WIP

Like I said before, we have it in a strictly legalistic sense! If it is possible to keep bringing someone back to court under the same charges, then it offers no protection against harassment from the government, and it's hardly worth the paper it is written on. That's not what I was comparing, read it again! The point was that unlike O.J., Susan Atkins will not be able to enjoy her freedom in good health, for an indefinite period of time, nor does she have the money to live it up in style like O.J. does! Her ability to enjoy freedom upon release would be very limited!

You want to know what historically defines a Canadian? One thing -- when the 13 British colonies to our south revolted against King George III in 1776, the four thinly populated colonies up here refused to join the revolt and remained loyal British subjects. We were joined by thousands of loyalist refugees from the American colonies, who mainly migrated to Upper Canada and pretty much ran things here for 150 years! Because Lower Canada had a majority French population, language and judicial concessions had to be granted to prevent them from joining the American Revolution. As a side note, back when I was in grade 8 history class, our teacher proclaimed that the reason why were having all of this trouble with Quebec was because we generously allowed them to keep their language after the French colonial government was defeated. Our teacher, either wasn't aware or deliberately omitted the fact that the British at the time, didn't feel they had enough power to force a cultural transformation on the French, or load them all on boats like the Acadians and send them in to exile. Land concessions were offered to the Iroquois to induce them to fight with the British Crown against the rebellious colonial governors, and after the Revolution, deals were made with western Indian Tribes because of the fear that the Americans would try to push north and take the western provinces and territories. So the Loyalists who defined Canadian identity in most of Canada up till the 1960's, never had complete control of the country at any time during our history; they only had the illusion of power because the Indians could usually be ignored and the Quebecois were mostly quiet and complacent. It wasn't just immigration that made this fantasy fall apart; the Quiet Revolution and increasing demands for powersharing from Quebec made some sort of Trudeau-style deal inevitable! From your first link: It could be argued that the change of the flag, from the very traditional-looking Red Ensign (which had a Union Jack in the upper-left corner), to the current flag -- which some critics at the time saw as Liberal Party banner -- signified something like a "regime-change." The main visual change could be seen as being from the royal scarlet of the Red Ensign to a new, plastic-looking red, with a too-stylized, abstract-looking Maple Leaf. It could be perceived as signifying a farewell – or perhaps rather a good riddance -- to traditional Canada, and implying that a new Canada, a "Canada Two" was now in the making. When I was young, there were anglo rabble-rousers who declared we had to be willing to fight a civil war like the Americans did, and impose the Red Ensign and the English language on Quebec. The only people spoiling for a fight over the issue were old cranks who were too old to fight anyway, and have all died off over the last 30 or 40 years! Your second link can't cite many specific examples of Canadian culture beyond the Group of Seven painters. Were Tom Thompson's paintings that great? I always thought they looked like crap compared to the works of the Dutch masters; but then, I don't know much about art anyway! That article is written by someone, like myself, who grew up on the border and was envious of the ramped up patriotism we witnessed every time we crossed the border to the U.S. side. I used to identify somewhat with this perspective and wish that we had a real Canadian identity and waved the flag like the Americans do; but after witnessing two undeclared wars that a majority of Americans got sucked in to supporting because they uncritically accepted the emotional appeal of flag-waving patriotic fervour, I am feeling a whole lot better about our lukewarm patriotism and nationalism we have in this country!

And it always comes giftwrapped in patriotic nationalism! It seems the people who make the loudest appeals to some sort of Canadian pride, want to define who is and who is not a Canadian; and it never surprises me that everyone other than the descendents of United Empire Loyalists is not a real Canadian.

Good point! But I'm basing my opinion on the many stories I've heard over the years about Susan Atkin's conduct in prison, including her work on behalf of other inmates. If it was just a matter of poor health of a recalcitrant, incorrigible murderer, I would agree with you.

What are you talking about "lesser charges!" He was found guilty of murder in the civil trial and that's why an award for damages was granted. Well, let's review then: O.J.'s blood was found at the murder scene and his ex-wife's blood was found on one of his socks, and those were just two of dozens of forensic evidence that made it a closed case for anyone other than members of an almost all-black jury who were motivated by a desire to punish the LAPD rather than O.J. Simpson! In Canada, they could have kept bringing him back to court until they got the guilty verdict desired. In the Guy Paul Morin case, it took the third murder trial with a phony jailbird witness to get the guilty verdict they wanted. Many analysts who sifted through the entrails of this debacle after Morin was freed on the basis of unmatching DNA evidence, believe that Morin was charged with the abduction, rape and murder of Christine Jessop because he was a weird loner who the other neighbours didn't like. Since there was nothing else to go on, the Crown made him their pidgeon and framed a case around him. Now, just in case there's a lawyer or a law student here who decides to burn me for saying we have no protection against double jeopardy -- to be factually correct, we have protection in the Charter of Rights, but the problem is that the prosecution is allowed to appeal a decision to acquit the defendent. A real double jeopardy law has no further recourse to try the person on the same charges. And he is a free man because of a legal technicality, not because of innocence! I'm not interested that much in the nuts and bolts of the legal system; what I'm talking about is that O.J. walks out on to the golfcourse enjoying his life as a free man, though he is a murderer. For the purpose of comparison, I was making the point that Susan Atkins opportunity to enjoy her freedom upon release is negligible due to her health.

