The Internet and Obama is a Muslim

I can’t believe how much dumber the internet has made people. I guess not dumber, maybe it just plays to people’s gullibility. I have seen usually smart people claim absolutely backwards things because they did “research” on the internet. When I ask for the “research,” all I get are websites that are... of... dubious origin. It’s never the Harvard Research Department or the national archives. Saying that you found it on fox.com does not make it true. The latest, and most annoying, argument that I had was about whether or not Obama is a Muslim. They had research they did on-line, but they didn’t site archives or registration or show me anything at all. It was just a yes-no argument.

I don’t even see why it matters if he is a Muslim or not or was a Muslim even matters. The problem with something like this is that people could be raised one way or be something at one time and change in the meantime. People jump to say that Bush is a Christian, but he is a “Born-again” Christian. This means at one point he wasn’t or was not a good one. The fear of Muslims is ridiculous when there are so many different types of Muslims on the planet and each local has different beliefs and traditions, the same is true of all different religions including Christians. I was raised, at least in the later part of my childhood Christian, but am an agnostic secularist now. It doesn’t matter. None of that matters. So Obama was/is a Muslim, John McCain doesn’t believe in women’s rights or Separation of Powers, or the Geneva Convention! Wake-up!

I think the problem with the internet is the age difference in users. When I was in school they were teaching us about what kinds of cites we can believe and how to properly research on the internet. Fact checking on-line is very different from in a book. The people I was arguing with are in their late forties and not trained in computers, much less internet fact finding. I could go right now and set up a website claiming that John McCain fathered babies in Vietnam and his Vietnamese grandchildren are trying to gain citizenship. When people start listing it on other websites, anyone could then pick it up as fact. I just don’t like my research to be discounted when I go to legitimate sites and review years of articles and speeches and votes and don’t rely on the Google top ten list for my information. The thing I guess that really bugged me about the encounter is that I was not to be believed and the research I did was to be discounted because I am young, naive, and brainwashed by Obama’s superstar power. The fact, that computers were widely used outside of scientific and government institutes before I got out of elementary school, should count for something when it comes to internet use and research.

Rant Complete.

Freedom of Speech vs Scientific Inquiry

As part of the Bill of Rights, we, as citizens of America are given a right to freedom of speech in circumstances where it doesn't infringe on the rights, or safety, of others. The problem we have now is that people are trying to make scientific debates democratic and free-for-all. This is most obvious in contraceptives, evolution, and stem cell research.

The framing of no argument and insertion of no facts after very loudly and forcefully complaining that something is "unproven," a "theory," or just claiming that it is "ridiculous" has somehow given credence to people whose ideas are based on a personal belief supported by a "strict interpretation" of a controversial document with questionable origins and history. This acceptance of these arguments completely baffles me. After studying the arguments I have found that I can almost cut and paste words into their arguments and disprove anything, even their arguments. The problem we have now is that they are claiming to be unheard and ignored when trying to talk to scientists, because they are not worth engaging. If a scientist does confront someone, they are given the win not matter what they do in the argument. I think some of the debates come down to a scientist and someone just standing there saying "God" and "Jesus" and "Bible" over and over.

Scientific Inquiry works off of the presentation of facts and studies and a review of the material presented. The biggest problems with most of these controversies is that when they are criticised, even in a professional manner, the response to the criticism is either to ignore it, insult the person giving it, or the argumentative equivalent of sticking their fingers in their ears and going, "La, la,la,la,la. La, la, la, la, la." This would not be an issue if they didn't then go crying to people that they are being suppressed by the evil scientists. It is ludicrous.

I just wanted to point this out right now as it has been driving me up the wall for a few days.

Beware the Tectonites!!!

It is my solumn duty to warn everyone whose belief systems are challenged by plate tectonics. Hitler believed in plate tectonic!!! He was a Newtonian as well. Stop the theories!!



A thank you to DonExodus2... is vids rock.

http://www.youtube.com/user/DonExodus2

Pick and Choose

I hate being a female, southern, white college student in this political atmosphere. No matter whom I argue for or against I get flack. If I like Obama it is because I am young and like the change movement. If I argue against Obama I am racist. If I like Hillary, it’s because I am female (and for some because I want to get abortions). If I argue against her it is because I am taken in by the flash and flare of the newer Obama campaign. I am almost ready to scream with all of these ridiculous arguments. At this point, I don’t like either of them.

Obama is too new for my liking and seems a little wet behind the ears to be made president. I don’t even want him to be a majority leader! I have heard his arguments and they sound nice but, like most politicians, he seems to side step some tougher questions and issues and gives very inspirational speeches that when taken apart seem to only say, “Gee. We should make things better. And aren’t those guys up there all stuck in their ways?” The problem I have with his youthfulness in the national political scene is that we don’t know how well he will follow through with some of his campaign promises. I worry that if we do elect him, thinking we will get something “new,” we will all be very disappointed. I think I am the only person who doesn’t see him as anything “new.” He still has lobbyists and everything everyone else has. The only difference is that it takes a great deal for him to attack someone, but that’s okay because he has people to do that for him.

