I didn’t know until I read this article.
WASHINGTON (AP) – Rudy Giuliani tried to find peace with a restless bloc of the Republican Party Saturday, telling religious conservatives not to fear him for his stand on issues such as abortion or expect he would change purely for political advantage. The GOP presidential candidate won praise for simply showing up before an audience that has been casting about for the best social conservative in the Republican field. But two former governors, Mitt Romney of Massachusetts and Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, shared the limelight with the former New York mayor, handily winning the top two spots in a straw poll of “values voters” conducted by the conservative Family Research Council. Giuliani sought common ground with Christian conservatives by casting himself as an imperfect man who has asked for guidance through prayer. He recalled crossing himself during his first day of law school after 16 years of attending Catholic schools. He offered assurances that despite his support for abortion rights, he would seek to lower the number of abortions. He pledged that if elected, he would appoint conservative judges, support school choice and insist on victory in Iraq – all issues important to the audience at the Values Voter Summit. ( ED NOTE: “School Choice” is a euphamism for illegal private school voucher schemes)… “My belief in God and reliance on his guidance is at the core of who I am, I can assure you of that,”
Giuliani: Foe
Ron Paul: Foe
Unfortunately for me (and the other dissatisfied voters in the state where I currently live), the only choices that will be available on the ballot will be the frontrunners of the Reps or Dems. Period.
The only candidate I “might” consider would be Kucinich (although he is perhaps a whacko, at least he’s an honest one), and he doesn’t have a chance.
Being forced to vote for the lesser of two idiots gets harder and harder!
Ron Paul comment posted by mxracer652:
Thanks mxracer652, I can now remove Paul from my list of potential candidates. The comment from him shows a complete lack of foresight and poor problem solving skills. If all the slaves were purchases and released they would just be replaced by new slaves. The plantation owners wanted the free labor not a specific slave.
An article from the BBC on the USA “Keeping the faith”:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7053157.stm
It would seem that Alex is of the opinion that human beings are not all born equal.
The idea should apply to law, ethics, and morality. Science should not be bound by the notion, however, because it glosses over legitimate research – research that can make people’s lives better.
Evolution doesn’t care about skin color and it doesn’t care about political correctness. It has, however, changed human beings in profound ways. Take sickle cell anemia as an example. It is far more common in Africa and the descendants of people from Africa. This interesting genetic difference provides immunity to malaria, which is hardly useful (and therefore rarely shows up) elsewhere in the world.
Science could pretend there aren’t differences, and is sometimes forced to because PC politics prevents funding to anything that might shatter their narrow worldview. I don’t care what color someone’s skin is. That’s a minor cosmetic difference (though it does provide more natural protection to solar radiation). I do care that skin color gets in the way of legitimate scientific debate and am ashamed that our scientific community can so easily turn a blind eye to Watson.
If he’s saying what he is merely because he is a racist prick, shame on him. If he’s saying it because the study has scientific merit, shame on the PC world.
Knowledge is power and if knowledge helps a people to understand themselves better they are better armed to take on the world and to shape their own destiny.
Anyone who knows about the black guy below, can forget about the idea skin color has anything to do with intelligence, the possible exception being the incredible stupidity of white Christians.
Here’s a video by Neil deGrasse Tyson, my favorite scientist and my favorite atheist, who also happens to be an African American. If I had 10% of his intelligence I would call myself a genius.
Astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson speaks about the role of intelligent design in the history of science.
http://redstaterabble.blogspot.com/2007/05/beyond-belief-neil-degrasse-tyson-on-id.html
BobC,
Anecdotal evidence is the antithesis of science. Science actively works to reduce bias, use of anecdotal evidence actively works to increase it.
We’re not talking about individuals, we’re talking about populations. I don’t know if what Watson said is true or not (I haven’t read any papers on the subject) but your statement most assuredly does not affect it. It’s not that I reject anecdotal evidence outright, it’s that I believe that it should be treated as biased until proven otherwise. You may or may not be correct, but the statement is not germane to a discussion of whether political correctness should influence science (I contend that it should not).
