Santorum Calls Democrats 'Anti-Science' 1237
ndogg writes with news that Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum has counterattacked those critical of conservative views on science, saying that they're 'anti-science' themselves. From a CBS report:
"In his remarks Monday, Santorum went beyond his usual discussion of the importance of increasing domestic energy production to deliver a blistering attack on environmental activists. He said global warming claims are based on 'phony studies,' and that climate change science is little more than 'political science.' His views are not 'anti-science' as Democrats claim, Santorum said. 'When it comes to the management of the Earth, they are the anti-science ones. We are the ones who stand for science, and technology, and using the resources we have to be able to make sure that we have a quality of life in this country and (that we) maintain a good and stable environment,' he said to applause, and cited local ordinances to reduce coal dust pollution in Pittsburgh during the heyday of coal mining."
Re:If this guy ever got in it would truly show ... (Score:5, Interesting)
America deserves him at this point.
I won't enjoy being in the blast radius, but my country has so many idiots and superstitionists in it we deserve to suffer horribly for letting it get this bad.
This guy is a joke (Score:4, Interesting)
Santorum's claim to have come "from the coal fields" is a stretch - by two generations. He has never worked in a coal mine. His parents' professions were psychologist and nurse, and Santorum is a lawyer who has spent all of his adult life in politics.
By that measure, I come "from the shipyards of Baltimore." I'll have to remember that if I ever go into politics.
I find this new definition of political science funny. Politicized science is what he meant, I guess. All these fools should just admit that they like science and regulation when it supports their preconceived notions about how the world should work, and when science and regulation contradict those notions, science and regulation are evil.
Santorum "Truth" (Score:5, Interesting)
I like Santorum. He says what modern Republicans are thinking, as wrong as that may be. He does not hide the crazy behind a manufactured persona like Romney. Ron Paul has too many heart felt beliefs that are antithetical to the GOP. Gingrich is a dishonest retread from a previous era, pushing the same failed policies.
But Ricky is a true reflection what Republicans are all about, and proud of it. If there is any justice, Rick will win the nomination where he faithfully campaign for what the GOP believes in.
Re:If this guy ever got in it would truly show ... (Score:3, Interesting)
... how stupid America really is ...
"Half of me sees Rick Santorum and says, bring it on, he could never win! Other half says, Fuck, I don't put anything past this stupid country."
- Bill Maher
Hypocrits abound (Score:5, Interesting)
and cited local ordinances to reduce coal dust pollution in Pittsburgh during the heyday of coal mining."
A deregulationist citing the protection from local environmental regulations. That's rich.
The hypocrisy is double because Pittsburg is currently undergoing a massive battle over fracking regulations.
Pittsburg has banned fracking outright and PA Republicans were trying to pass a State law to nullify local regulations.
When that was deemed a politically untenable idea, they switched to a straight-jacket of State level regulations.
Read about it here: http://www.npr.org/2011/11/30/142948831/a-debate-over-who-regulates-gas-fracking-in-penn [npr.org]
It takes one to know one... (Score:2, Interesting)
Politics and political leadership has become a swarming mass of vipers all pandering to biases and cultural predispositions and have very little to do with rational decision making and leadership (if it ever did). Both parties are just interested in the science that supports their predefined ideologies and ignore or discount that which doesn't. It is sad but that's what we have for "leaders" these days on both sides.
and slashdot ... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:So says the religious guy. (Score:1, Interesting)
FWIW, I'm a Christian who believes in both creation and evolution.
The Bible says that one day God created x, and on one day God created y. It doesn't say how much time elapsed between those events, or how he did it. God could have created the cosmos with a "big bang".
And I believe that evolution occurs, but evolution doesn't explain what happened before the beginning of time, or where all the mass in the universe came from in the first place.
Re:Santorum claiming that.... (Score:2, Interesting)
I honestly have to admit, I have no idea who to vote for. Romney was the most likely person, but I don't even really like him either, he just seemed like he was more moderate. If Santorum wins the primary, and there is no guarantee he will, but if he does, I will probably take this opportunity to find some third party candidate to vote for. I can't vote for the Democratic platform, not to mention that I find Obama to be a rather uninspiring figure, but I have to admit, they've also managed to come up with a pool of jerks and retards on the GOP side. Ron Paul would be possible, if his ideas weren't otherwise interesting ones turned all the way up to Eleven.
Anyone know a nice pro-science, individual rights, fiscally responsible, small government oriented party out there? It would also be nice if they could also ignore gay marriage, contraception, abortion both pro or con, and also just about every other distracting hot button issue out there. It would be nice if they simply had a government that worried about balancing a budget for a change. We can always wait until 2020 to elect some more culture warriors, if we get bored with prosperity.
Anyway, Obama will win because he's uninspiring, but he's the incumbent and he's bland enough that no one is scared of what he'll do. And it's too bad really, there has to be better Presidential material out there than Obama and the Republican candidates.
WTF Just Not Enough (Score:5, Interesting)
It is rumored that if Santorum actually gets the nomination, the GOP will draft Gov. Christie of NJ for the Republican candidate. But he's one cannoli short of a heart attack, so not many will vote for him. Nobody wants Romney, either, because of Romneycare and the whole Mormon thing. And Paul, as much as he may appeal to some people, is one fall away from a hip replacement.
So here's an interesting fact? Jeb Bush and his father showed up at the Whitehouse back on the 27th of January [usatoday.com] for a long talk. (Oh, to have been a fly on THAT wall.) The other interesting thing is that Jeb's wife, Columba, has made it neuteringly clear that he's not available until 2016.
