Posted on 10/25/2006 11:10:46 AM PDT by Blackirish
As the Republican base fragments and Christian conservatives consider a “fast” from politics, the polling data point to a mid-term Republican thumping. Less than two weeks from now, Republicans will begin their post-mortem soul searching. And as the corpses of their House and Senate majorities grow cold, so should Karl Rove’s 2006 campaign strategy.
(Excerpt) Read more at article.nationalreview.com ...
antiRepublicrat: May I add a corollary? Having a high incidence of such posts also gives ammunition to those at DU and other places to defame this board as a bunch of "far-right religious nuts."
May I add a suspicion? Some of the anti-evos here are leftists "salting" FR with quotes to be "mined" later.
And you should quit insulting those of us who do believe in the Creator. If you guys want to prove the theory of evolution, more power to you. But don't use it as a tool to destroy our faith in God or to destroy our political and religious freedom.
The insulting has not been one way nor evenly balanced. And science is not a tool used to destroy political or religious freedom. Science is apolitical. It has been made a political and a religious issue by those who feel is its discoveries threaten their religious beliefs. This has been going on since Galileo, and it's getting played out once again on FR in the conservative coalition. It's really sad and too bad. You've made your position clear to me and I respect that. However, I disagree.
As are some who claim to be "Evolution Scientists." We nuke the trolls when they are discovered. It happens.
See my aforementioned statement on fairness and bias.
Surely you jest!
Science is apolitical? Global warming science is apolitical? The theory of evolution is apolitical? Yeah, riiiight.
I tried Googling "bifurcation of nature" and ran head on into a bunch of philosophy using terms which I have never been exposed to before.
As such I could not on first reading make out *what* was being said.
I trust your intellect, integrity, and judgement. Could you suggest a good introductory book or website on the subject?
Cheers!
PS It'll be on the "to be read pile" for now--I just started Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged and Michener's Alaska, too.
Cheers!
A tolerant bunch there, huh?
Thanks for the info on the tree rings, btw. It's always good to have multiple, independent, concurring evidence.
BTW, here's another question (tee hee).
For radiometric dating, recall that one of the crevo threads recently posted an article about a naturally occurring uranium-based chain reaction in Africa...this by definition would screw up isotope ratios in the immediate vicinity of the reaction, as well as any places to which the fission by-products or matrix got washed downstream.
How common an occurrence is that? Is it enough to worry about dating of any fossils or local geographical strata?
Cheers!
The thing is that we aren't. The last ten years to fifteen years I worked in both geo-sciences (oil exploration) and in biology (DNA sequencing). Both of these fields were connected to the theoretical and applied sciences. The vast majority of people I worked had some measure of religious faith. Many of them were church (or synagoge) going people.
You are laying down friendly fire, because most scientists and engineers are conservative by nature. They are typically cautious, not prone to accepting a change without good reason, and desire results. They are patriotic people, generally pro-free enterprise people, many of them veterans too. They are *not* far-out Moveon atheist types that you would think they are from reading FR. The liberal arts may be filled with those types, but the physical sciences and engineering disciplines are not.
I generally had no problem talking politics with them, but they didn't want to vote Republican, because they perceived (wrongly or rightly, which seems to be the topic of this flamewar) that the GOP is filled with anti-science kooks.
Imagine yourself trying to talk to you coworker under these conditions, only to have him point you to a conservative site where scientists are labeled as maxist homosexuals. Boom. You lost him.
Sure it is. People who prospect for oil use geology and micropaleontology to understand the conditions under which petroleum is produced. The oil companies don't care what party you are, they care about dry holes.
What I don't understand is, why do you suffer us evos to "live" here in the first place if we're so obviously Marxist tools who are helping get Democrats elected by our very presence here?
We are just rerunning the same discussions I have seen innumerable times here on FR. There's no point continuing it. Hopefully, we have enough common ground to hold together a majority conservative coalition.
If that were true, we wouldn't be having this discussion today. The fact is, your people are seizing upon this issue to belittle and insult (see link to Darwin Central posted above) believers in God and to use so-called "apolitical science" as a means to deprive us of the truths we hold to be self-evident, ie, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
And, yes, this is an organized long term effort led by the ACLU, the liberal/socialist Democrat Party, the leftist main stream media and now joined by a minority of well meaning (I'm sure) but misdirected would be conservatives. You can't be a conservative if you fall in league with the Marxist ACLU and the socialist Democrat Party. Sorry.
For radiometric dating, recall that one of the crevo threads recently posted an article about a naturally occurring uranium-based chain reaction in Africa...this by definition would screw up isotope ratios in the immediate vicinity of the reaction, as well as any places to which the fission by-products or matrix got washed downstream.
How common an occurrence is that? Is it enough to worry about dating of any fossils or local geographical strata?
This is not my specialty, so my answer will not be as precise nor necessarily as correct as for radiocarbon dating.
The materials they date in Africa are not the fossils themselves but the volcanic layers which are often found above or below the fossil-bearing layers. Volcanic layers are suitable for dating by the various forms of radiometric dating. I believe I remember that the uranium problem does not occur in those volcanic layers, but this is far from my area of specialty.
As an additional source of dating, the fossil-bearing layers usually contain animal and plant fossils as well. Some of the species are unique to certain layers, and once those layers are dated in one location, those relative dates can be applied to other locations.
Hope this helps.
Don't fool yourself. There's nothing more political than science. Any science, at any level.
"because most scientists and engineers are conservative by nature."
"but they didn't want to vote Republican,"
Then they aren't conservative.
Just like the "science" of global warming, the "science" of the theory of evolution started out as a political issue, still is, and always will be as long as there is a God in Heaven and religious people on Earth. You people should quit lying to yourselves. It's a political issue!
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