Clinton is set in her ways and okay off politically. I, however, don’t see her time in the White House as training to be president. After going through her senate votes (as well as Obama’s) I agree on her with most things and her service on the Armed Services Committee is very great at this time in our nation’s history. The problem I have is some of her choice in staff and attacks. Granted, she wasn’t expecting to have to fight, but some of the shots she has taken are far below the belt (way *hee-hee*). The tone did become rather bothersome for me because it took away from real issues that I wanted to hear discussed. With the reconcilliary tone she has come to take now, I find it better, but wish she’d used it before this point. Now we get to hear more about issues and John McCain is getting attacked for the ridiculous things he says. (American troops are being welcomed home... well... those we still don’t have there.)

With the turn in the campaigns to the general election, hits on John McCain are growing and people do not like some of the attacks he is leveling against Barak Obama. If the head of the KKK said he wanted McCain to be president people would not say, “John McCain is prejudice and against the rights and solving problems in Sudan.” It doesn’t work either way and he needs to stop saying these things. He sounds like Bush when he swift-boated McCain in 2000. Now he is backing the president and ensuring the cry of duplication of the Bush presidency in his own workings. He is no maverick, he is not a straight talker, and he is a charlatan pulling the wool over the eyes of people looking for security in the future. He is the boy-who-cries-wolf of politicians right now saying that “bearings” evokes age and Obama supports terrorists. If that is so than so does McCain, he even sought the endorsement of a man who said we deserved 9-11. He has lost his “bearings,” as has any person who thinks that people who make more than $200k are the middle class to be helped in the coming presidency. Senator McCain is constantly asking for Olbermann’s one-line, which his campaign has complained about, “Old man yells at cloud!”

Belief and Debate

A quick dedication to "Eric." If you read this and know it's you no worries mate this is just why I get angry when you try and debate me.

Belief is defined by dictionary.com (based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary) as:

1. An opinion or conviction
2. Confidence in the truth or existence of something not immediately susceptible to rigorous proof
3. Confidence; faith; trust
4. A religious tenet or tenets.

I don’t understand the point of belief. It is a useful word especially when used as in case one or two as in, “I believe his story over yours.” The third definition and the forth definition are the ones that give me trouble. I don’t understand the equivalence between belief and faith the way many religious people use the words.

When speaking to people at my school I sometimes hear that something is the way it is because they have faith and believe it to be so. This means that in some of actual arguments they do not see their belief as an opinion or simple confidence in their idea. They present it as a fully supportable fact with an unbending strength which is where I grow weary. There is no argument one can present to disagree with them or debate anything. They will not give on a single aspect. The belief shot is where an argument dies. Case in point: me and a fried I will call “Eric” were discussing evolution. I was trying to understand how he could say that God created one of each species and it became all sorts of the species (like having grizzlies and pandas) without evolution having happened at all, guided or not. “Eric” stayed firm and kept restating his belief, which I did not mind, but as he grew more repetitive and I had different arguments for each point, “Eric” threw his trump card. He said, “This is my belief because I have faith.” There is no way of trumping that. “Eric” and I have had several discussions and almost all of them ended in this same statement.

As time has passed I have come to wonder, why did he use the word belief, especially in his discussions about God? The way he thinks of God is in a factual nature, the same way as I think about the wind. The problem I run into is that I would never say, “I believe in the wind,” or, “I have faith that the wind moved the leaves.” This is ludicrous to me. It is there I see the effects and can explain its origins and the nature behind it and that is how “Eric” feels about God. This is where I strain. Why say “believe” or “faith?” If it exists and can be proven in your mind, why should one use these straddling terms? There are people, who argue that the earth is the center of the universe and argue most vehemently their case for a heliocentric universe. Those of us who disagree with their ideals do not say that we believe the sun is at the center and the only thing rotating around the earth (besides man-made objects and debris) is the moon. We know it. It is fact. Why add the ambiguity of belief to the situation?

When religious believers like “Eric” debate they speak of belief in the same way I speak of theories. It is something known and just short of fact. This is where people who want to argue with the vehemently religious need to see the connection. If, in a debate about the beginning of the universe, a leading scientist says, “Well, the Big Bang Theory allows us to...” he will quickly be stuck in an argument about an absolute beginning and who started the Big Bang. Instead, if the scientist would just say, “I believe in the Big Bang,” they would be just as stumped as everyone else is when debating them. So this is my call for all scientists to use their beliefs in facts and fight fire with fire and for people who would argue a belief as fact think of what life would be like if we all went around saying things like, “I believe in this table and will therefore put my drink down on it.”