I don't think you were paying attention, but I pointed out a weakness in our system because the state can come back with the same charges if they fail to win a prosecution. Except for O.J.'s lawyers, I haven't heard any legal experts make a case for his innocence. They had ample evidence to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, and the reason they failed was because of the inept prosecution conducted by two attorneys who had such bad rapport with the jury that they could not even make eye contact with them, and a politically motivated D.A. who gave in to Al Sharpton's demand that O.J. be tried before an inner city black jury even though a jury of his peers should have been taken from the exclusively white residents of his neighbourhood in Bel Aire! And if it was in Canada, there would have been a second criminal trial that would have found him guilty of murder!

I guarantee the people who developed the myth of the Garden of Eden, which probably originated in ancient Sumeria, gave such issues no consideration since genetics was unknown and traditional societies that arrange marriages, still today force cousins to marry to keep wealth and land within the tribe. So, if you already accept the concept of first cousins getting married, I'm sure they would have seen nothing wrong with allowing a special dispensation to allow the children of Adam and Eve to "be fruitful and multiply!" Today, many Christian fundamentalists teach that incest was not a taboo in this case because these first people were closer to perfection than successive generations. They back this belief up with ridiculously long lifespans of ancient patriarchs, most notably Methusalah, who allegedly almost made it to the thousand year mark! He died at the age of 969. Numbers had great significance in ancient times; you notice the same lucky numbers like 7, 10, 12 popping up all over the Bible, and it seems that while they were telling their tall tales, the original writers seen a millenium (1000 years) as too significant to claim that any man could surpass it! But if a man could live almost a thousand years and still be fertile, the population increase would have been astronomical. For this reason, the biblical literalists claim that the long-lived early descendents of Adam and Eve could quickly populate the Earth! It would have been as good an explanation as anything if the fossil record and genomics hadn't come along and killed it! That's a point I have made with many fundamentalists who take the Garden of Eden literally -- the serpent (wasn't Satan at that time, that was a later interpretation) told Eve the truth. God did not want them to gain knowledge, but instead remain innocent and ignorant like animals in a zoo! Because of their curiosity, and desire for knowledge, they were cut off from Eden and lost their innocence and their immortality, since the angels prevented them from returning to the Garden and eating the fruit of the Tree of Life. If you look on the story as an allegory for the loss of childhood innocence, the Garden of Eden and many similar myths tell the story of coming of age and learning about death and suffering in the world we have been born in to. Especially during earlier times when life was brutal, arduous and short (paraphrasing Thomas Hobbes), many people upon reflection, may have wished they had never learned about the facts of life! Many years ago, evolutionary biologist Stephen J. Gould proposed a philosophical position that he hoped would prevent conflicts between science and religion; he called it NOMA - non-overlapping magisteria, and it was his wish that science would be given the areas of discovery where it works best, and would not step beyond neuroscience and go in to ethics and philosophy of mind, where religions claim to have their special expertise. But right from the start, there were people on both sides who realized it would never work, because science is researching areas that religion considers home-turf, and even liberal religion makes claims about the Cosmos and human nature that are in opposition to scientific discoveries. The religious way of explaining and defining our world draws from basic human nature to make up explanations for the unknown where factual knowledge is unavailable. A modern example of this process was studied by anthropologists in the 20th Century when they examined the "Cargo Cults" of the South Pacific. The John Frum Cult studied by David Attenborough just after WWII, showed Pacific Islanders making their own "radios" to talk to the air gods, making uniforms and doing marching drills mimicking U.S. soldiers who had been observed. And what's really extraordinary is that within one generation they had created their own end-time apocalyse where John Frum would return from the air with lots of cargo and drive the foreigners from their islands. On the contrary, the scientific method is a recent development that runs counter to the human desire to jump to conclusions. I prefer this method to finding meaningful answers, but I'm a little skeptical about it replacing religion or pseudo-religious methods like new age spiritualism and mysticism. The best we can hope for is for religious dogmas to make way for reality when accumlated scientific knowledge makes certain beliefs implausible.

Well, at least you're willing to extend some degree of mercy! Haven't heard it from many hardliners so far.

Is that just for strictly legalistic reasons? Because on principle, none of the hardliners seems to be able to make a case why it would be wrong or harmful to society to let her die outside the prison gates! Wrong! O.J. was found guilty when the Goldman and Brown families took him to civil court. The damages awarded were based on a judgement that he was guilty of murder. The only reason why he is a free man today is because the U.S. has double jeopardy laws, so they couldn't retry him for murder after the D.A.'s office botched the prosecution of the criminal case. In Canada there are no such double jeopardy laws, and they would have kept bringing him back until they got the judgement they wanted, just as the Guy Paul Morin case and Dr. Henry Morgenthaler, who was continually tried and acquitted for operating private abortion clinics for decades! It's a sad commentary on the public-at-large if they can't distinguish between a case like this and letting Charlie go free! They are in this case!

