Re #25
To whom indeed. There is a famous question that has endured down passing millennia. "Am I my brother's keeper? "

I am an atheist, but I know the answer.

Today's news seems to be about that Palestinian camp in Damascus where for generations happy little campers and their parents have "stayed in nice hotels, dined like kings, and spit in our collective faces". Now that ISIS has moved in, those kids will have to go out and look for a paying job.

That'll teach 'em, the little moochers.

Michael, that is my point exactly. You and others don't like folks like myself spouting Gomer Pylish religion around the place while at the same time to some greater or lessor extent, you take up your Global Warming cross and make that your religion. I can't do anything about a God I can't see. I surely can't control Him if he exists. It is the strangest thing to me that you and others believe that you can control and satisfy—dare I say worship, your man-made god. Global warming, climate change, is a religion to bow to, pay tithes to, make donations to, get taxed for.

If global warming is man caused, it would be much more simple to do away with man so that there would be no causation. When the earth finally heals, no one will be around to notice. Perfect.

Poverty is universal, Janice. ( Jesus said it first) So is displacement. Governments are responsible for it. The super wealthy aren't gonna' give up their money to anyone. The middle class does, voluntarily and un-voluntarily. Palestinians would have a state today if they weren't so adamant on Israel's destruction. And they would win 'right of return' too.

Charlie, this story about Mary anointing Jesus feet is related in two places in the gospels, the one you quote from Mark and also in St. John 12.8.

The former states that it was in reply to: "some that had indignation within themselves, and said, Why was this waste of the ointment made? For it might have been sold for more than three hundred pence, and have been given to the poor. And they murmured against her." After which Judas goes to the high priests to betray Jesus.

But the latter reports that it was Judas Iscariot, already with the silver in a bag on his person, who complained: 4. Then said one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, which should betray him, 5. Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor? 6. This he has said, not that he cared for the poor; but because he was a thief, and had the bag, and bare what was put therein."

This "the poor always" has been used by the pious for centuries to ignore the plight of the poor, in fact to make them suffer for being poor.

But how do you reconcile the fact that the reports are so contradictory that in one case it is a number of folks who are asking (in latter times it was the trustees of the poorhouses and the refugee camps) while in the other it was specifically the bad guy Judas.

For my part, I doubt that the historical Jesus ever said it.

Coincidentally I wrote a paper in Swedish on the Gospel of St. Mark about ten years ago to compensate for not attending a seminar in my Comparative Literature class. So I am primed for this question. I won't bore you with the contents of the entire paper, but here are some pertinent bits.

The Gospel of St. Mark was written some sixty or seventy years after the death of the historical Christ. It is included as the second book in the New Testament but most critical assessments regard it as being the first of the four that was written. Scholars in antiquity and all extant manuscripts name Mark as the author. The oldest reference is Papias (200 years Common Era) who says that Mark was an interpreter for Peter and that he wrote his version in Rome based on what Peter had told him. Most researchers concede the Marcan priority, and conclude that Matthew and Luke more or less copied Mark to create their versions. Some also hold that Matthew and Luke drew from an hypothetical document known as Q.

The literary relationship of the first three gospels are known as "the synoptic problem" because the first three—known as the synoptics—are similar (the so-called triple tradition) but in strong contrast to John.

The phenomena that demand clarification in the synoptic problem are:

1) Ninety percent of Mark's 661 verses are (often ipsis verbis) in either Matthew (more than 600) or Luke (350) or both.
2) Mark text arrangement is followed by the other two.
3. When the words are given verbatim, Matthew and Luke are seldom in agreement, but one of them uses Mark's text.
4) When there is no parallel text in Mark (roughly 200 verses), the corresponding texts in Matthew and Luke are similar.

According to the earliest Greek manuscript and the earliest writings of the patriarchs, the Gospel of St. Mark ends abruptly after chapter 16, verse 8. Several manuscripts have different endings and both the English and Swedish versions have 12 additional verses. (And since Easter is just around the corner, I will tell you that verse 9 and following are about the resurrection and ascension.)

