead...or if there is a God, then evolution couldn't have happened.

My wife is studying to get into grad school for ecology conservation and biology. She has no problem reconciling her faith with science. Who's to say that God didn't "intelligently design" evolution? Who's to say God didn't make what is...and the rest was left up to chance, after all....man was given "free will" right? I would think that it would just be as easy to say,"Well God made evolution. It's in his plan" since "his plan" seems to be a favorite copout anyway...

[Grim_Fandango 0]

What really gets me is the instistance that if evolution is correct, then God is dead...or if there is a God, then evolution couldn't have happened.

My wife is studying to get into grad school for ecology conservation and biology. She has no problem reconciling her faith with science. Who's to say that God didn't "intelligently design" evolution? Who's to say God didn't make what is...and the rest was left up to chance, after all....man was given "free will" right? I would think that it would just be as easy to say,"Well God made evolution. It's in his plan" since "his plan" seems to be a favorite copout anyway...

It's a matter of perception.

You can choose to believe that God eventually created everything, but you won't be able to provide proof. Like someone said we can prove the how, but not the why.

Personally I don't think there is a why. The universe is so incomprehensibly large that there's no reason why things like life, evolution and natural systematics wouldn't be a coincidence.

What really gets me is; If God created everything, why did he leave so much out when he told the prophets what he knew?

I reject the notion of God (the creator) since Science has told me a lot more about a world that supposedly was his own making, than he did.

[Balschoiw 0]

I guess in a civilized, science based society there shouldn´t even be a discussion necesarry to know that evolution theory is true.

I guess everyone who had his eyes open in the biology class knoes that...

For G.W and the "God is the one who created us humans":

I don´t care if someone believes that he was made from a pile of sculpturing material. But sellling this as a researched science theory is bullshit.

God still has his existance guaranteed even if there is evolution.

Just make him part of the process by saying that he was/is the one who started the whole deal with a big fat background idea and the knowledge about evolution. Evolution is a big trial and error deal, a so called selfrunner, so God may have had his fingers in it aswell.

Promoting the creation theory as the ultimate truth is religious bogus and taking this theory to schools is a crim imo.

[Grim_Fandango 0]

Would it have been too much to ask to tell us that the world wasn't flat? Imagine how much time that would have saved us in the ways of exploration etc.

I think the problem with Christianity is that the Bible is so extensive that you can argue basicly everything from what's written in it. It's made by a load of different people with a lot of different oppinions, so if I was an educated Christian I'd find it hard to choose who and what I believe.

By the way, what does this discussion have to do with US Politics? It's going a bit off the topic.

[llauma 0]

Would it have been too much to ask to tell us that the world wasn't flat? Imagine how much time that would have saved us in the ways of exploration etc.

I think the problem with Christianity is that the Bible is so extensive that you can argue basicly everything from what's written in it. It's made by a load of different people with a lot of different oppinions, so if I was an educated Christian I'd find it hard to choose who and what I believe.

By the way, what does this discussion have to do with US Politics? It's going a bit off the topic.

Well religion is strongly connected to the politics of the current government. Many of the big decisions made during the last four years have been influenced by religious beliefs.

[Grim_Fandango 0]

Would it have been too much to ask to tell us that the world wasn't flat? Imagine how much time that would have saved us in the ways of exploration etc.

I think the problem with Christianity is that the Bible is so extensive that you can argue basicly everything from what's written in it. It's made by a load of different people with a lot of different oppinions, so if I was an educated Christian I'd find it hard to choose who and what I believe.

By the way, what does this discussion have to do with US Politics? It's going a bit off the topic.

Well religion is strongly connected to the politics of the current government. Many of the big decisions made during the last four years have been influenced by religious beliefs.

Of course, I know

And I think it's a very interesting subject to discuss, but I think it's taking it a bit too far making it a discussion about religion vs. science rather than a discussion of religions real effect on the current US government affecting the entire world with their policies.

I mean I doubt many people can be in doubt of what the creationist "theory" contra the theory of evolution is, or means for both sides of the oppinionated spectrum, so it's just a bit of a stalemate to get into that, rather than the policy itself.

Personally I think it's as primitive as when the catholic church tried to outlaw scientists in all different shapes and sizes back in the dark ages, and though my regard for President Bush's intellect is definetely not high, I think even he should know better than to mix in his fanatic beliefs with real politics.

[llauma 0]

Personally I think it's as primitive as when the catholic church tried to outlaw scientists in all different shapes and sizes back in the dark ages, and though my regard for President Bush's intellect is definetely not high, I think even he should know better than to mix in his fanatic beliefs with real politics.

I dont really blame Bush for not being the brightest. People like him exists everywhere. The shocking is when people gives such people power. His 'dumbness' and religious beliefs have never been a secret but still they elected him, twice.