BobC,
I really like Astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson, as well. He is my second favorite only to Carl Sagan. He shows up regularly on the Daily Show and other similar programs and does an outstanding job of putting complex ideas into layman’s terms.
From ABC news:
Presidential candidate Rudolph Giuliani hired a Catholic priest to work in his consulting firm months after the priest was accused of sexually molesting two former students and an altar boy and told by the church to stop performing his priestly duties.
The priest, Monsignor Alan Placa, a longtime friend of Giuliani and the priest who officiated at his second wedding to Donna Hanover, continues to work at Giuliani Partners in New York, to the outrage of some of his accusers and victims’ groups, which have begun to protest at Giuliani campaign events.
“This man did unjust things, and he’s being protected and employed and taken care of. It’s not a good thing,” said one of the accusers, Richard Tollner, who says Placa molested him repeatedly when he was a student at a Long Island, N.Y. Catholic boys high school in 1975.
At a campaign appearance in Milwaukee last week, Giuliani continued to defend Placa, who he described to reporters as a close friend for 39 years.
One more thing about Placa. It is being reported that he was Best Man at Rudy’s first marriage. That marriage that was later annulled by the Church.
What,
With God, ALL things are possible. I guess Rudy’s first wife didn’t have any chariots made of iron.
Here a question to ponder: How is it that 10,000 wildfire evacuees are living peacefully in a stadium in San Diego yet the 14,000 Hurricane Katrina evacuees in the New Orleans Superdome required less than a day to turn it into a Third World loot-and-r-ape fest?
Why don’t you tell us why you think that was, Alex.
I’d be more interested in what YOU think.
Sorry, I asked you first.
alexatheist,
Because more christian fundamentalists lived in New Orleans?
I watched the video provided from the speech Neil deGrasse Tyson gave. I really like his positions and his ability to apply critical thinking to the ID “philosophy” (since it’s not a science and isn’t a religion of its own). He’s not the best speaker, but clearly a bright mind.
alex,
I know one reason why things are different at LA than in NO. In NO, the hurricane happened TO the stadium and everyone in it. IN LA, the fire is happenening a safe distance away, and because they are predominantly rich and white, as opposed to poor and black, there are plenty of provisions to go around for those in need.
Let the shitstorm begin.
When looking at the BBC article that was pointed to by justme, I noted that a Pew Centre survey was cited. The article failed to give any specific information on date and title of the survey, so I went looking.
I couldn’t find a specific survey that lead me to believe it might have been the one cited in the BBC article but, I found lots of others. In all but one case answers that favored religion have declined since the turn of the century. The one case that favored religion also suggested that the respondents didn’t want to hear about religion at all. Some results showed 50 – 60 percent favorable toward religious issues in public life but, all showed a continued trend toward a distaste for religion. In several cases only older (over 60) folks showed reactions that were favorable toward religion. The younger ( 20’s ) folks showed large percentages that were negative toward religion.
This was encouraging to me and showed that the overwhelming support for religion by citizens of the United States as suggested by major news organizations and media, is not really true.
My thought is that maybe the news organizations that are favorable toward religion are influenced by advertising revenue from big corporations, which of course would find it easier to market and sell to a nation of sheeple. With the help of the corporations and or news media, a relatively small number of fundies seem to be deceiving the rest of the United States citizens and unduly influencing public policy.
Since the people’s governmental representatives are beholden to the interests of corporations and religious leaders, the people’s representatives favor sheeple too. The herd is much easier to deceive. Maybe our representatives should be called to show us the “beef”.
ron paul and abortion.so guys/gals what is wrong letting each state determine what the abortion law will be.
what is more important in affecting intellect, biology or culture?
why is everyone so anti confederate they were alot more moral then the rapist/plundering yankee invaders.
should states outlaw human/animal hybrid research,creating designer babies with defects this is coming into play now and my personal view is yes it should be illegal.what is yours?