So! 3 completely unelectable candidates so far as the GOP is concerned. The party favorite-which is why they're sometimes known as the "Waiting For Jeb" party-isn't available either.
I'm going to guess that the "fix" is in, and Obama is going to be president for another term. Then after that, we'll have another Bush in the Whitehouse. So everything that's happening in this "election" is just a dog & pony show, just as it's always been.
Re:So says the religious guy. (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7Q8UvJ1wvk [youtube.com]
Science funding goes up under republicans, and down under Democrats.
Re:So says the religious guy. (Score:5, Interesting)
Except, of course, Intelligent Design is officially denied by the Vatican [catholicnews.com] in favor of something called "Theistic Evolution" which basically is evolution combined with the Copenhagen interpretation of Quantum Physics, with God as the Observer/Creator (because God's observing the universe, he's affecting the universe).
Re:So says the religious guy. (Score:5, Interesting)
No, the Bible most clearly says why *and* how. It says God spontaneously created all of the animals and Adam, and then created Eve from Adam's rib
There's an interesting story about that. Contrary to common Christian belief, the male skeleton does not have one less rib than the female skeleton. But male mammals, including apes, commonly have a bone in their penises called a "baculum" [wikipedia.org]. Whether that's related to the term "boner", I couldn't say. So one interpretation of the bible is that it was actually Adam's penis bone that God took to make Eve. And that the shame he gave them wasn't about original sin at all, but simply that he removed their bodily hair. And that's how man came from the apes, not by evolution.
Complete bollocks of course, but as good as any other twisted version of a stupid bible story.
Re:Santorum claiming that.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Which why I (maybe others have too...) coined the phrase: "Even Ronald Regan wasn't conservative enough to be Ronald Regan."
That's what happens to heroes - they become larger than life.
-CF
Re:So says the religious guy. (Score:5, Interesting)
Sorry, but Science fared a lot better during the Islamic Golden Age [wikipedia.org].
Isn't history great?
a granfalloon divided against itself cannot stand (Score:5, Interesting)
I take a more extreme view of faith as a form of solipsism. If you fully separate faith from science, faith becomes an entirely personal matter: you can only gain faith by some kind of mysterious internal light inaccessible to the methods of science. OK, fine. From this view there's no reason not to believe that God created the universe five minutes ago, exactly as we recall it to have been five minutes ago, replete with another 13.7 billion years of back story (which can be boiled down rather succinctly to the big bang, QED, and self-organizing primordial goo--for which the exact mechanism in the last case remain a trifle mysterious). For some reason, God loves the evolutionary back story. No creation is complete without one. Either way, evolution is the minimum description length account of what we observe as the history of the universe in rocks and oceans and nebulae. This is true whether or not evolution actually happened. Even if God created the earth and human kind a mere 10,000 years ago evolution is still the minimum description of what we observe in the fossil record and the genetic heritage of life (an exploding data set which poses a looming and insurmountable challenge to 10,000 year literalism).
If you feel the illumination of faith from within, you can show it by how you choose to live. If you inner glow so moves you, you can reflect honour on the divine creator by living your life to a high moral standard however you perceive this.
Where I tend to draw the line is when two people get together who each feel an inner glow, who then compare notes and decide that they believe in the same divine spirit. This consensus is not achieved through a scientific process. Faith is not amenable to science. How do you really know you believe in the same deity as anyone else?
Here's how the slight of hand works in organized religion. You posit a sacred text, and then attribute authorship of the sacred text to a unique and singular deity. Yesterday's TED talk on the Cyrus Cylinder [wikipedia.org] shows the Book of Isaiah attributing to Jehovah what had previously been attributed to the Babylonian god Marduk. One story, multiple originating deities. Fancy that.
I have a lot of problems when a group of 100 million people go around absolutely secure in the belief that they feel within themselves a sliver of the same divine flame, when most of them can't even agree on the right way to tie your shoe.
Santorum, to his credit, is not so secure: he views the Democrats as hewing to the wrong Christian god. Now let's repeat this bisection step until every believer is a faith until himself or herself. Faith as a personal matter. Wonderful.
I have no real problem with faith, but I have a deep problem with the aggregation of faith. Let's suppose Obama believes that he and Santorum both believe in the same god, but Santorum disputes this. How is such a discrepancy resolved? Remember, you can't use science. Faith is not amenable to science (or it wouldn't be faith). I guess you need a prophet of especially reliable connection to the Big One. Shades of Russell's type theory. And we agree on the nature of this prophet exactly how? Are we back to the aggregation of unique inner glows? I thought so.
There's no conflict between science and faith as such, but there is a conflict between science and the aggregation of faith (for some reason, faith tends to aggregate along racial lines, and never takes the last critical step to one world religion).
Message to Santorum: if you want to dis-aggregate the Christian granfalloon, by all means fill your boots.
Re:So says the religious guy. (Score:5, Interesting)
In college I reproduced an experiment that showed this was possible. Combine a few gases (nitrogen, CO2, methane) with water in an oxygen-free sealed container and expose to electricity with a spark gap, and a few days later you have a variety of amino acids in solution. Others have performed slightly more complex experiments to create nucleotides (the precursors to RNA & DNA).
So I guess this either means that I am officially a God, or it requires a "Supreme Being" to guide it about as much as a baking a decent chocolate cake. I'll take Occam's Razor, at least I can use it to cut the cake...