[Akira 0]

It has to do with American politics for a variety of reasons:

1) This discussion was started when I posted an article relating the Fundie Christians protesting an IMAX movie that said "life may have developed in the sea" and effectively got a number of movie chains to not show it.

2)Kansas and Texas both have textbooks that stress evolution is a theory (in the "not proven" definition) and that creationism is still a viable theory as well.

and

3)GW got elected by directly appealing to Fundie and evangelical christians, and as a result, they have been making a lot more noise politically and socially.

[Grim_Fandango 0]

Personally I think it's as primitive as when the catholic church tried to outlaw scientists in all different shapes and sizes back in the dark ages, and though my regard for President Bush's intellect is definetely not high, I think even he should know better than to mix in his fanatic beliefs with real politics.

I dont really blame Bush for not being the brightest. People like him exists everywhere. The shocking is when people gives such people power. His 'dumbness' and religious beliefs have never been a secret but still they elected him, twice.

I think it's a bad case of economic nepotism blended in with political pride over people's general intuition.

Bush was brought to power because he has a lot of very powerful friends, and people voted for him because they always vote Republican, not because they can't see him for what he is.

But yea, I can share the odd curiosity in voting a man back into office that's actually doubled his country's national debt, thanks in part to him leading that country to war in a fit of pure pragmatic insanity to a point where I fear for the mans mental health.

What's even more odd to me is that so many European governments, including my own, jump on that crusade-circus train. Especially when their own populations clearly are saying "NOOO!".

Nothing like crimes against democracy in the name of democracy itself.

[SFWanabe 0]

nice way to start your out of home life, being sent straight to jail.

I didnt know the car was stolen....

[Sophion-Black 0]

remember... its your grandma's

[ralphwiggum 6]

I just had to post this.

[Grim_Fandango 0]

Which reminds me of another thing I can't get into my head about american politics.

Why is it worse exploiting your position as a president to get laid (even if it isn't technicly laid, let's not get into that), than going to war without even sending the CIA into the country first to determine if there's an actual threat?

Clinton gets laid and cheats on his wife like 99% of all other men in power, and you bring out the torches and forks, Bush goes to war for no reason and it's like "Yea, but what are you gonna do about stuff like that?"

Shouldn't it be the other way around?

(To the esteem of the French people; when their last president died, they even let his mistress walk in the funeral procession.)

[Sophion-Black 0]

Which reminds me of another thing I can't get into my head about american politics.

Why is it worse exploiting your position as a president to get laid (even if it isn't technicly laid, let's not get into that), than going to war without even sending the CIA into the country first to determine if there's an actual threat?

Clinton gets laid and cheats on his wife like 99% of all other men in power, and you bring out the torches and forks, Bush goes to war for no reason and it's like "Yea, but what are you gonna do about stuff like that?"

Shouldn't it be the other way around?  

(To the esteem of the French people; when their last president died, they even let his mistress walk in the funeral procession.)

The middle east reagoin was the area we had the least amount of knowlage. we flew in blind in Afghanistan, it was just "hope they have bases at the capital" for a while. then we started to get information in. You have to remember that the middle east reagion kinda hates us, so we had no real allies to rely on for incertions. Iraq is a little bit differant. everything that was built in the past 15 years was monitored. Saddam had a "secret" project called "project 2000". it was a bunker that withstood the first US attack on it ("shock and awe"). we had full knowlage were everything was. all the bunkers were destroyed, excluding "project 2000", right off the bat. we destroyed the countries ability to protect itself by destroying the Command centers, Communication centers, Leaders ability to control. and what was left of the Intell service. thats what paved the way for the "farthest march in history".

[Grim_Fandango 0]

Which reminds me of another thing I can't get into my head about american politics.

Why is it worse exploiting your position as a president to get laid (even if it isn't technicly laid, let's not get into that), than going to war without even sending the CIA into the country first to determine if there's an actual threat?

Clinton gets laid and cheats on his wife like 99% of all other men in power, and you bring out the torches and forks, Bush goes to war for no reason and it's like "Yea, but what are you gonna do about stuff like that?"

Shouldn't it be the other way around?  

(To the esteem of the French people; when their last president died, they even let his mistress walk in the funeral procession.)

The middle east reagoin was the area we had the least amount of knowlage. we flew in blind in Afghanistan, it was just "hope they have bases at the capital" for a while. then we started to get information in. You have to remember that the middle east reagion kinda hates us, so we had no real allies to rely on for incertions. Iraq is a little bit differant. everything that was built in the past 15 years was monitored. Saddam had a "secret" project called "project 2000". it was a bunker that withstood the first US attack on it ("shock and awe"). we had full knowlage were everything was. all the bunkers were destroyed, excluding "project 2000", right off the bat. we destroyed the countries ability to protect itself by destroying the Command centers, Communication centers, Leaders ability to control. and what was left of the Intell service. thats what paved the way for the "farthest march in history".