Maybe you can give me your definition for "fanaticism," since I was talking about beliefs that are protected from scrutiny and analysis. If your religion has doctrines that transcend criticism and empirical analysis and must be accepted uncritically as a matter of faith, then like or not, you have a belief system that is completely insulated from any sort of critical inquiry (except by outsiders). Whether or not the adherents of the religion are fanatics, depends on how they respond to outside challenges. Young-earth creationists are fanatics, because they've seen scientific discovery challenge their literal interpretations of mythology, and they are hard at work building a wall of separation between their church members and any educational material that includes evolutionary theory. They teach their children from creationist home-schooling textbooks, that scientists and academics are godless enemies of Christianity, and when they are done with their education, the brightest homeschool children are encouraged to further their education at places like Liberty University, Regent University and this new Patrick Henry College that was created specifically with them in mind. These Christian colleges seem to focus almost exclusively on law and theology, so they will fill the ranks of the ministry and clog the benches with more conservative judges, but they won't add anything to future scientific discovery. Now, to sum it up, these people may be polite in public, dress nice, go to work every day, pay their taxes and keep their grass cut......but to me, I would have to say YES they are fanatics! Probably not dangerous fanatics (except for the way they vote), but still fanatics none-the-less! They are to some degree except for Secular Muslims! Speaking of creationism, there is a very large Islamic creationist movement that has its own version of the Discovery Institute, over in Turkey. They create their own science textbooks that deny evolutionary theory where it confronts their religion, and as a result, according to a poll of public acceptance of evolution taken two years ago that compared the U.S., Japan and 30 European nations, Turkey was at the bottom of the list, and the only country that saved the U.S. from being in last place: http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2006/0...at-least-w.html But, once again there is still the question of deciding who is a harmless fanatic and who is a dangerous fanatic! A few years ago, just after 9/11, I spent some time studying this religion that I completely overlooked up till then. At first, I was put off by the Islamic apologists, both Muslims and non-Muslim scholars such as Karen Armstrong, who tried to shift the blame for terrorism and related violence completely from their religion to social, economic, and tribal issues. These may play a part, but it seemed that they are deliberately downplaying the role of religious doctrines that encourage martyrdom. On the other hand, the arguments made by Islam-critics like Robert Spencer, Craig Wynn, Ibn Warraq and Ali Sina, focus on those Quran and Hadith verses that are the most shocking to Western ears, and argue that all of these verses condoning warfare and slaughter during the Conquest of Arabia makes Muslims more accepting of violence and brutality today. But, at the same time, they try to minimize the influence on modern Christians and Jews of the glorification of killing and brutality found in the Old Testament books, especially those dealing with the Exodus and the Conquest of Canaan. From what I've read about some of the stories coming from the warfronts in Iraq and Afghanistan, military chaplains are once again reaching back to those OT verses that are usually ignored except during times of war. Yeah, I think I mentioned that already! And, if they believe that they will escape judgement and hellfire by becoming a suicide bomber, you can't deny the connection with the religious doctrine! I do it all the time!

Well, that was a waste of time! It looks like you are not only a fanatic, but judging by this offensive rant, you may also be a dangerous lunatic! I'll stand with the people with the "thick foreign accents" over the likes of you any day!

I might have agreed with you if it wasn't for the fact that she is already facing the death penalty! Within the next 12 months, her doctors expect her to die from inoperable brain cancer or other complications of the disease! Her health is likely already in decline and will worsen as the disease progresses; it's not like she' going to go off to live it up in the nightclubs and out on the golfcourse like O.J. Simpson! So who gains by keeping her in prison at this stage of her life? Is every crime issue only about vengeance and retribution to religious conservatives?

I finally got around to watching the video clip and I voted to let her go! People do change over time. I'm not sure what her level of complicity was when she was a participant in the Manson Family murders back in 69 when she was a brainwashed cult-member, but she has not been a danger to anyone during the almost 40 years of incarceration. If she was still a danger, she would behave like Charles Manson, who still has to be kept in solitary. There is no profit to anyone in making her die in prison!

I can't help stepping here to note that it seems a little ironic that you are attacking aboriginals and immigrants in the same thread with some vague appeal to Canadian nationalism. If you're going to use the "we were here first argument" to order immigrants to speak English and abandon their cultural quirks to conform to Canadian values, then even those of us who's ancestors left Scotland in the 1770's and landed in Quebec, are also immigrants, since this continent was occupied for thousands of years before we got here! What exactly does it mean to become Canadian? Do you have to stop speaking your native language at home and cut off all of your family contacts with the old country? And what do we have here to define as Canadian culture? When I was young, growing up in Ontario, it meant holding on to everything that was British! When the Maple Leaf was adopted as the national flag, our local Eaton's store refused to fly it and kept the Red Ensign (with the Union Jack in the top left corner) flying on the flag pole! Back then, being a Canadian meant refusing that godawful concession to the Quebeckers! My, how times have changed! So it seems to me that if there is anything tangible to define Canadian culture, it is a work-in-progress and like it or not, those immigrants you hate so much are going to play a role in molding and shaping Canadian identity in the future!