To further confuse the issue, in 1958 in the ancient monastery Mar Saba was found a copy of a letter and a copy of the Marcan gospel. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mar_Saba_letter

All these confounding issues aside, what we do know is that the gospel had a long history before it was written down and was based on an oral tradition several generations after Christ's crucifixion. And it has gone through many translations. I found it interesting that the Swedish and KJV English versions have radically different styles. And now both have been turned into modern versions and any critical thinker must ask: What did Jesus really say about the poor?

Well, one thing he supposedly said, (Mark 10.21.) was:

21 "Then Jesus beholding him loved him and said unto him, "One thing thou lackest,. Go thy way, sell whatsoever thus hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven, and come, take up the cross and follow me.
22. And he was sad at that saying and went away grieved: for he had great possessions.

Now you get a reward for reading all this, Charlie. Don't cheat. If you haven't really read it all, your screen will crack.

The Swede Joe Hill was executed one hundred years ago this year. Like the historic Christ he was executed on trumped-charge:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJ236CwhlPw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUR2PDTptO0

Happy Easter, Charlie.

Janice, you crack me up. I do believe that Jesus actually said it, but to fortify my position and defense of it— not self-piosity (not a word) Jesus speaks of the more serious lack of wealth in Matthew, Chapter 5, also known as the Sermon on the Mount, more specifically, the Beatitudes, which I have all kinds of trouble obeying. He says: Blessed are the poor in spirit. It is a profound statement which covers pretty much everyone. I don't think he was talking about self-help courses there. All the lost will ever have is what they attain in this life. The "you can't take it with you" saying is apt. So the lost are just as truly poor as the poorest beggar who ever lived. I think what Jesus was doing in Mark was setting the whole thing up so that it would be undeniable that He alone could make a man rich {in spirit} {alive spiritually} and make the poor, who are truly poor in possession and spirit, able to obtain faith, which as you know, is a dangerous thing. It levels the playing field, because in the end, we (the redeemed) win. Judas had a predetermined role to play and obviously, appropriately held the bag. (was left holding the bag) Since he was never a true believer, he was truly bereft in the end, where the Pharisees buried him in Potter's field. paying for it with the sellout. Most intellectuals that I know are not Christians, neither are many rich people. They find no need of God. God is viewed as an unnecessary crutch for weak-minded people.

I am not aware of serious Bible scholars dissing Mark. Mark's approach has always seemed a little strange to me though.

You too, Janice.

Charlie, my friend, you may need to deepen your thinking. All relations are meant to be reciprocal. No exceptions. That's the whole point of having covenants: they are agreements, as the lawyers say, between parties. And every phrase has a corollary. If "as above, so below" is true, then "as below, so above" must also be true. That's why we do the rituals so carefully. How we do them affects things in the other realm. It's not just earth that needs restoring.

That's why we try to rectify the world, it's why we write poems and build houses and measure our words carefully. Yes, things fall apart, constantly, the vessels break, over and over, and it's up to us to remake them, and put evil back in the containers. Even though we know they're going to break again. It's what we do. It's why we're here.

That's why I love the story of the Lamed Vavniks so much. Milton was wrong: poetry doesn't exist to justify the ways of God to man. It exists to give the Lamed Vavniks arguments and indisputable evidence.

And that's why it's so sad that you, Charlie, yes, you, personally, my friend, are so willing to justify, explain away, and ignore evil and evil collective actions. It undermines their case. If God gathered them together this morning, they'd have many good arguments for why he shouldn't just go ahead and destroy the world. But he might reply "Look how many do evil, and deny they're doing it! Look how many just try to explain it away! And look how sure of themselves they are as they do it!"

Do the Lamed Vavniks exist? It's a nice story, but who can say? Besides, what the hell do I know? But if they do, shouldn't we be trying to give them evidence to bolster their case?

Best,

Bill

Charlie, your proposition seems to be: "We can't do anything about global warming, so let's stop wasting time and money trying."

Well, first of all, that's a false premise. There's a lot we can do, beginning with cutting the vast quantity of man-made emissions - something the planet has never had to try to cope with in its 4.5 billion years of existence until the last hundred years or so. Yes, the planet goes through, and recovers from, natural cycles. This is a totally unnatural one.

But your argument, by extension, could be carried into other fields:

"We'll never eradicate starvation among children in the third world, so let's stop wasting time and money trying to feed them."

"We'll never wipe out disease, so let's stop wasting time and money on medical research."

