BLOGDIAL : We are the best

First, I would like to say that I hope the people protesting against animal experimentation (1) are strictly vegan, (2) don't use any animal-derived clothing or animal-derived products and (3) are denied any medicinal intervention, surgical or otherwise, which have been generated through the exploitation of humanity's place at the top of the intellectual pile. People agreeing to these conditions can protest to their heart's content and their moral strength will win them many friends.

??!!

There is also an argument that worrying about animals being used under strict laws with the aim of improving human knowledge is pitiful when factory farmed pigs, chickens, cows and the like are slaughtered in their millions every day, wastefully and scornfully treated in both life and death simply to feed an obese population of ingrates with no idea of where the food on their plate comes from.

This is a straw man argument. You present something tangentially related to what you are trolling about and then knock it down to discredit the first argument. Honestly, you have to do MUCH better than that!

While ID could be taught as an "idea" I think Dawkins is fundamentally right in demanding a separation of religious dogma from scientific theory in teaching. I think "disastrous consequences" is about right if children are taught in such a slipshod manner as to allow religious beliefs to define classroom policy and teaching schedules. One may as well include other 'theories' of the nature of the universe into physics classes such that children have no idea whether it's waves, particles or "turtles all the way down".

A mix of straw man, separation of church and state. Oh dear. I'll bite. "Turtles all the way down" is comprable to feathers on dinosaurs. For generations 'science' classes taught that dinosaurs were giant lizards with scaly skin. This was the view handed down by the religiious elite, and all schoolchildren were examined on it, and made to believe it like it was the absolute truth. Now of course, feathers are the vogue, all the books are being re-written the religion has had an update, and if you want to pass the exams, you have to put on the feathers. That is "turtles all the way down"; a set of beliefs that are internally consistent but completely wrong. Why should any student be forced to recite the verses of this religion or face academic failure? It is wrong for scientists to claim that they are the only ones who know what the truth is at any one time, and then to insist that everyone follow them or face ruin.

What people teach in a school is the responsibility of the school and the parents that send their children to that school. The policy for all should not be set by scientist atheists, any more than it should be set by Muslims or Catholics. Scientists fail every time because they believe that they are the only ones that have the correct view. They are precisely like the fundamentalist Muslims, only they don't want to kill you, they just want to kill your way of thinking and they use these skeptic tactics, like the straw man argument, to equate religious belief with illogical nonsense like "turtles all the way down".

Ideas.... See above. When you invite me round to your hovel for a bowl of gruel cooked in your hand-thrown clay pot and show me your lovely new dog-skin trousers and the fabulous new cesspit out back, then I'll let you get away with suggesting a world without scientists.

And we will both be HUMAN when we eat that gruel, which will be real gruel and not GM frankenstien gruel.

There is no dogma! Show me the scientific dogma and I'll run it over with my scientific karma. Richard Dawkins may have dogma, but that's his problem.

There is no dogma? There is no "Mafia". There are no UFOs, There was only one shooter. This is precisely the poor attitude that people are talking about; scientists believe that they are right in all things, and that their method of divining the world is the only correct and trustworthy one, and that they are not suffering under any sort of delusion or misunderstanding or error. This is false. Scientists have been wrong again and again and again; there is nothing bad in this per se, but what is totally wrong is their stubborn and arrogant belief that they are absoutely correct at any one time. I am not against arrogance or stubbornness. BUT when the arrogant and the stubborn try and force people to believe what they believe, they are no better than the female mutilating, child beheading, stoning to death for adultery 'nutcases' that pollute this world. It is they are truely living inside a "turtles all the way down" delusion, because they fundamentally believe that they are correct, above all others. This belief they adhere to is crafted to near perfection; it allows for self correction ad infinitum through writing experimentation and re-writing. The dogma is flexible, handed down as it is 'improved'. The only thing that it cannot absorb is anything that is outside of the scientific method, otherwise, anything is game. This is modern sciences fatal flaw.

"We"? Who we? We the people that guzzle fuel and eat mass-produced shit without a thought? We the populace that demands progress, whether it's a new Playstation or better botox?

We are the people who want to be sure that when someone deveolps a new feed for a cow, that they remember their school lessons whilst they are doing it: 'COWS ARE HERBIVORS - THEY DON'T EAT MEAT, ESPECIALLY NOT OTHER COWS'

Do not conflate the science that produces the playstation (maths, material science) with the science that produces hybrid humans and gm crops. The latter two are BAD and the former are GOOD. The internal combustion engine falls under the former, and is GOOD. Just because it has been over used doesn't make it bad, it means that we all have to change our behaviour, and the people who invented it are not responsible for its misuse. GM damage cannot be withdrawn from the environment, this is why it is different to the damage caused by burning oil (note how I do not call it fossil fuel :P ). The same goes for hybrid humans. Once hybrid human genes are mixed into the gene pool, they cannot be removed; future generations will be contaminated, and that is that. No amount of "sorry" will fix either of those two pollutants.