Well, according to the story, we are created in the image of God, but man is a fallen creature because of that Garden of Eden thing, where Adam and Eve chose the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge and were banished from the Garden. It's a neat little theodicy that explains why things are so bad down here with all of this disease, death and suffering, while up in the sky everything seems perfect.....and up until modern times, most philosophers would reason that the creator of a perfect celestial sphere would also have to be perfect! That was the biggest stumbling block for me growing up while being surrounded by religion (a series of religions) -- they make contradictory claims, so they all can't be right; if any one of them is a divine revelation, that usually means the majority of people are doomed to annihilation or worse (hell); or none of them are right! I'm not sure what you mean! Immutable in theology means that God's nature does not change; perhaps you are thinking of one of the other unbounded divine virtues like omnipresensce.

Was that quote really from Aquinas? I can't believe he would say God wasn't perfect when his arguments to prove the existence of God in the Summa Theologica maintain that God is perfect, infinite and immutable.

And do you know that religious dogma is a set of protected beliefs? Since the point has gone right over your head, I'll put it more directly: Karl Marx created a number of philosophical positions that he declared were absolute, unalterable truths; and that makes his political, ethical and historical philosophy a close cousin of religion! The only thing he didn't have was a claim to a supernatural realm to appeal to, and that makes a religious fascist movement potentially more lethal than communism! In today's news, a new round of suicide bombings by female terrorists have killed dozens of Iraqis, have you ever heard of a communist suicide bomber? Let me know if you find one, because it seems unlikely that you can convince someone to sacrifice their lives just to become "heroes of the revolution!" It's much more effective if you can convince them that paradise awaits in the next world! As soon as you pick one religion, or one sect of a religion, over all of the others, you are potentially setting the stage for conflict! Many religions make a claim to having absolute truth and being the only true religion, and yet are considered peaceful because they are passive in regards to attempting to carry out God's will on earth. So the Jehovah's Witnesses, Mennonites, Amish, Hutterites, are pacifists although they don't believe in a pacifist god, but one that will wipe out the whole human race during the divine judgement, except for those who have separated themselves from the world by joining the "true" church. But all it takes is a belief that there is one true, exclusive religion coupled with an exhortation that the believers must subdue the godless world and bring everyone under the true faith, and you have the most lethal form of fascism! And I consider religion just as harmful where it causes harm through adherence to doctrine at the cost of preventing the spread of disease.......but you aren't willing to deal with that issue! Sure it was a national socialist movement! But, what other features did Nazism have to distinguish itself from Communism besides religion and racial superiority? Read an english translation of Mein Kampf and you'll see loads of religious references in the personal philosophy of Adolph Hitler that he used to develop and distinguish his movement from Communism! You'll notice that it's not socialism or anti-capitalism that Hitler finds objectionable about Communism; but instead it's atheism, internationalism and racial equality which are the Marxist principles that he objects to. There are too many to bother, I'll leave you to look them up yourself, and while your at it maybe you kind find me one quote of Hitler calling for atheism or the abolition of religion!

I don't buy the idea of comparing numbers, because the excuse is always going to be offered up that there were other reasons for the killings. Christians invoke the names of Stalin and Mao, but won't take credit for Adolph Hitler because the Nazis blended in elements of Nordic paganism. Hitler was able to take advantage of existing hatred and suspicion of Jews to begin a campaign of extermination. How big a role did time honoured religious traditions like Martin Luther's "On the Jews and Their Lies" play in motivating either active or passive participation in the genocide? http://www.humanitas-international.org/sho...luther-jews.htm But, besides counting the dead from wars and genocides, any religion that advocates rules that endanger people's lives, like refusing blood transfusions, vaccinations, condoms and anti-retroviral drugs, is also guilty of murder.