Ren said “I really like Astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson, as well. He is my second favorite only to Carl Sagan.”
I’m also a big fan of Sagan. I’m old enough to remember his television series Cosmos. I found him recently on YouTube and found out he also loved evolution, like I do.
atomictesting said “We’re not talking about individuals, we’re talking about populations.”
Agreed. My example proves nothing.
atomic also said “You may or may not be correct, but the statement is not germane to a discussion of whether political correctness should influence science (I contend that it should not).”
Agreed, but this idea Watson has about race and their intelligence is not very scientific from what I have heard so far, and the liars for Jesus are of course using this for their anti-science propaganda.
I noticed Watson himself, perhaps because of the massive criticism he received, said “To all those who have drawn the inference from my words that Africa, as a continent, is somehow genetically inferior, I can only apologize unreservedly. That is not what I meant. More importantly, there is no scientific basis for such a belief.”
alex:
Not an ad hominem. Just an insult, & an observation.
Get your terms straight.
Strawman much? I said nothing about Asians.
Yeah, I know your type. Yours is the ‘higher’ standard.
Sweet rationalization.
If I were playing the ‘PC’ card, I’d be busting my ass trying to explain how wrong you are, & proving it. Been there, done that.
I’ll eat fish, I’ll eat meat, but there’s some shit I won’t eat.
Weren’t you the same clown who carried on about how the Jews are ‘over-represented’ in Hollywood?
Well aware of the difference, but I didn’t even bring up Zionism.
Strawman again.
Call it clear vision.
No, you just claimed that the other 5 million Jews just ‘wandered off somewhere’ or somesuch.
A recent discovery of Nazi records puts it up to 17 million, BTW (including the gypsies, gays, etc.)
All good & well, but I’ve seen other bloggers here thoroughly eviscerate your claims (or ‘questions’) on this matter.
Weren’t you also the guy who claimed that Osama might be rolling around in a cave on a high-tech dialysis wheelchair?
(sorry, that 1 was just too hysterical, 1 for the books. I’m in tears laughing about it)
Yeah, you keep on casting yourself as 1 lone warrior on the battleground of truth, trying to get others to see what you see.
Let’s do this: qualify what you mean by ‘dismal failure’. Also, qualify what you mean by ‘intelligence’. Or ’success’, for that matter.
There’s a difference between being PC, & simply being fractious.
I doubt too many folks could get any less PC than I am, but I’m game.
I’m really confused now. KA or AlexA? Which is the racist? Which is the zionist? I just have such a hard time remember the respective positions. Does somebody have a mnemonic that might help.
reason, you’re an idiot, humans are animals, and we’re already 90+% hybrids with bonobos.
Beneath that, retroviral DNA makes up the large portion of us. You literally are the viruses that infect you.
Other non H. sapien sapien organs are being transplanted into us. More hybrids, uh oh.
We already have human/machine hybrids, pacemakers, artificial limbs, titanium braced skeletons & screws, et cetera.
You’re a hundred years too late.
mxracer,
You obviously have a lot more patience than I. I stopped reading “reason” posts some time ago as, due in part to a lack of punctuation skills, his/her posts became unintelligible.
BTW, you are right on target with this
. In fact, that is one of the things MANY xtians seem to be unable to comprehend and/or accept!
reason,
I personally believe we should outlaw ALL human/Animal clones.
Except for human/fish clones. I’ve always wanted gills so I could swim unimpeded underwater.
Or human/bird clones. I’ve always wanted to fly without an airplane.
Or human/equestrian clones. I’ve always wanted a horse cock that I could throw to the old lady…
In all seriousness, I think we need to be very careful with franken-food as well as franken-steins. I’m not for banning said research, just being careful and… yes, even regulation of said science. Just not regulation brought to you by religious influenced politicians, but by maybe a board of trusted scientists in the appropriate fields that would develop quidelines to be followed, with the force of law behind them.