No one wants to throw away all science. We only want to destroy the bad, the poisoinous, the stuff that kills our childrens rightful inheritance to a clean world.

'Not tested on animals' came about as a result of LAW not science. It was LAW which required products to have been tested for toxicity to animals...

And that makes it right? If they pass a law that all products must be tested on unwilling humans, will the people carrying out the tests comply with it simply because it is the law? "I was only following orders". We all know where THAT road leads don't we.

Starve or take the devil's shilling?

Turtles all the way down....to hell!

The "arrogant and cavalier treatment of our shared environment" is carried out not by scientists, but by businesses and politics. The "evil" is a result of business and politics.

We cannot shift the blame off of the people who carry out the work. The people who carry out the making of exotic poisons are responsible for the existance of the poisons, which would not be there had they not made them. Scientists must decide not to do work that will have disasterous consequences or which will cause untold suffering. If they don't have the backbone to do it, they will be made to do it.

And yet, every time one speaks in an attempt to help people understand science, he is derided as a charlatan.

Richard Dawkins is not trying to help anyone "understand science". He is trying to manipulate public policy to exclude ideas that he finds offensive as a humanist atheist. Helping people understand science by speaking, teaching, and demonstrating scientific principles is good - trying to kill other peoples ideas with hysterical language like "disasterous consequences" is BAD, and he is immediately discredited when he puts himself in opposition to ideas he personally loathes just because he loathes them.

When you need it, and it is your only hope, think of these invisible men.

An emotional paragraph. Emotion is good. No one is agiainst good work. No one is against the men and women who truely want to help their fellow man. Do not confuse peoples disgust with the GM meddlers and human cloners and mix it in with an imaginary hatred of the good biologists who make the world better in a humble and moral way.

No one bats an eyelid when Bush talks anti-science nowadays because.... religious fervour and a McCarthyist attitude to dissent makes it unwise to do so.

NO, People don't bat an eyelid precisely for the reasons that I gave, which aparently went in one eye and out the other.

Exactly why people of integrity and intellectual rigour such as Richard Dawkins should be encouraged to put the true face of science to the people, and to expose business and politics (and religion) as the EVIL manipulating forces behind the problemswith which science has been stigmatised.

ALL HAIL HIGH PRIEST DAWKINS HOLY DISSEMINATOR AND REGENERATOR. ALL BOW TO HIS WISDOM, THE WISDOM OF THE GREAT GOD OF SCIENCE!

ahem...once again, no matter who says it, you cannot excuse the immoral acts of scientists out for a buck and shift the blame onto the paymasters or legislators. Everyone is responsible for their own actions, and scientists are not part of a super human subset of people for whom the rules governing responsibility do not magically apply.

First, (if one agrees in a state-sponsored education system) the argument of what is taught to children should be taken by educated people able to understand a debate. It is these people who should be beating Bush with intellectual sticks and pointing out his lack of objectivity and lack of ability to understand the debate. Second, people like Richard Dawkins are exactly the type of people to tell a school what should be taught.

Firstly there is more than one way to organize state schools. There is no reason why the curriculum should be centrally dictated. Secondly if it is to be centrally dictated, then ELECTED OFFICIALS should set the curriculum, not UNELECTED ATHEISTS. The public pays taxes for these schools and elects representatives to get the job done (ideally) and so lone voice third parties with an agenda, from whatever camp, should not be able to exert undue influence on the shape of the curriculum.

But their poor standard of education has made them too STUPID to see past their TV set and into the real world.

This is the world according to HIGH PRIEST Dawkins. If you do not understand the scientific view of the world, and do not accept its tenets, then you are, by definition, 'uneducated'. After all, no other type of knowledge is valuable, no other belief is correct save that sanctioned by the high priests of science, you are therefore by definition, incapable of making good decisions. If you do not support THEE KNOWLEDGABLE 1 by definition you are outside of the faith, irredeemable, and to be surgically excised. ALL BOW!

would you be able to live with yourself if all you did as the books got burnt was stand by and watch your beliefs go up in smoke?

Funny you should put it in those terms; Dawkins is the book burner here, as he tries to incenerate the idea of God the creator and replace it with his own ideas to be rammed into the minds of children. Funny that "I was only doing my job" is the excuse used by the vivisectionists who maim, kill and torture "because its the law" borth of these...from the same era of book burning.