Science in itself cannot make moral or ethical decisions. Scientific evidence can be used to make better informed decisions in many contentious issues like abortion, stem cell research, active and passive euthanasia etc., but it's up to the people and elected or appointed decision-makers to get up to speed and have a sound moral philosophy to make the right choices. But the "set of rules" given by religions are outdated ordinances wrapped in the superstitions and prejudices of nomadic desert-dwellers who lived 3000 years ago! Many have been conveniently disregarded, such as the prohibition against wearing a garment made of two different fabrics. Did the other commandments against murder, rape and theft represent any special revelation from a divine source? Not very likely, since every tribe that has ever lived on the planet has had the same rules as part of their code of conduct, whether written or oral tradition. And these rules only apply within the tribe or nation, not to surrounding tribes who are considered enemies or at least potential rivals. Killing, raping and pillaging was given divine sanction because they were "enemies of God." Not that the other tribes were any better; evolutionary psychology defines the motivation as "kin altruism," which causes us to consider the well-being of people related to us to be more important than strangers. The creation of the city states and then nation states united by nationalism and common religious belief, enabled a larger community to have a sense of social cohesion. Now the trick is to get people to identify a sense of internationalism, and consider the wellbeing of the rest of the world as well. Some religions may be compatible with worldpeace, but we all know there are others that are directly at odds and openly hostile to the concept, identifying it directly with the Antichrist! All it takes is a little rational thought to develop a humanistic system of ethics, instead of trying to buff the edges of an antiquated religious code to make it compatible with modern times. How so? Communism had much in common with the religious based totalitarian movements of Nazism and Italian and Spanish Fascism. they both claimed to represent a universal truth which explains everything and can cure every ill; Marxism had pseudoreligious doctrines like historical materialism, and as practised by Lenin, Stalin and Mao, it created a pantheon of heros and demigods; so Marxism had many trappings of religion, except maybe for that very important asset that supernatural religions enjoy -- the ability to promise future rewards and punishments after death. Is it all just a matter of numbers? Whenever I've had this debate with fundamentalists, I ask them if I can include the mythical massacres of the Old Testament, including a flood that supposedly wiped out life on earth; but sticking to the real world, I consider all needless rules that cause death and suffering to be as bad as religious devotees who deliberately commit murder; for example, does the Catholic Church have blood on their hands for deliberately spreading misinformation about condom use in third world countries? The worst example is East African women married to migrant workers, who have been told that they must not use condoms even if they know their husbands are infected with AIDS. Instead they are promised that they will die as martyrs for remaining faithful to Catholic doctrine! Heads should roll for this: The Catholic Church has been accused of telling people in countries with high rates of HIV that condoms do not protect against the deadly virus. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3176982.stm And even if they do show their feet of clay and apply common sense instead of blindly following tradition, that will not undo the damage already done by trying to invent arbitrary rules that do not address human needs: Catholic Church to Ease Ban on Condom Use Pope Benedict XVI is moving away from the absolutist stand of his predecessor http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,1979145,00.html Well, that's why I think that quote from Steven Weinberg I posted previously, is so powerful: a person may have all of the good intentions in the world, but if he feels obligated to carry out a religious duty as a test of faith, then that person can commit barbarous acts he would not have done otherwise!

Yes, I was surprised to notice this connection awhile back on an American forum -- that the majority of religious conservatives who accept so much on faith from their pastors and their favourite Republicans, were skeptics on issues like evolution and global warming, which have broad support among the scientific community. And it's apparently not a random anomaly! This survey conducted by the Barna Group, shows that evangelicals are really out there on their own on global warming: only 33% believe it is a major problem! A similar low number of 35% of evangelicals believe that it is important to invest in protecting the environment. Other religions average around 55% to 60%, relatively close the atheist/agnostic 69% average, on the issue of whether global warming is a problem. http://www.barna.org/FlexPage.aspx?Page=Ba...rnaUpdateID=279 Evangelicals are more likely to adhere to apocalyptic views of the near future, believing they will be raptured soon from whatever problems are going on here on Earth; and that may be a key link to their nonchalance over the environment, and their enthusiasm for conflicts in the MiddleEast, like the Israeli raid of Hezbollah's strongholds in Lebanon a little over a year ago. Bad news is good news to people with this dangerous outlook on the world, and attempts to solve environmental problems or prevent wars are viewed as setbacks for those anxiously awaiting Armageddon!