Ren,
Seriously? We have been selectively breeding crops & animals for quite a few millennia now.
Genetic modification is genetic modification whether it’s in a lab or in a barn.
I’m all for human DNA modification, evolution & inbreeding has left behind some nasty problems that we will one day be able to remove.
I’ll go out on a limb a little bit here for Dr. Watson (pretty funny saying that). This statement tells me he fully understands what is the current scientific consensus.
Scientifically there is no such thing as “inferiority” in genetics. The only thing that can be considered “inferior” is something that simply doesn’t work (ends in extinction). By that token, almost everything that is currently alive is inferior (and that could easily include humans). The prevailing assumption is that human intelligence is the factor that determines our survivability. This is, relatively speaking, a new avenue that life uses to test the bounds of natural selection.
Our species is destined for eventual extinction, as are all species on the planet. This cannot be stressed enough. If billions of years of evolutionary history teaches us anything it is that we are not the end. Chimpanzees, bonobos, and humans have all branched from a single concestor (using the term Dawkins prefers) and independently evolved and any one of those three lines (or even the tiniest sub-branch thereof) could be carrying the genetics that takes that branch into the future. It is equally plausible that none of them will succeed.
The cockroach is a prime example of evolutionary success – it is relatively unchanged for at least the millions of years that we have fossil evidence of cockroach ancestry. It isn’t terribly intelligent, but is incredibly resilient (as a species and even certain individual characteristics such as the period between necessary feedings). If I were a betting man my money is on the cockroach before I would put money on h. sapiens.
Getting back to the point, humans are arguably “inferior” to the cockroach in the light of natural selection. They have succeeded relatively unchanged while our line has had tremendous change over the same period of time. Distinctions of inferiority among humans are scientifically useless unless they’re making a brave attempt at determining what will select among our differences. That takes bravery indeed – the number of possible threats our specific collection of genes face could be described as astronomical. The number of plausible threats are significantly smaller but if one is to take religion as an example, humanity is still scientifically extremely myopic as a species.
The exact way he put it lends credence to his ability to make objective observations. I could be wrong and I’ve certainly been wrong about people before, but I’m willing to give the man the benefit of the doubt on this one.
Ren,
Mx hit the nail on the head, I’ll just hammer it a little more for fun.
You’ve used the term “clone” incorrectly in every case. The closest term in the the common vernacular you should be using is “hybrid.” A clone is a genetic duplicate (identical twin) of an individual. Cloning itself is probably not harmful to our species if it is limited (and could actually end up increasing our survivability through sheer “luck of the draw” assuming that we accidentally cloned an individual that survived an extinction event). It should be limited in precisely the same way inbreeding is limited – through taboo. It’s not likely that laws are actually necessary, taboo can go a very long way on its own. Even if there were a law there should be no serious enforcement of it (the law merely put in place to assist in the perpetuation of the taboo).
As Mx pointed out, you’re already eating “franken food.” Virtually nothing you eat has not been the product of cultivation and cultivation is just a specific type of “genetic engineering.”
Watch the “Atheists [sic] nightmare debunked…”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLqQttJinjo
This can serve two purposes. First, it illustrates how stupid religious people really can be (which is always fun to do on this blog). Second, it illustrates the product of thousands of years of cultivation can result in.
Should genetically engineered organisms designed for the purpose of consumption be carefully considered? Absolutely – and it is heavily regulated, being covered by several health organizations in the U.S. Watch Penn & Teller’s “Bullshit,” Season 1, episode “Eat This!”
Should we have irrational fear of cloning and genetic engineering of food? Definitely not – we’ve just been doing it the slow way for thousands of years. Speeding up the process (directly genetically engineering the DNA) isn’t likely to end in armageddon any more than the slow way (cultivation) has.