The fact that the high priest thinks the people setting the curriculum are "fools" is worth noting. He is the same type that thinks, for example, that "Homeopathy is no better than placebo", and of course now that these holy verses have again been published in The Lancet that printer of pages from the ever increasing multi bible of science, he will believe it even more. No matter that everyone (the MILLIONS of people) who use it say that it works, that it brings them relief from hayfever for example. No matter that this medicine has been used sucessfully for over a century; this doesn't matter because it has not been published in a peer reviewed journal. Dawkins is the fool. And he is free to be a fool until the end of time as long as he does not foist his diabolical will and evil plans for intellectual domination on anyone. Should he persist, he will be smacked down and all will benefit. Real science will increase; the science of humans for humans, science that is open and not closed will gain ground. Bad science, the bad 'modern science' of religious dogma, rigidity and closed mindedness will loose ground. And that would be a good thing.

First, I would like to say that I hope the people protesting against animal experimentation (1) are strictly vegan, (2) don't use any animal-derived clothing or animal-derived products and (3) are denied any medicinal intervention, surgical or otherwise, which have been generated through the exploitation of humanity's place at the top of the intellectual pile. People agreeing to these conditions can protest to their heart's content and their moral strength will win them many friends.

There is also an argument that worrying about animals being used under strict laws with the aim of improving human knowledge is pitiful when factory farmed pigs, chickens, cows and the like are slaughtered in their millions every day, wastefully and scornfully treated in both life and death simply to feed an obese population of ingrates with no idea of where the food on their plate comes from.

(Then there are the good Dr F's comments, which we shall come to presently...)

I love the way talking head scientists rubbish on about "disastrous consequences" when it comes to ideas being taught[...]

While ID could be taught as an "idea" I think Dawkins is fundamentally right in demanding a separation of religious dogma from scientific theory in teaching. I think "disastrous consequences" is about right if children are taught in such a slipshod manner as to allow religious beliefs to define classroom policy and teaching schedules. One may as well include other 'theories' of the nature of the universe into physics classes such that children have no idea whether it's waves, particles or "turtles all the way down".

Lets apply some logic to both of these troll articles. Life without scientists, means life without ...

Ideas.... See above. When you invite me round to your hovel for a bowl of gruel cooked in your hand-thrown clay pot and show me your lovely new dog-skin trousers and the fabulous new cesspit out back, then I'll let you get away with suggesting a world without scientists.

Anyone that wants humans to live on this planet for another ten thousand years doesn't want anything to do with scientists and their insane world destroying dogma.

There is no dogma! Show me the scientific dogma and I'll run it over with my scientific karma. Richard Dawkins may have dogma, but that's his problem.

We want a world without these egomaniacs who look at every living thing as just another tool or object to experiment on.

"We"? Who we? We the people that guzzle fuel and eat mass-produced shit without a thought? We the populace that demands progress, whether it's a new Playstation or better botox?

The rise of products that are guaranteed 'not tested on animals' is a testament to this sentiment.

'Not tested on animals' came about as a result of LAW not science. It was LAW which required products to have been tested for toxicity to animals, and by extension, humans. This LAW was rescinded or modified. A PRODUCT may state that it has not been tested on animals, while all ingredients in a product may still have been. Of course, if their toxicity is already known, this is not required. BYKT.

Scientists are falling out of favour now more than ever due not only to their arrogant and cavalier treatment of our shared environment, but also because they are trying to control what people think, instead of just getting on with their work quietly and dilligently. They are not content with improving the quality of life for everyone, they insist also on controlling the minds of the population, poisoning the environment with their diabolical experiments and making sure that no one anywhere will be able to even live without their permission. By that I am talking about the scientist created crops that don't produce seeds (for example). That, by any measure, is pure evil, a perversion of nature, and totally inexcusable and unjustifiable.

It is EXTREMELY difficult to get personal funding for science. If it wasn't, maybe fewer scientists would need to work for Monsanto et al simply to have a job. Scientists working for Big Companies are not evil. Scientists in general just have no value in the eyes of either the public or the government, so there is not enough government-funded GOOD science to do. So what to do? Starve or take the devil's shilling? In the real world of academic science it is government policy which sets the limits of what science gets funded, so blame the politicians and the lobbyists who set the scientific agendas. And these bastards are in thrall to the businessmen who tell their monkeys what tune to dance to.

The "arrogant and cavalier treatment of our shared environment" is carried out not by scientists, but by businesses and politics. The "evil" is a result of business and politics. Consider: your country relies on a crop which is susceptible to a disease. Science allows you to modify your crop to resist the disease, and you have scientists capable of doing this work at public-funded institutions. Intrinsically not a Bad Thing, one may think. However, governments do not fund these projects. Instead, they allow businesses to carry out the work, extort maximum profit from the work, protect the rights of the business over the need of the populace... and one ends up with the "evil GM" situation we hear so much about.