No, I would not agree! I said before, we can still use Isaac Newton's Laws of Motion today as long as we are working in the world of middle dimensions that we live in. Classical mechanics doesn't run into problems until it has to deal with wave/particle duality and uncertainty on the atomic scale, and it's ability to describe gravitational effects on the astronomical scale is impaired when curvature of spacetime becomes a factor. Otherwise, for everyday use they work fine. And similarly, any work done on the atomic or sub-atomic levels that doesn't deal with very massive objects like black holes or the singularity at the start of the big bang, can be studied with quantum mechanics. No, but as a rule of thumb, when dealing with these sort of highly specialized, technical subjects, the best advice is to take the consensus of expert opinion and be a little more skeptical of the expert who is off on his own. Sometimes the heretic is right; but he still has the burden of proof to make his case before a peer review panel. It's the same thing if your financial adviser told you now is a good time to invest in U.S. mortgage-backed securities; he may be right and ahead of the curve, but if you heard all of the other money experts were convinced that the real estate market was way overpriced, you might be a little wary of taking the advice of your money guru, even though he knows the subject much better than you do! Rather than taking one man's advice, or just taking a public poll to see what the majority of people think, you might want to know what the consensus of expert opinion is on the subject -- and the same thing goes for scientific questions! Math is not my department, so I'm a little lost when mathematicians and physicists talk about "beautiful" and "elegant" mathematics! But this seems like a very subjective judgement by the people who work in physics departments around the world. For one thing, QM stands in the way for the physicists who believe there must be a unified field theory underlying nature, since the situations where quantum mechanics is applied to studying subatomic effects in spacetime (such as quantum tunneling, where the "special" theory of relativity, which assumes flat spacetime, is used) since QM generates meaningless infinities when attempts are made to incorporate the curved spacetime of general relativity. The presupposition that the math will be "elegant" may be another one of those situations where our intuitive expectations for how things should work are violated under dimensions that we didn't need to deal with during our evolution. The real world may be ugly by our standards of aesthetics and there may be no unifying theory -- even at the start of the big bang! And of course, many physicists, including Einstein himself, could not accept uncertainty and uncaused events because our everyday understanding of the world is a determined universe that works by strict laws of cause and effect. And that may be the source of the search for hidden variables in quantum theory; besides the Copenhagen Interpretation, the next most popular interpretation of the range of probabilities is the 'Many Worlds Interpretation' -- where instead of the collapse of a wave function, the probabilities represent different dimensional pathways chosen by the particle. If there were three probable choices, the particle would follow all of the paths in three different dimensional parallel universes. Many Worlds meets the criteria of being deterministic, but it has it's own inelegance, since there would have to be an infinite, or near infinite number of alternative universes to allow every probability to follow its course. No surprise that science fiction writers love this interpretation! They can use this interpretation to create alternate universes where Hitler won WWII, dinosaurs still roam the earth since the comet or asteroid that struck the earth 63 million years ago didn't happen -- the possibilities for writing fiction are also endless, but not necessarily based in anything real. But, once again, it will only have consequences where gravity becomes an issue at the atomic scale -- very dense objects like black hole singularities. Of course they do! In geologic history, there is a contentious debate over whether collisions of asteroids/comets caused previous mass extinctions, or whether natural earth changes like volcanic flood basalts and plate tectonics, were the main culprits that cause mass extinction. There is not enough evidence to make an either/or case for most mass extinctions, but the consensus of opinion is that the K/T extinction that we are most familiar with, since it wiped out the dinosaurs was caused by a comet/asteroid. There is still a minority opinion that a volcanic flood basalt was the primary cause since some geologists have noted that the Deccan Traps in India were formed during the period of the extinction, 60 to 65 million years ago. A previous mass extinction called "The Great Dying" 250 million years ago, was an even more pivotal event since it wiped out over 90% of plant and animal life on land, and virtually all sea life. But the P/T extinction is also contentious since there is also evidence of impact and earth changes at that time! The consensus seems to be shifting towards earth changes, thanks in large part probably to the work of paleontologist Peter D. Ward, who discovered evidence for sulphate-producing bacteria in sedimentary rocks he was exploring in the Canary Islands a number of years back. His explanation for the re-emergence of lethal cyanobacteria at the time, was that volcanic activity of the massive Siberian Traps flood basalt, dumped so much carbon dioxide, methane, sulpher dioxide and other noxious gases in the atmosphere over a period of one million years, that it created an anoxic situation in the planet's oceans, killing off sea life and allowing anaerobic bacteria to return and flourish. Ward's theory is presented in a book I read last year called:"Under A Green Sky," and received a lot of notoriety outside of the earth sciences community because he believes that a continued increase in CO2 levels will at some point cause the polar ice caps to melt and the ocean circulation system to grind to a halt, or at least slow down so much that it can't replenish the oceans with oxygen. Ward's conclusions may not be 100%, but one thing that I admire about him is that he had the courage of conviction to stick by what he considered to be correct at an early point of his career -- Ward was a graduate student working for renowned paleontologist Luis Alvarez, who discovered the correlation between the Chixulub Crater in the Yucatan, with the demise of the dinosaurs. Alvarez assumed that all mass extinctions were caused by impact events, and was so offended that Ward was developing an earth changes theory, that he yanked funding for his work in the Canary Islands! Ward had to scramble to search for alternative benefactors so he could continue his work. So, I have no illusions that scientists don't always act rationally and altruistically, but can be motivated by ego, pride, jealousy, greed, revenge, just as much as the rest of society! One cynical physicist commented many years ago that:"new theories are accepted when old dept. heads die of old age!" -- so it may take time, but eventually a worthy new idea will win acceptance if it has strong support. In religion, that process is either non-existent or could take centuries to change doctrines! see above! I haven't figured out yet exactly what standpoint you are arguing from, except that you take a relativistic view that scientific inquiry is no more valid than any other statement of beliefs, including religious authority. Whether some people consider it offensive or not, I am not going to grant the same degree of authenticity to religion, mysticism or any other belief system that claims to receive knowledge from outside of our natural world. And I just used Ben STein as an example of someone who tries to make a claim by trying to discredit evolutionary theory and the scientists who work in fields that depend on evolutionary theory to do their research. And, it is not necessarily just a Christian thing! On this board, Charter Rights seems to be the biggest denier of the scientific method that we have here. He rejects the "out of Africa" theory of human origins for a belief that the natives always lived here since time began -- even though it flies in the face of fossil and DNA evidence. Well, from what I've seen so far, her views are attacked as narrow and intolerant primarily by liberal religious people who think that just asking the Why question is objectionable. After running in circles with the abortion debate, I am also more inclined to demand that people such as those who present the mantra: "life begins at conception" do more than say " I believe!" If I have to defend the reasons why I believe there has to be a stage in fetal development where we start conferring human rights to a fetus, the people at opposide ends of the debate should not be allowed to hide behind the privacy of personal belief! That's why these sorts of issues never reach any real consensus! On the prolife side, if the policies you are advocating are just based on a belief that a "soul" is dropped into the embryo after fertilization, that is no longer a private religious belief, and the evidence for this soul and the doctrine of ensoulment should be subject to evalutation as well! Communists are materialist, but they are not humanists, since they deny the rights of the individual in favour of collective rights. A secular dogma like communism can take on many of the properties of a religion, and if you use Cambodia for a comparison, the religion of communism was not "hijacked by a tiny minority of extremists," but instead it was the true believers in Marxism who decided that classes of people like city-dwellers needed to be exterminated, since they could not be moulded in to a true proletarian class. This is similar to Thomas de Torquemada, the Grand Inquisitor, who became the greatest mass murderer of heretics because he was a devout Catholic and could not be corrupted by bribery attempts like other inquisitors. He was described as ascetic and beyond reproach and could not be corrupted by the accused who attempted to buy him off! But, have you noticed how communism has pretty much come and gone in less than a hundred years? I don't know how communist North Korea's regime is; many analysts have pegged it as more in line with the old aristocracies of that region that depended on emperor worship to maintain their power over the people. The Communist China of today is a far cry from the Maoist regime of "the Great Leap Forward!" Today it is just another one-party dictatorship, no different than other similar regimes in the Third World. A big part of the reason is that since communism is atheistic and cannot promise supernatural rewards or threaten supernatural punishment, a communist regime could not make a faith-based appeal to the people to disregard the continued failure of their system and have faith that God would soon be coming to either begin a new world order, or take them all off to heaven to live happily everafter! Communism was doomed by the very rationalism that they appealed to. Over the years, people could see through the propaganda, since they couldn't make an anti-intellectual appeal like "blessed are the sheep, since they just do what their told and don't ask tough questions!"