"We'll never stop people committing crimes, so let's stop wasting time and money on police forces, law courts and prisons."

I hope you don't actually believe any of those things. I also hope that enough people of good will and good sense will be able to act in time to ensure that there will still be a planet where people can continue to starve, get sick, and shoot their neighbours.

To whom shall we assign blame?

For the most part of six-thousand years, men were relegated to burning wood, which came from trees, for heat during winter and for cooking fuel. When men began to settle down and farm the land, they cleared the land of trees to raise their crops. When more land was needed for fuel and more land was required for civilization to dare I say, flourish, they cleared more and more land, which became an ever intrusive and pervasive cycle. I believe that we can agree on that.

For the better part of six-thousand years, the world's population has polluted the atmosphere with wood smoke and particulates. It has been continuous and pervasive. In fact, it had become common.

For the better part of six-thousand years, men started fires to chase and herd buffalo and all sorts of other beasts around the world because they didn't have the capability or intelligence to kill for food any other way.

Certainly, this has had an affect on the planet. It contributed to the creeping of deserts in Africa, China, Australia, and the United States. There are vast areas of deforested areas in South America, Europe, and Russia. Some Pacific Islands are bare because of it.

Nearly all of these intentional actions were man-caused. Kings and rulers and organized governments have authorized these actions for nearly six-thousand years, more than enough time as civilization has exploded to have completely fouled the atmosphere and kill every living thing, block out the sun, raise the seas, make the poles inhospitable. We surely should all be dead from this abuse.

If you throw in all the destructive wars and conflicts over six-thousand years, not to mention pestilence and disease, how has Mankind ever stood a chance?

If you add natural disasters into the mix, it is an even more dire situation. Yes?

Nowadays, people build eco-friendly cars, houses, boats, farms, war-making weapons meant to kill but not destroy the environment. (neutron bombs) But it takes resources to manufacture those things. It takes digging great holes in the ground and drilling deeper holes in the ground to accomplish these goals.

Corporations and governments play shell games with labor forces when called to account for these improvements in ecology. They move their work forces about like playing a game of checkers whack changes the fortunes of one region to the benefit of other regions.

It has always been a zero sum game. One example is ethanol for fuel. Another is electric car batteries. Those are simple examples. There are aplenty more.

In other words, progress only tries to keep up with the demand of the living. It is, in and of itself, a cycle.

Why are we all, all 71/4 billion of us not dead from the stacked deck of progress?

Progressives do not seek an end to global warming. They seek finances to overcome the loss of profit because of it.

Why are we so naive?

Well more than half of the world lives/exists in abject poverty. They are not thinking about global warming. They are thinking about their next meal, their next fuel for keeping warm, enough money for illness or old age if they are fortunate to live that long.

There is truly not enough money collectively in the world to ensure that 31/2 billion people are taken care of. Furthermore, there is no intention of the wealthy and wealthy governments to do so.

Why do we continue to fool ourselves?

Why do we pretend to care?

Who is it that has inspired such folly?

I know, but I ain't sayin'.

Bill - of course the Lamed Vavniks exist. What is more surprising is that, of the 36 worldwide, I believe we have three or four
here on the Sphere. Just look around.

Brian - the three questions you raise are both valid and scary. The fact is that there are an appreciable number of U.S. legislators - particularly on the individual State level - and a lesser but still significant number of citizens who might answer:

1) Yup!

2) Not exactly, but we should focus on diseases that are more prevalent among those who can pay for the treatment.

3) Absolutely not. America has by far the highest incarceration rate in the world, and that - and the guns so many of us own - are what keeps this great nation safe. Furthermore, since so many of our prisons are privately owned - are profit making ventures - it provides a real boost to the economy.

Getting anything done about global warming - or anything else that doesn't involve the military (what is it that we spend - more than the next ten countries combined?) or anything more complicated than a game of checkers - is extraordinarily difficult. It didn't used to be. I was around for WWII and the aftermath, and saw what a nation could do when its leaders - all of its leaders, on both sides of the aisle - were men of vision and courage. It is, unfortunately, a very different world today.

Charlie, I had forgotten that, despite all the incontrovertible evidence, you are a "six-thousand year" mantra man.