You already eat cloned food. Any organism that is also a food crop that reproduces asexually (assisted by humans or otherwise) is a clone of the original. Take a bite out of that seedless orange and taste the cloned goodness:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenocarpy
Fear the clonage! Your child will be born with two heads, guaranteed, after one bite of that clone!
God shmod, I want my monkey man!
mxracer652 and AT,
I guess I have to work on my sarcasm skills better. I actually believe in eugenics, as long as it is by choice. I was trying to be funny. I am sorry. I will say a few hell merrys tonight and get right with my lawrd.
Oh yeah, and one more thing. I know the difference between a clone and a hybrid, though one would never know it from reading my previous post. I don’t know WHAT I was thinking. I think I was just using reason’s terminology.
Nope, just looked it up. He said hybrid. I screwed the pooch. My bad!
Rusty
shmod? Is that a unix/linux command I don’t know?
If it is, Ren, it isn’t working. My computer has not spit out my monkey man!
Ren,
If you really wanna get right with the Lard, put about 1 & 1/3 cup of flour, 1/2 tsp. salt, 1/2 cup LARD, and between 3-6 tbsp. cold water into a pie crust.
Mmmmm…. that’s good lard. Now use a lot of hail cherries!
atomictesting said “Our species is destined for eventual extinction, as are all species on the planet.”
I really liked and learned a lot from your last comments about Watson, cockroaches, and humans.
I agree all species will become extinct eventually. I have often wondered what it would take to completely wipe out humans. Assuming there will never be a nuclear war, what could cause our extinction? Right now we are not threatened and our population is growing rapidly. I don’t think too many people will wipe us out. Famines and wars will keep the population under control, not that I’m in favor of mass starvation and wars, I’m just guessing that’s what we can expect when our population becomes too big for our planet to support. Destruction of the environment by humans could wipe us out, but I’m optimistic this trashing of our planet will stop before it’s too late. An asteriod as large as what wiped out the dinosaurs could wipe us out, but I doubt it. At least some humans, with all our technology, should be able to find a way to survive. I suggest it’s at least possible humans could survive until our sun burns out 5 billion years from now. Anybody disagree? Thanks.
BobC asked
One decent asteroid hit could easily do it. Or a super volcano eruption (Yellowstone for example).
Those not killed by the event will struggle and die in the climactic chaos that would follow for years.
Both of these scenarios happen fairly regularly, and both are overdue for a recurrance.
Any day now…
My point is not to illustrate that there is anything that will massively wipe us out – our species will eventually take two branches and one of them will cease to exist.
What is “human” is really quite abstract if you think about it. Do the billions of symbiotic bacteria in our bodies count? It is quite possible (likely, even) that our survival on Earth might not even be possible without them.
Bioligists have decided that species are delineated by (at least in sexual reproducers) the ability to produce viable offspring (capable of perpetuating the species through reproduction on their own).
If this is the case it is inevitable that all species will become extinct due to biological incompatibility. This could happen even within one line (the current “human” might be sexually incompatible with the first “human”).
The tree may split for a lot of reasons. The most likely one I think takes little imagination to envision is space colonization. Assuming we get there, humans will be changed by life in space or on other planets and over time this change will probably render colonies of us sexually incompatible with one another. This would delineate separate species. If we all evacuated our current planet at least to avoid the impending fate of the sun if not for sociological or ecological reasons then our fate to become something “not human” becomes inevitable too.
This is what I mean by “all species go extinct.” It’s not always by competition, predation, punctuated equilibrium, or idiotic religious or political wars (in our sad case). Any combination of those factors and many others lead to biological genetic drift.
BobC requests:
The words “possible” and “could” are significant. I certainly wouldn’t be able to rule out that it is theoretically possible for humans to survive as a species for something close to 5 billion years. Other organisms have a better chance of doing it though, such as some that live in water or small tough ones that live on the earth or underground. For humans to survive probably will require at least some significant amount of survival within totally artificial environments. But those environments will be highly susceptible to attack from viruses and bacteria and human stupidity.