Brian Greene is a good source to go to learn about String Theory, and the Elegant Universe book that the series is based on has a unique feature of giving readers the choice of skipping over some of the detailed technical sections, so they can focus on the concepts that are discussed. The only problem I have with Greene and some of the other popular advocates of string theory, like Michiou Kaku, is that they have their whole careers tied up with proving some form of string theory model. Neil De Grasse Tyson and Lee Smolin have written books recently from the skeptical vantage-point that some physicists and department heads are concerned about the way all of the eggs have been placed in the string theory basket by putting all of the best brains in physics and mathematics to work developing string theories instead of devoting adequate attention to other possible quantum gravity theories.

Okay, thanks for providing a textbook example of a straw man argument! These assumptions that atheists are claiming to be incapable of prejudice and even claiming to be more intelligent, are part of your prejudiced view, not ours! The study that started this thread is making a claim based on averages that skeptics who have dropped their religious dogmas are going to be more intelligent than the people who accept them! It's an argument based on population averages, and I have seen anything in what I've read so far, that the researcher (Richard Lynn) is claiming that becoming an atheist will raise your IQ! That's just extra baggage being thrown on to discredit the study. Feel free to agree or disagree! It's only one study and with all of the money that organized religion has at its disposal, you'll be able to cite contrary studies very soon, which will more than likely point out the weaknesses of using IQ tests to accurately determine intelligence. I've already stated previously that I don't put a lot of trust in IQ studies (interesting that many rightwing extremists like to use them when they give the results they like, such as The Bell Curve), but I'd still like someone to give a good reason why the majority of the top scientists who are members of the N.A.S. do not share the belief in the supernatural that the majority of the population does. My suspicion is that people who are not very bright, are going to be less likely to make a break from magical thinking than the smart people. It doesn't mean that the geniuses are going to follow through and be rational, but they should have a greater likelihood of doing so than someone who has trouble evaluating the evidence. Right! No one is completely rational, and the smartest naturalistic thinker still cannot be completely objective about how he or she forms their beliefs. We begin our lives accepting everything our parents teach us, and we may hold on to some of their unfounded beliefs and prejudices without even being aware of them. And once we are sure about a belief, it is given the emotional reference of a favourite memory, since we don't want to forget or lose track of it. The emotional connection to a favoured belief makes it more difficult to abandon. Not if you take more than a superficial examination of belief systems like Communism that were based on a materialistic worldview! An atheist has the freedom to adopt any naturalistic worldview ( and for most, this means incorporating any phenomena presently regarded as supernatural, if it is proveable) that is available. You've just shown this in your example, since Marxism and the extreme laissez-faire capitalism advocated by Objectivists are at opposite extremes of the political spectrum. As far as I am aware, most atheists adopt some type of humanist philosophy that is not on the fringes. But the religious are already starting off with a transcendent worldview that they have varying abilities to adapt and re-apply when new knowledge becomes available. Every new discovery that challenges a faith-based belief system can create a cognitive dissonance that leads many to adopt a hostile attitude to everything new that might threaten this carefully crafted model. Right! But physicist Steven Weinberg says it best: "Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." When people are told it's their Christian duty to torture and kill heretics, they may otherwise be good people, but a religious belief forces them to be barbaric; and with the revival going on in the Muslim World today, many might have otherwise been productive citizens if their religious beliefs and the exhortations of their trusted religious leaders didn't tell them God wanted them to commit a terrorist attack, become a warrior, or stone a young woman to death for talking to an infidel British soldier!