I hereby promise to make no further attempt to engage you in rational discourse.

Brian,

Rational discourse is a two way street. I used what I know to be recorded history, not speculative fiction. Harrrumph. There is no mantra position here. I was trying to be accurate, not colorful.

Anybody who wants to waste more time discussing this with Charlie should keep in mind that he is perfectly willing to believe that the world was formed six thousand years ago, and that all of the science that contradicts that is "speculative fiction". Did I get that right, Charlie?

Never mind, I'll take it to PM.

Michael, I have set a trap and am waiting for someone to step into it.

Now that I've made you aware of the trap, I dare you to spring it. Hint. You won't get out of it.

At any rate, it is irrelevant what I think of Creation or when Creation happened. Another hint. Someone put this universe together.
Do you care who it was?

And even you skeptics and atheists out there, I don't need to believe in Creation or God Almighty to prove I'm right about the Global Warming/climate change religion. Who will come first?

Michael, tell me what year you want to start with past what I've referenced, if you dare.

Charlie, I don't think you got my message. I'm not going to waste my time discussing religion, or God, or global warming with you, for reasons which are obvious to me, if not to you.

I've read all the posts, yet I still can't see how this got from being a discussion about global warming to a discussion about a God who apparently grew up with the Sumerians.

I've been waiting for days, literally days, I tell you, to be able to use this link:

http://blackbag.gawker.com/is-ancien...man-1694539419

"Can you recall your middle-school social studies lessons? How, at some willowy point in your 11th or 12th year, you learned that recorded history begins with the appearance of writing? There were the Mesopotamians with their cuneiform scripts; the Egyptians' hieroglyphs and demotic scrawls; and later, the Greeks and Romans, whose societies form the backbone, for better or worse, of our own—if only because they kept such meticulous records.

We have all sought and found these connections to our past—in museums, in books, in the ground. This is our inheritance. And it is ingrained in us so early, so matter-of-factly, that it permeates most of our existences without demanding critical reflection.

What if it's all bullshit?"

After all, we just take it on faith, because we were taught by somebody, who was taught by somebody, who...

Kasparov buys it, and we all know he's WAY smarter than I am. Everything we know is wrong. Everything! Six thousand years? It's way less than that.

Seriously. Read it. It's worth your time.

Thanks,

Bill

That article actually brings back many memories for me. When I was an undergrad, I spent a summer on an NSERC grant fixing up the English for some translations that Anatoly Fomenko made of his work.

Just so people know, Fomenko is a giant in mathematics, having proven some of the most important results in modern topology and surfaces (trust me, this is a big deal in mathematics!). I'd say that his intellectual importance dwarfs that of Kasparov. This is not the work of a quack.

I'm delighted to hear that his theories are gaining ground in Russia and a (small) presence on the internet.

Isaac Newton was not exactly an intellectual lightweight, either, but some of his ideas were reeeeeeeeally out there....

Accurate? Well, according to your system of beliefs, six thousand years ago there were only two people alive. Even according to mine, there were approximately seven million. Now there are more than seven billion. That's three and a half billion times your number, and a thousand times mine. So not only were their numbers infinitely fewer, but they lacked all the technological means we have today of pumping filth into the atmosphere and the oceans, notably heavy industry and the internal combustion engine. I'm sure even you can accept the equation: Many more people + fossil fuels + industrial technology = vastly increased pollution.

And by "speculative fiction", I take it you are referring to the entire body of knowledge acquired by archaeology, geography, physics, chemistry, anthropology, biology, botany, astronomy, and other disciplines.

Haste, Tiresias; believe, and thou wilt see. Christ, by whom the eyes of the blind recover sight, will shed on thee a light brighter than the sun; night will flee from thee, fire will fear, death will be gone; thou, old man, who saw not Thebes, shalt see the heavens. O truly sacred mysteries! O stainless light! My way is lighted with torches, and I survey the heavens and God; I become holy whilst I am initiated. The Lord is the hierophant, and seals while illuminating him who is initiated, and presents to the Father him who believes, to be kept safe for ever. Such are the reveries of my mysteries. If it is thy wish, be thou also initiated; and thou shall join the choir along with angels around the unbegotten and indestructible and the only true God, the Word of God, raising the hymn with us. — Clement, Exhortation to the Heathen, xii

Content and happy I am, to be among the heathen, to live upon the hinterlands of Edon, Earth. Here there be lions of knowledge, gazelles of intelligence, bulls of information; all these, and much much more, to be realized, and utilized, from the source ---- the Cosmic Codex of Creation.