If humans can create several sustainable environments in space and/or on other planets the odds of survival of the species would be greatly increased.
God-ideas are a drag on the possibility of survival because the competing god-ideas will want to kill each other off. Also, the followers of god-ideas tend to think that their god-idea will fix any problems therefore, reducing the possibility that any real efforts will be made in time. And most of the god-idea idiots think the worse things get the closer it is to sky daddy coming, which is obviously a problem.
At any rate over 5 billion years the human population is sure to be pruned to very low population by human or natural causes.
Personally, I think the current human population is unsustainable. If humans can avoid doing something else stupid, we will still be plagued by population growth due mainly to denial by the god-idea people. Christians just don’t care about the planet they are leaving for their grandchildren. The rest of us will have to live with the destruction that christianity is causing.
HeatheNZ, atomictesting, rna2dna, lots of great ideas, thanks.
Yeah, religious wars are a threat, but hopefully will be confined to the Middle East.
I’m not sure how we could survive anywhere else than here on earth. We evolved to survive here. Other worlds may be too far to ever reach, and survival there might not be possible.
“our species will eventually take two branches and one of them will cease to exist” is an interesting idea, but I wonder if there is that much natural selection going on right now for our species. It’s not too difficult to survive when all we got to do is get an easy job and go to the grocery store. Not much selecting going on, so I wonder if we will change that much. On the other hand, 5 billion years or just 5 million years is a long time, so I suppose we won’t look the same that far into the future.
“One decent asteroid hit could easily do it.” makes sense but our solar system might be safer than it used to be, thanks to the huge Jupiter acting as a vacuum cleaner. The asteriods and comets are more likely to hit it than us, and we even witnessed this not long ago.
Anyway, it’s an interesting subject. Science certainly is more interesting than the magic the god nuts believe in.
Tell that to the people that live in the Sahara desert by choice.
The diversity of life is often driven by the environment and Earth has some wide diversity of environments that has driven changes in species. Of course, environment alone isn’t the only selector of genes.
We aren’t likely to see as many changes as a species until we make a radical change. Humans are a pretty climate tolerant species, but there are places we cannot live without technology. Our brains (specifically our technology) allow us to better adapt our environment to us – unusual for animals. Our medical technology keeps genetically “unfit” genes (ones that natural selection would otherwise have culled) in our genome allowing their genes to be propagated to future generations. In ways we’re guiding our own evolutionary future, but I’m not going to say we have the power to stop it entirely.
Assuming we survive the violent religious and political struggles that threaten to destroy us, our descendants a million years from now are very unlikely to be “human” by biological terminology today.
Concerning future and/or impending causes of extinction, there’s a great chapter discussing these very things in a book entitled:
“A short history of nearly everything” by Bill Bryson. There are a large number of events looming on the horizon.
Actually, the whole book is pretty interesting.
As to your being optimistic, I’m reminded of a quote which read (unfortunately I can’t remember to whom it should be attributed) that says “Optimists just don’t have all the facts”.
666,
I have a copy of that book! I’ve read some of it but wasn’t happy with the christian slant that kept rearing its boring head. Next time I dig it out I’ll take another look.
rna2,
yeah, I remember that slant but ignored it in order to get at the other nuggets the book provided. It’s kinda like life in general around here (where I currently live), you keep having to look out for the piles of crap in order to avoid them and still find a clear path to where you’re going.
From 666: “Optimists just don’t have all the facts”.
This reminds me of someone I used to work with who often said “Imagine the worst case scenario, then bet on it.”
Thanks for the book suggestion. I will add Bryson’s book to my amazon wish list.
Bob,
I don’t know if I’d bet on it but rather try to be prepared for it!
As far as Bryson’s book, I found it at the public library (in case you might not want to buy it).
Have you ever seen a horse cock? Now why would you want to do that to your wife?! To make her scream is NOT an answer