Talk about hubris! If you actually picked up a book in your local library on the subject of quantum mechanics, instead of trying to BS your way through, you would be aware that the descriptions of atomic and sub-atomic events described by the theory of quantum mechanics has layed the groundwork for just about every major development in electronics from the transistor to the electron microscope and M.R.I. machines. The development of the laser was proposed as a practical application of the principle of quantum entanglement. There are new experimental "quantum computers" being developed which are trying to make use of wider number of choices a quantum chip would have if it could make use of the full range of probabilities available, instead of the simple binary gates currently available. So why would they feel the need to scrap their work and switch to a new theory? Any theory with as many practical applications as quantum mechanics, is not going to be scrapped!

Wrong understanding then! Quantum mechanics works fine in describing what goes on at the atomic scale, what it doesn't work with is general relativity -- the theory used to describe gravitational effects as curving the spacetime that surrounds a mass, and that's why a unifying theory is sought after, not to replace existing theories! no one would believe you, if you did! And this is a classic problem with accepting arguments from authority-- your physicist, like all physicists, is aware that there are a number of competing interpretations of the effects discovered in quantum mechanics. I don't know where the number 23 comes from, but it sounds like he is referring to an interpretation that the uncertainty observed in measuring a particle's location and velocity is not caused by a random Uncertainty Principle, but instead because there are an undetermined number of local and non-local hidden variables at the atomic scale that are still unknown. This interpretation is popular with physicists who desire a classical physics approach that eliminates uncertainty and randomness, and makes the Universe a deterministic, orderly system again. But the majority of physicists still accept the Copenhagen Interpretation that particle reactions are suspended in a superposition of varying probabilities until one of those probable choices is made when the wave-function collapses. There are no hidden variables in this interpretation; randomness is assumed to be an inherent part of the system. Good, because it's not an either/or situation! Quantum mechanics can still be used as long as gravity doesn't have to be incorporated into the model, as would happen if you're trying to describe they physics of a Black Hole or the original black hole -- the Big Bang Model. And String Theory is only one of a number of quantum gravity theories proposed to resolve this issue. And since no one has figured out a way of testing string theory models yet, many physicists are hedging their bets and continuing the development of earlier quantum gravity theories like Loop Quantum Gravity. And that's how religion and mythology is generated! When there are no answers, people make up their own. The Cargo Cults of the South Pacific in the 20th century (especially the John FRum Cult) provided a laboratory for anthropologists to observe the origins, development, propagation, and stubborn resilience of a myth to persist and grow, even after failed prophecies and new knowledge should have caused the cult to disappear. But why just pick on the John Frum Cult? The organized religions that dominate most people's thinking today have no more evidence to support them than the Pacific Islanders' belief that John Frum will still return from the sky at the end of times bearing valuable cargo, and either slay or drive out all of the whites and non-native Indians who have settled on their islands. Because the scientist with a new hypothesis has to prove its value to his or her peers. That's the whole principle behind peer review. Something that pseudoscientists and creationists have no respect for, and that's why they take their fake medicines, fake evidence for psychic phenomena, fake evidence for creationism directly to the public! They know that many people, if not the majority of people are not critical thinkers, and do not know how to determine what theories can be supported with evidence, from those that are convincing-sounding fakes! Okay, I'm looking! What's wrong with it? This is a very ancient period in geologic history that's difficult to study, since our planet's plate tectonics, erosion, plants and animals, not to mention human development, all make it difficult to study this period in the Earth's history. From what I gather, many geologists studying this period believe there was a massive glaciation event that likely covered the planet about 600 million years ago, and this caused a mass extinction of micro-organisms. Since these are small, soft-bodied organisms that would leave behind little fossil evidence compared to later post-cambriam hard-shelled life forms, it is obviously still speculative work. Are you saying that the geologists and paleontologists shouldn't be bothering to attempt a study of this period in the planet's history? The young-earth creationists certainly are! And that's why they want to discredit all research done on the distant past. And that's the whole point of the scientific method! Scientists have their pet theories and can develop rivalries, that's just human nature! But unlike religion, a prominent scientist cannot stonewall the acceptance of a new theory that is providing testable, repeatable results -- so disregard the lies and propaganda spewed forth by Ben Stein in his documentary! If that's where this is coming from! Did Drea actually say she knows everything? Or is that just the charge thrown at her by everyone who doesn't like her and wants to make a personal attack instead of dealing with the subject? I've been arguing all along that beliefs should not be held as absolute and should be re-examined an re-evaluated when they are challenged by new and possibly better explanations. I'll believe in gods, demons, souls, ghosts, ufo's, faith-healing, psychic powers and homeopathy, as soon as one of their advocates can make a convincing evidence-based argument for their existence! Otherwise, I'm going to stick with a naturalistic method to understand the world. The people who compromise their flexibility to adapt, are not the scientists or the atheists, they are the adherents to religious and even political dogmas that are treated as absolute, inerrant truth!