Sincerly,
Stephen

What is reality, how can it end, how can it have a border between reality and what? if there is an end to reality, what is beyond that end, similarly how can reality as it gets smaller, end, how can smallness like bigness have a border, if say the border of smallness is x then where does half x exist, since anything can be divided there is no end to the small just as there is no end to the big. Therefore if reality is infinite how can it have a beginning or end, how can it have a creator, such a creator would have to exist outside of reality, where would that be? And who created this creator, another creator and so on, more infinite progressions.
It can be truely frightening to consider the true nature of reality but unless you do, you end up clinging to delusions, the delusion that 'god created the universe, or that the big bang created time, it's all intellectual hubris the desire to give certainty where none exists.

Enlightened
 

Oh good, I'm glad that's cleared that up.

Yes. you can always depend on Ross.

Don't forget Stephen.

Michael, don't forget our very own equally reliable six-thousand-year man.

"Six thousand years?" you say. "How can that be? What about the dinosaur fossils? What about the fossilized remains of life-forms that lived, and became extinct, long before the dinosaurs? What about carbon-dating? What about the remains of Homo Habilis, Cro-Magnon man, Homo Neanderthalensis, and all the other early varieties of men who existed long before Adam and Eve?"

Well, don't you worry your pretty little head, Michael. It was all a prank on the part of God, admittedly not usually noted for his sense of humour. He created all that stuff, and all the apparent evidence, in the twinkling of an eye, just to fool you.

But actually, it's not six thousand years. The whole thing, including Eratosphere and its innumerable postings, was created a mere thirty seconds ago. You think you can remember what you had for breakfast this morning? No, you were created with a complete set of entirely fictitious memories.

And there's worse to come. It's all going to be obliterated in another thirty seconds. But God actually has a soft spot for his daily creations, and doesn't want to cause us unnecessary distress, so it will seem much longer than that.

Fossils were put there by Satan to make us doubt the existence of God, Brian, didn't you know? Probably about thirty seconds ago, as you suggest.

Scientists generally give conservative estimates. It's worse.

The Creation Museum in Kentucky doesn't attribute fossils to Satan's deceptions. According to them, most fossils (including seashell fossils on mountaintops) are evidence that Noah's flood really did cover the entire earth. They also have lots of explanations for how the same cataclysmic event produced fossils of plants and animals (including dinosaurs) but not of the wicked humans also destroyed.

I think the following museum placard is relevant, tangentially, to the global warming debate:

http://ak-hdl.buzzfed.com/static/201...91582253-1.jpg

Here's the text, if it's too small for you to read:

And that's the problem, right there--the idea that science is about coming up with clever explanations to make the observable evidence fit in with one's "starting assumptions".

Clearly, this is what the staff of creation museums do themselves. They assume that the Bible is factually true, and work backwards from there. The wording of the sign suggests that they expect their opponents in any scientific argument to be doing exactly the same thing that they are doing--i.e., "setting out to prove" a pre-determined answer, and imposing their own unchangeable starting assumption on the data throughout the process.

The erroneous impression that this is the way science works is encouraged by the widespread acceptance of industry-funded studies "scientifically proving" things that benefit those industries.

(BTW, I agree with Quincy that the unseemly East Anglia University email affair was blown out of proportion, but the fact that certain things could not be flatly denied did not exactly build public confidence in the objectivity of climatologists in general.)

Science contaminated by blatant confirmation bias is not science, no matter who does it. Although the scientific method does start with a hypothesis, the data is supposed to be allowed to confirm or deny that hypothesis by speaking freely for itself. The answer, whatever it may be, needs to come forth from the data, not from the desire to confirm or deny a presupposition.

That said, in the case of both evolution and man-made climate change, when enough data over time points in the same direction, large numbers of independent scientists start to agree that what they're observing seems consistent with a larger answer. However, that's not the same as starting with an answer, and then trying to shoehorn observable reality into it to produce results consistent with that answer. Cooking up data to produce the answers you want isn't science--it's fraud.