I don't see what that has to do with anything I said. I just didn't get that a president screwing an intern was more shocking than starting a war without knowing what you're doing.

The CIA had plenty of opportunities to insert agents into Iraq via the Kurdish controlled areas in the north, the Turkish border to the west and I'm very sure they'd be able to liase with anti-regimist groups in the south if they wanted to, and they've done so plenty of times in the past (even though the plug has been pulled every time it got serious).

The fact is that nobody had any reason to suspect Iraq of terrorism, even on a hunch. Anyone that knows a little about the structure and ideology of the islamic fundamentalist terror groups like Al Qaeda would know that they hate the Arab dictators of for example Iraq and Saudi Arabia, in fact I think Osama Bin Laden even said that literally on occasion.

With Afghanistan you had the Clinton administration flying Predators in there and bombing them regularly whenever something happened, so there was no mistaking what was going on there. That just wasn't the case in Iraq, which is why it wasn't spared a thought, it just simply wasn't a real threat.

You think the US would let the UN do something for them if they thought it was important? No way, they let Blix run his show and didn't invest in infiltrating the Iraqi system because they knew there was nothing there, it was just an unarmed kook having fun with executing a few of his citizens here and there, like the Saudi Arabian royal family and other dictators in the middle-east does.

[SPQR 0]

Iraq is a little bit differant. everything that was built in the past 15 years was monitored. Saddam had a "secret" project called "project 2000". it was a bunker that withstood the first US attack on it ("shock and awe"). we had full knowlage were everything was. all the bunkers were destroyed, excluding "project 2000", right off the bat.

Was USA threatened by a hardened bunker ?

Geez, what a threat !!  

Quote[/b] ]everything that was built in the past 15 years was monitored

Well, you should monitor more, as you saw WMD that weren't there  

I'm really speechless...

Quote[/b] ]thats what paved the way for the "farthest march in history".

... before the fastest retreat in history

But that's only a theory, as, unlike you, God whispers nothing to my ear  

I would like to eat a Retreat Burger, with Gore sauce and Big Lies fries please  

[denoir 0]

This is sort of both relevant in the EU and the US politics thread, but since it seems to mostly be talking about the effects of the right-wing christian influence in politics:

The wages of fundamentalism [international Herald Tribune]

Quote[/b] ]

The wages of fundamentalism

Peter Watson International Herald Tribune

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 22, 2005

CAMBRIDGE, England For decades, "big science" - indeed any kind of science - has been led by the United States. There are warning signs, however, that American science is losing its edge, and may even have peaked. One reason is that as religious and political fundamentalism tighten their grip, they are beginning to sap America's intellectual vitality.

By contrast, the political turmoil that has broken out on the other side of the Atlantic shows that Europeans grasp how destructive fundamentalism can be.

According to a survey in Physical Review, reported in May 2004, the number of scientific papers published by West European authors had overtaken those by U.S. authors in 2003, whereas in 1983 there were three American authors for every West European. The percentage of patents granted to American scientists has been falling since 1980, from 60.2 percent of the world total to 51.8 percent. In 1989, America trained the same number of science and engineering PhDs as Britain, Germany and France put together; now the United States is 5 percent behind. The number of citations in science journals, hitherto led by American scientists, is now led by Europeans.

As battles have raged in Kansas and elsewhere in America over evolution and Genesis, reputable biologists have spoken up in favor of Darwin's theories, but who knows how many students have already been turned off biology by these skirmishes?

As a result of fundamentalist opposition, America is already falling behind in cloning and stem cell research, now led by South Korean, Italian and British scientists. In February the New Scientist reported a survey in which fully half the scientists working for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said they had been pushed to alter or withdraw scientific findings for political reasons.

Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the number of Chinese and Indians traveling to America to study has fallen by more than 50 per cent - they are going to Europe instead. There are now as many Asian PhDs being produced as U.S. ones, more and more of them familiar with Europe.

Yet history shows that fundamentalism leads only to stagnation and disaster.

Look back at the four great eras of fundamentalism in world history. Under the influence of the Israelite zealots in the centuries before Christ, ancient Israel dropped behind the surrounding civilizations both politically and materially, and provoked the Romans, who annihilated them, sparking a diaspora which lasted 2,000 years. Christianity in the Roman Empire led to half a millennium of dark ages, ending only with the rediscovery of Aristotle in the 12th century. Ascetic Buddhist fundamentalism in China from the fourth century to the ninth century resulted in 4,600 monasteries being destroyed, before the Song renaissance released the finest flowering of Chinese civilization. And Islamic fundamentalism beginning in Baghdad around 1067 led to a millennium of backwardness, which still afflicts the Islamic world.