Governments could ban companies from using pesticide-resistant crops should they choose. These are of no benefit to the populace, just to the people who sell pesticide. But they don't ban them. Why is that? Is it the fault of the evil scientist, or business and politics?

If I were a scientist, (which I am by the way, a TRUE scientist in the way that men were in the past) I would cease trying to force my religion down the throats of the masses, because the masses are going to turn around and shut down every interesting lab and experiment once and for all, since clearly the people behind them have no sense of responsibility, no common sense, no connection with their fellow man, no morality, no empathy with living creatures or the planet...in other words, they are not human.

And yet, every time one speaks in an attempt to help people understand science, he is derided as a charlatan. As a dogmatist, a blinkered snake-oil salesman incapable of seeing past the glittering piles of gold that litter his evil path through life. This thread, led by an article by a great scientist and an elegant writer and thinker, exists because the argument they pose is immediately stamped with the big red rubber EVIL stamp.

If I were a scientist, I would be saddened by the SHIT that is accepted as 'truth' and the SHIT that is thrown at honourable people simply trying to state their case - a case they may have been working on for decades. I would be disgusted by the EVIL that is publicly accepted "scientists", I would be sickened by "Dr" Gillian McKeith, that she has respect and status, when many people who have worked their entire lives for the ultimate benefit of others go ignored at best. I have met men who have worked for decades developing a whole new theory of immunology and are applying it to treating cancers, and it is working. When you need it, and it is your only hope, think of these invisible men.

No one bats an eyelid when Bush talks anti-science nowadays because everyone and thier dog can see that it is scientists that are pushing us into a nightmare future[....]

No one bats an eyelid when Bush talks anti-science nowadays because.... religious fervour and a McCarthyist attitude to dissent makes it unwise to do so. If people paid more attention to good scientists perhaps Bush wouldn't even be in power, as he would have been clearly seen as the imbecile he is. Instead, Bush, without a functioning brain cell in his head, can delude a nation into thinking global warming won't affect Uncle Sam, and drilling into the Arctic wilderness for more fuel is a better option than setting fuel consumption limits on car manufacturers. There is an imbalance there somewhere, and you know it wasn't the scientists that manipulated the populace into accepting this state of affairs.

Remember when the Cassini probe was being launched? People protested that a nuclear reactor was being used to power it. Those people would rather not have Cassini in orbit around Saturn, simply because they dont like the power source of the mission. These are the types, that if they win, will shut down the beneficial, non destructive science because they cannot distingush between something that doesn't change the environment or humanity and something that is pure exploration / research.

Exactly my point.
Exactly why people of integrity and intellectual rigour such as Richard Dawkins should be encouraged to put the true face of science to the people, and to expose business and politics (and religion) as the EVIL manipulating forces behind the problemswith which science has been stigmatised.

Blathering on about how religion is simply wrong because it has not appeared in a peer reviewd journal is just the kind of insulting, unfeeling, stupid and threatening behaviour that is going to cause this nightmare to come true. And it is threating precisely the wrong groups in society; people with children in schools. Richard Dawkins has no business telling a school what they should or should not be teaching to a mans children, and when you threaten peoples children, as we all know, people go absolutely WILD with rage.

First, (if one agrees in a state-sponsored education system) the argument of what is taught to children should be taken by educated people able to understand a debate. It is these people who should be beating Bush with intellectual sticks and pointing out his lack of objectivity and lack of ability to understand the debate. Second, people like Richard Dawkins are exactly the type of people to tell a school what should be taught. However, all RD is doing is pointing out under what heading ID and evolution should be taught, and that scientific theories and religious beliefs should not be mixed in the same class. If Richard Dawkins was NOT standing up and protesting at the bastardisation of education for our children, THEN the parents should be going wild at him. As it stands, then they should be going wild with rage at the legislators and policy-makers. But their poor standard of education has made them too STUPID to see past their TV set and into the real world.

My advice to all the imbecile talking heads like Richard Dawkins; S.T.F.U. and accept that people will believe whatever they want to believe, they have the absolute right to believe whatver they want to believe, and that this is none of your business.

Of course these points are true, but as a REAL MAN would you be able to live with yourself if all you did as the books got burnt was stand by and watch your beliefs go up in smoke? Would you meekly accept sending your child for indoctrination at a school you know is teaching SHIT at the behest of men you consider FOOLS? If you had a voice would you not speak out? Will you teach your kids to simply STFU?

Then your nightmare has ALREADY begun!

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Paul Hellyer Former Minister of National Defense to Address UFO Symposium on Disclosure and Planetary Directions