And yes, in the case of the Big Bang Theory, the idea came out of insubstantial data, and then additional experiments were developed. Still, the data had to be allowed to speak freely for itself. And the findings had to be reproducible by others, working independently.

It seems relevant to mention again that the cosmologist who came up with the Big Bang Theory was a Catholic priest. Msgr. Georges Lemaître considered theology and science to be two completely different means of seeking truth. He didn't see any advantage to trying to make them confirm each other. From a book edited by astronomers Stephen Soter and Neil deGrasse Tyson:

This has been a rather a long digression from the global warming topic, but I think it may shed some light on why some people show such vehement cognitive dissonance on the question, despite the overwhelming preponderance of evidence that human factors are driving climate change.

No one can be an expert at everything. Everyone has to take some things on faith. With scientific matters, most people are completely at sea, and need to rely on someone else's guidance. Frankly, many would rather that that "someone else" be a trusted religious or political party leader, rather than a bunch of scientific strangers with unknown motives (or a gang of mockers on a poetry forum's General Talk board).

Well, you did step willingly into it, Brian. Where you guys are now with Earth's and the age of man, was where I was as an adolescent some 40 odd years ago. Personally, I could give a rat's tail about how old the earth is or how long man has occupied it. That's just the bait. Coming full circle back to the subject of Global Warming/Climate Change is the trap you stepped into.

If the earth is as old as you cite, millions, if not billions of years or longer, man has certainly not occupied it for all of that time, by your own measuring. For the sake of argument though, let's pick a number we might all agree on, say two million years. Does that sound about right?

We might even agree that the land mass at one time was all connected— Pangea.
We can also agree that somewhere way back in earth's history that uncountable micro plants and micro animal types existed.

Since there is no recorded history of dinosaurs co-existing with man, one must conclude that they died, went extinct sometime before man drug his knuckles out of the oceans.

Mountains formed, valleys and rivers appeared. Deserts and jungles came about and both poles froze in ice.

Seas rose and fell, great fishes swam the seas. Floods and droughts came and went.

All of this happened without the influence of man.

There are various hypothesis' about all of the physical manifestations the earth went through.

At all times, there was breathable air for all of everything that breathed air and there was enough air for the fishes to breathe as well.

What you guys are telling me is that you are putting your "faith" in what evidence scientists have found, but have not agreeably given a definitive conclusion about how all of these happened.

For example, what happened to all of crustaceous life for it to either be miles down below the ground turning them into petroleum, or upon the highest mountains embedded in the rocky strata?

Same question with the extinction of the dinosaurs.

Same with the fish.

Same with the vegetation and trees.

Something apparently happened, no?

Some things happened over time, over millennia that destroyed them all.

What catastrophes came and went to kill them?

Again, scientists cannot agree on causation.
They can only speculate, which is why I used the term; Speculative fiction.

There is not a theory that you can cite that I have not heard, not one.
And scientists change their minds about earth's past history all the time.
There are many schools of thought out there which blow in the wind.
The only certainty you have is that something happened. That's it.



So in the face of all of that destruction and chaos, why was anything left alive?
All of those creatures breathed the same air, even when the environment they lived in changed.
Don't you suppose that global warming and global cooling happened on an fairly frequent basis? Don't you suppose that volcanos and hurricanes and earthquakes and other calamities happened with regularity? And yet, many species survived and thrived, and the Earth cleaned and rid itself of poison all by itself? Without man's interference or help or carbon credits or taxes or population? No matter whether one believes in a Divine Creator or not, these things happened. They were not man-caused.

And then when man showed up, he began using the resources stockpiled for his ingenuity and profit. Some of those elements are rare, some plentiful.

Men do not have control of nature. Yes, men pollute nature and the earth cleans up after them just like they never existed. When nature has had enough of man, it will be the judge, not the other way around. This theory is called order.

I have never subscribed to the belief of doing nothing to keep the planet clean. I don't want to hear heinous platitudes either about— if this, then this.

I find it fascinating that cities and counties across the world are drilling into our garbage dumps to retrieve gas to use.

