Free Speech and Inflammatory Rhetoric

[WinePusher]

With the recent tragedy in Tuscon Arizona, many on the left have been blaming this on conservatives and their supposed "inflammatory rhetoric." Conservative leaders such as Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Michele Bachmann, Sharon Angle and others have been their primary targets. They have focused particular attention on Palins bullet map and the call to use "second amendment remedies" by Sharon Angle.

But let's look a little closer at this. The DNC used a bullet map similar to Palin, people on the left like Ed Schultz and Mike Malloy have called for the death of some presidents and conservative leaders, a documentary was made about killing Bush by a leftist, and Obama himself has made inflammatory remarks with violent connotations. The left also was so concerned about jumping to conclusions about Fort Hood, but jumps to conclusions about the political affiliations of this psychopath in the absense of evidence.

1) Are second amendment remedies to problems ever justified? Remember that the point of the 2nd amendment was to combat a tyrannical government.

2) Are conservatives to blame for this?

3) Are liberals being hypocrties by jumping to conclusions over this, and not jumping to conclusions over Fort Hood. