Posted on 05/25/2005 3:41:22 AM PDT by billorites
The May 21 Lincoln Journal Star piece on the Rosenbergs' son's address to the American Civil Liberties Union annual dinner glosses over the most important fact of the case.
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were unquestionably spies; the Venona intercepts, Khrushchev's statement that the pair provided "very significant help in accelerating the production of our atomic bomb," and released KGB documents show that Julius was in fact a leading Soviet spy in America who led an espionage ring that transferred nuclear weapons technology to the Soviets.
In this way the Rosenbergs put in jeopardy the lives of every man, woman and child in this country and sustained an evil empire that kept hundreds of millions of people in bondage.
Nonetheless, the ACLU persists in trying to maintain the long-discredited lie that these treasonous agents of a tyrannical foreign power were somehow innocent victims of anti-Communist hysteria.
Why this 50-year love affair with virulent enemies of the United States? Has the ACLU run out of innocent people to defend?
Of course, it's easy to post snide insinuations on FR about atheists, with a cohort of fundy brethren around to provide cover. It's not so easy to confront liberals on their own turf. The Rosenbergs were real Marxists, and real enemies of the United States. Dawkins is a Lib Dem who happens not to like the President. To some of us, that's a meaningful distinction.
Wild-Ass Guess: fantasy pulled out one's behind.
Since jwalsh07 has seen fit to impugn the conservative credentials of evos in general, I though I'd post this link , from today's Lincoln Journal-Star. First letter on the page.
A false assertion not backed by any evidence. In fact, I have pointed out that certain "evos" are great contributors whose opinions I hold in high esteem on conservative issues. You, at times, have been among them.
I assume you wrote that letter to the editor and you have my thanks for doing it. Well done prof. I'll ping you next time one of my letters makes it through the liberal filter of my local newspaper. To be fair though, they have printed a number of my rants.
Of course, it's easy to post snide insinuations on FR about atheists, with a cohort of fundy brethren around to provide cover.
Another unfounded assertion 180 out from the facts. I debated this issue on this thread by myself. The "brethren" were all on your side. Not complaining, just stating a fact. I expect nothing less when I visit your 'turf'.
It's not so easy to confront liberals on their own turf.LOL, I rode around Boston in particular and New England in general with "Impeach the President and her husband" bumper stickers on my cars for near 6 years. I've gone nose to nose with union thugs trying to suppress conservatives rights to speech at various rallies here in Ct. I've posted some of those very pictures here at FR. Confrontation happens. Such is life.
The Rosenbergs were real Marxists, and real enemies of the United States. Dawkins is a Lib Dem who happens not to like the President. To some of us, that's a meaningful distinction.
Yes the Rosenbergs were Marxists. Dawkins writings regarding religion, and I have read quite a bit of them, force me to conclude that his views on religion are the same as Marx. How you conclude from that that that I think all atheists are marxist in their views toward religion I have no idea.
But here's something you can take to the bank Prof. My personal rule on FR is that I don't write anything that I wouldn't say to you in person.
Regards.
Unless you understand that "theory" entails conjecture you are not working with the correct definition of theory. Do you see the words "system of assumptions" in the American Heritage Dictionary definition of "theory", or does cognative dissonance kick in whenever those words come up?
Like I keep saying: "she's as beautuful as she is brilliant."
I wish you would stay engaged in the discussion, PatrickHenry! Your insights are always much appreciated. Hugs!
In understanding the universe we try to avoid those, but we all must make some. A wild-ass guess need not be a deemed a "fantasy." Science works with the assumption that nothing travels faster than the speed of light in a vaccuum. As far as I am concerned, that is a fairly large assumption - large enough to be a wild-ass guess but not a fantasy insofar as reason has been able apprehend reality. If we were to work with the assumption that nothing moves faster than the speed Jeff Gordon in a dump truck, then we would be engaging in a wild-ass guess that could be deemed fantasy.
Science doesn't 'work with that assumption'; science reaches that conclusion. There's a major difference.
AntiGuv: That is true, but the organizing principle need not be intelligent. Two examples of non-intelligent organizing principles are general relativity and quantum mechanics. Some would posit that the ultimate organizing principle that underlies the universe is the Theory of Everything (hence, the name..) but I guess we can't be sure unless and until we discover it!
This is an issue of time - whether one views our 4D block as three spatial dimensions evolving over time or whether one views time as a dimension: x,y,z,t.
This also hinges AntiGuv's presumption that general relativity and quantum mechanics are not intelligent organizing principles. Relativity, quantum mechanics, string theories and many "theories of everything" view time as a dimension and therefore that presumption cannot withstand scrutiny.
I would love to also engage in a discussion of time, null paths, light bending at positive gravity indentations, inter-dimensional gravity and the ilk - if anyone would care to "go there".
The theories of everything definition from Wikipedia is a great case-in-point since not all TOEs are physics and yet they are TOEs by definition. In a like manner, a homosexual man may not "want" to be a man but he is a man nonetheless, by definition of what a man "is".
Notwithstanding that, our definition process is very illuminating.
IMHO, most of them along with researchers in panspermia/cosmic ancestry/exobiology and collective consciousness would keel over at the notion that their work fits the definition of an intelligent design hypothesis. After all, being tagged ID is a scarlet letter to mainstream scientists. LOL!
Nice link!.
It even includes plants, the bane of creationist and ID thinkers.
I suggest you either learn to accept the consensus meanings of English words, or choose another language in which to converse. No part in the definition of 'theory' involves an inference from incomplete data, or guesswork. And the first sign of a charlatan is an attempt to change the accepted meaning of terms.
Ballocks. That's a deduction, not an assumption.
My guess is that you get your science information from the main-stream media or creationist web sites.
Biologists are still arguing over the number of animal phyla and the best way to organize them. The proposals range from 32 to 36 but this could change next year. Molecular data sometimes results in dramatic reclassification. Cladists are now trying to build trees based on gene appearance, cell types and organ types. Classifying organisms is an ongoing battle. It's not as clean-cut and trivial as you're led to believe.
Also I don't think you could put all that information into one book. It would weigh tons. I agree there could be some reasonable number of samples, though.
I'm going to spend some time with PatrickHenry's link and see how that looks.
But, it occurred to me that you may intend to signify something more narrow by this contrast. So, I want to see what precisely you mean by "life v non-life" (and, for that matter, I'd like to know why you generally phrase it "life v non-life/death in nature").
Claude Shannon's theory is the origin of the field of mathematics known as information theory and is used in pharmaceutical and cancer research among other things. The discipline is generally known as "information theory and molecular biology".
Here is my post from another thread:
Information is that which distinguishes life from non-life/death.
Information, paraphrased as successful communication is the reduction of uncertainty (Shannon entropy) in a receiver or molecular machine in going from a before state to an after state. It is the action, the communication itself, the arrows on the chart below. It is not the message. The value or meaning of the message being transmitted has no bearing on the model.
Two quick thought experiments for Lurkers:
Consider what would happen if you dropped a live bird, a dead bird and a cannonball from the rooftop.
Successful communication includes all of the named elements. In biological systems these elements should be interpreted as follows:
Applied to the enigmas, this definition would interpret all of the following as living with the following restrictions:
Bacterial Spores autonomous successful communication
Mycoplasmas autonomous bacterial model parasite successful communication
Mimivirus autonomous virus model parasite successful communication
Viroids non-autonomous virus-like noise/mutation contributing to successful/failed communication (no protein coat)
Viruses non-autonomous virus noise/mutation contributing to successful/failed communication (feeds genetic data to the host)
Prions non-autonomous protein noise/mutation contributing to successful/failed communication (protein crystallization)
If you have an alternative mathematical definition, I'd love to see it!
All deductions result in, and are based upon, the assumption they accurately reflect reality. Once one makes a conclusion, he uses it as an assumption upon which to base further thought. And no matter how many times you write to the contrary, a theory by definition entails a set of assumptions. Besides, it is common usage to make use of the word "theory" in a manner that deflects the meaning of "fact" or "absolute truth."
The intent of my post was not to endorse or debunk their work but to evidence what their work entails vis-a-vis science.
I get somewhat amused at the notion of aliens seeding life on this planet - but for researchers such as Crick, this was the best explanation.
It is what it is.
The point of defining panspermia/cosmic ancestry and collective consciousness on this thread is to determine whether the definition fits the definition of an intelligent design hypothesis.
Right. So when evolutionists say that evolution occurs by the process of random variation and selection, the claim, at least as originally vetted, is that, while the variation step is uniformly (sorry about the original terminology) distributed, after the selection step, the distribution is gaussian, with a central tendency toward those individuals whose attributes give them the best chances of survival. This is the invisible sculping blade with which evolution "designs" species as the blade changes shape over time. If you want to argue against the evolutionary story, this is what you need to attack. Attacking "chance", as if uniform distribution were the story is a strawman attack.
More little word games. Please restrict yourself to posts in English. I'm sure you'd love to construct another language in which a deduction is in fact an assumption, but that's not the one we're using here.
That nothing can travel faster than the speed of light is a consequence of special relativity, not an assumption. Deal with it.
The man has denied it directly.
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