I also find it fascinating that millions of birds are slaughtered each year by windmills generating clean energy and solar farms are frying many millions more as the birds fly over the glaring solar panels. I find it more fascinating that there is no outcry from the progressive community about it. What will happen when progress kills all the birds? How many Chernobyl's and Fukushima's are there in the offing? Or TMI.s? What will happen to man when bio-engineered grains begin promulgating antibiotic resistant diseases or bio-engineered or cloned livestock becomes the norm?

The earth will still cool and heat at its own pace and people will adapt to smog.Until they don't.

That's what the scientists are saying.

We are all suckers.

But everybody's got to believe sumpin'.

When medieval people found dinosaur bones, they attributed them to the giants who populated the earth in its early days, as per the Bible. This actually makes pretty good sense until you find the skulls.

No, Charlie. Science is never about having faith that something is true. Science is about predictability. If one can predict on the basis of known fact that something else will happen and can measure the rightness or wrongness of that hypothesis, then it can be assumed as fact until disproved.

Science is always willing to say "I don't know yet, but I am trying to find out." Science is constantly disproving as well as trying to prove.

Some things we do know. Some things we don't and we say so. That is what science is. NOT faith.

Cross-posted with Gail.

Kind of like the Weather Man?

That is the kind of statement that results in a loss of respect for your views.

I am sorry to be obliged to disagree with you, but the fact is that you just throw out statements with no substance, and no reference that would support them. And you throw them out like a blanket. That makes it impossible to really take your intentions seriously. You aren't out to discuss, you are out to bamboozle.

You present conjecture as fact. For me, you can believe anything you want to. That is what freedom of religion is all about. But don't insist that it is "truth". It is conjuncture, it is speculation, it is faith.

I highly recommend checking out what the evangelical Christian climate scientist Katherine Hayhoe has to say about faith, conservative politics, and science in this television interview from last September.

Twenty-two minutes of excellent points, in my opinion.

I found out about her because Rush Limbaugh launched a really nasty intimidation campaign against her. Thanks, Rush!

What you say is right enough, Janice.

What scientists do is another matter. Mortal men (and women) and therefore inclined to cheat and lie and all the rest of it. Like priests. Like teachers. Like poets.

Who would deny the climate?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1Sa52DpMCs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJhbQIlu4mk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Klgp_qDiRhQ

John, you are an affable curmudgeon and fine poet but sweeping generalizations such as that scientists are inclined to lie and cheat, do you a disservice.

Charlie, the only "trap" I can see is the one in which you are locked. It's called a closed mind, and leads you to make all kinds of absurd statements based on nothing whatsoever, and to refuse to answer any points that you find inconvenient.

I won't waste my time taking apart your latest diatribe line by line. Let's just take one example:

Well, no, there wasn't. To begin with, there was a lot of hydrogen and methane and water vapor. Later on, nitrogen and carbon dioxide were added, and the water vapor condensed to form the oceans. But guess what? For 4 billion years - no free oxygen! It was only when primitive algae came along about a billion years ago that large quantities of oxygen were created as a consequence of photosynthesis. And it was only about 600 million years ago that enough oxygen had been released to create the ozone layer, without which life on land could not exist.

Of course, you don't believe any of this, although you have no counter-arguments of any kind. I just hope that if a time machine is ever invented, you don't go for a jaunt a few billion years ago without taking an oxygen tank and mask.

Scientists change their minds as new and better evidence comes along (although as John points out sometimes individual egos can get in the way of this-scientists are only human-Prof Fred Hoyle's dogged insistence that Archaeopteryx was a fake springs to mind) and so theories and models of how the universe works are constantly being refined, improved and sometimes replaced. Faith, of course, doesn't work like this at all.

After millennia of inquiry by some of the most intelligent people ever to draw breath there remain many holes in our understanding of nature. These holes are shrinking all the time, but whether or not they can eventually be closed is moot. The reason that they remain, and that scientists often disagree about why this is and what can be done about it, is entirely attributable to the limitations of the human brain. This does not weaken a the case for a purely physical explanation of creation one iota.

Janice, my comment can be put this way: Men and women are inclined to lie and cheat. Scientists are men and women. Therefore scientists are inclined to lie and cheat. t is, I would have thought, unarguable. You keep attributing statements to me that I have not made.

You seem to think we should have faith in scientists. Faith?