By contrast, the very history of modern Europe - the scientific revolution, the Enlightenment, the modernist battles of the 19th century - may be characterized as the victory of rationalism and science over religious dogmatism. Europe is the birthplace of science. It was in the universities of Europe, in the 12th and 13th centuries, that the experiment was conceived and the testing of hypotheses became a rival form of authority to that of the church, creating the accuracy, efficiency and prosperity on which the modern world is founded.

Whatever Europe is, it is emphatically open-minded, especially about science, the most important activity yet invented.

There is no better illustration of this than a spectacular experiment reported in a recent issue of Nature, the science weekly. A team of 17 cosmologists led by Carlos Frenk, of the University of Durham in Britain, announced they had built a computer model of the universe. After 20 years preparation, the team took over a supercomputer in Germany for an entire month, shutting down large parts of German science, performed 500,000,000,000,000,000 calculations and proved beyond reasonable doubt that Einstein was right, that the universe is expanding, and dark matter a reality.

The same week that Frenk and his team announced their results, French and Dutch voters rejected the European constitution. Among the motives for the "no" vote there was an implicit rejection of the fundamentalist threat that some see in Turkey.

Turkey has tried to rid itself of fundamentalist Islam twice - and failed twice. In the 16th century, the Turks built observatories, translated European scientific texts and sent embassies abroad to study medicine and technology. But these advances never matured since their libraries were forbidden to stock books "filled with lies" (history, astronomy, philosophy). In the 19th century Shariah law was curtailed, the Koran reinterpreted to fit with parliamentary democracy and books on chemistry and biology translated. Again it didn't last.

Above everything else, Europe is not fundamentalist. This is why, in their hearts, many Europeans have misgivings about Turkey's entry into the EU. Europe has no shortage of problems of its own making, and has no need to import fundamentalism of any variety.

[bn880 5]

If you are interested in US politics, this is a very relevant issue on the horizon:

http://www.afcn.org/node/204

Apparently there is a movement by the Republicans now to cut funding to smaller and public (versus nation wide) news corporations and media. The funny thing is this has been attempted for several decades now to control "real raw local news" and in order to keep the Republican mainstream "truth" on national netwoks dominating. It has never gotten anywhere due to the lack of Republican hold of the house/senate etc. Now there is even internal infiltration into Corporation of Public Broadcasting.

Anyway, read up on the real facts, media control is a very real factor in this 2nd Bush's term.

[miles teg 1]

Well hey it worked for Hitler.

Seriously, if a regime controls the media, they control the masses. Thats never been a secret and is one way in which dictators and totalitarian types of governments keep the disent amongst the masses to a minimum.

The second method used in the past, but not as much by modern dictatorships, is to keep the masses entertained. This was one secret of the Romans to keep the masses distracted and happy.

The third very powerful means of controlling the masses is to keep them fearful and finding a scapegoat. In the next election Iran will likely be the demon and the reason why a strong Republican President must be elected to protect America against the terrorists. Along with that goes the usual flag waving and calls to patriotism and defending America.

The fourth means is depicting their party as the standard bearer of Christianity upholding good Christian morales. It doesn't matter if none of their policies resemble anything remotely close to the teachings of Jesus. All that matters is preception and very self-righteous speech.

Combine these four things and even in the midst of falling job markets and falling wages, Americans will happily vote again another ass kicking Republican President who will keep those

God-hating liberals/commies, and terrorists from taking over America. They will also keep America happily mesmorized by reality shows and sports.

I think that is one reason why the Republican Party has gone into overdrive to demonize Howard Dean who has brought up all of these things in the open in recent interviews.

He is the FIRST Democrat I've heard who has openly questioned the relationship between the Republican Party's policies and their claim to uphold the Christian faith. He's also talked about the need for the Democratic Party to take back Christianity from being the sole domain of the Republican Party in the minds of the American people.

He's not always politically correct, but he has a hell of alot more balls then other democrat leaders in the Senate and Congress.

Chris G.

aka-Miles Teg<GD>

[billybob2002 0]

Quote[/b] ]He is the FIRST Democrat I've heard who has openly questioned the relationship between the Republican Party's policies and their claim to uphold the Christian faith.  He's also talked about the need for the Democratic Party to take back Christianity from being the sole domain of the Republican Party in the minds of the American people.

He's not always politically correct, but he has a hell of alot more balls then other democrat leaders in the Senate and Congress.

You wish, Dean has already called the Republican Party..you know. How can the Democrats "take back" Christianity when they support abortion like they do. etc etc etc The list goes on. Dean's rheotic may appeal to the Democrats hardline base but you got to remember people do not like those attitudes on the whole.