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Originally Posted by Rufusboi
Not all scientists can agree if global warming is happening. Not all scientists can agree that if it is happening whether it is caused by human actions or is a natural occurence. The evolution debate is also linked to religion. Just because someone has religious beliefs that don't coincide with another person's belief in evolution does not mean they are uninformed or uneducated, it just means they have different beliefs. I'm not a fan of Palin, but some people think it is wonky thinking to take Obama seriously or Clinton seriously.
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It is true that not ALL scientists agree that global warming is happening. But the overwhelming consensus in the scientific community is that global warming is happening and that the most parsimonious cause is that it is anthropogenic. It is the explanation that best fits the data. What's more, the scientists who tend to *disagree* with the consensus are not, in fact, geophysicists or climate scientists--rather they tend to come from outside the field. Lastly, some of the scientists who claim to disagree with global warming are actually engineers. With no insult meant to any engineers in the house but engineering is not science. It is based upon science but it is not science itself.
Evolution is not a matter of belief. It is a matter of scientific evidence. I know that this is going to insult some folks but there's really no kind way to put this--
if you deny that evolution happened then you are manifestly and seriously misinformed about biology. That's harsh but it also has the virtue of being true. ALL of the evidence in biology is on the side of evolution and NONE of it is on the side of any other explanation which, let's be honest, is creationism. Intelligent design is just creationism disguised to pass Constitutional muster. Again, ALL of the evidence in biology is on the side of evolution and NONE of it is on the side of any other explanation. This isn't a matter of opinion, it is a matter of fact. Anyone who tells you differently is either lying to you or doesn't know the literature.
All of the genetic evidence points to common descent.
Incipient structures point to common descent.
Transitional fossils point to common descent.
That we can *reliably* calculate the distance between any two species for which we have a complete genome within a margin of error of around +/- 1% points to common descent.
The fossil record points to common descent.
Species in transition toward speciation (the northern ring gulls around the Arctic circle) point to the fact that our model of speciation appears to be correct.
The fact that certain genes code for the same thing across phylum speaks to common descent. For example, the same gene that codes 'make eyes here' in fruit flies does the same job in rats, mice, humans in fact ALL of the placental mammals use the same gene (memory slips me if the marsupials use that gene but I believe they do). This doesn't specify what KIND of eyes grow in the location it simply specifies "whatever kind of eyes are going to be built, build them here". The HOX2 gene is ubiquitous in the animal kingdom (HOX2 is one of the genes tasked with building the overall body plan.)
I could go on and on but you get the picture. Evolution is the only *reasonable*, testable explanation subject to falsification going. Might an intelligent designer have created all of it? Sure, it's *possible*. But just because something is *possible* doesn't mean it is at all reasonable to assume that it happened. The problem with intelligent design is that it can't be falsified. Intelligent design proponents avoid the subject of falsification because they *know* they don't actually care if it can be falsified or not. If it can't be falsified it's not science. It might be art, poetry, religion or drama but it isn't science. Evolutionary theory can be falsified and has withstood every single challenge thrown at it in the last 150 years. Every anomaly so far has been accounted for.
Look, if someone said that the Sun orbits the Earth every single person here would say that person is ignorant of physics. If someone said that Abraham Lincoln was never President of the United States every single person here would say that person was ignorant of U.S. history. If someone said that space and time are two separate things then anyone who knows Relativity would say that person was ignorant of the that subject. And if someone maintains that evolutionary theory is wrong then that person is demonstrating their manifest ignorance of biology. I'm sorry, I know that's harsh, but it is still true. Yes, I know that there are biology teachers who claim that they don't accept the theory of evolution--they are either lying or they got their biology degree from a Christian college that taught them lies about the science of biology. Yes, I used the term lies because they are lies. To say that there are no transitional fossils is to lie. To say that there are irreducibly complex structures is to lie.
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Perhaps someone's belief that Saddam was involved in 9/11 is due to being influenced by media stories and hype.
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No, it is due to not being skeptical, doing about 15 minutes worth of research on Google. It's this simple. Saddam Hussein was a
Baathist. The Baathist are secular pan-Arabists and outside of using religion as a prop, take a pretty standard Jacobin Socialist line on religion--namely that it's bunk but is a tool of social control. The 9/11 hijackers were all members of Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda is a
Wahhabi-influenced group of Sunni Muslims. To put it into American cultural context, the Baath party would be somewhat akin to the Communist Party in Stalinist Russia and Wahhabism is to Islam as Southern Baptist is to Christianity. So what you are saying, in essence, is that the militaristic arm of a fanatically devout sect of Islam--whose leader, by the way, called for the head of Saddam Hussein for being an apostate--got into bed with a secular socialist who would just as soon be done away with religion entirely. Again, to put it into context that would be like saying that Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell are the two top donors to the ACLU! Now, this is information that if you had read anything about the Middle East you would have known as of 9 Sep 2001. But if you hadn't it was STILL information that existed and I simply Googled and linked to the very first result returned--which turned out to be Wikipedia articles.
These are not hidden or classified sources. They are totally open sources and so if someone believes that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11 or even thinks it is plausible it is because they didn't take the time to Google some terms that they were probably not familiar with before 11 Sep 2001. Terms like Wahhabi and Baath party and Sunni and pan-Arabism. If information is available--and it is--and the information is important--and it is--and someone doesn't take the time to go out and confirm for themselves that is THEIR fault, not the fault of society or the media.
Cheers
Aj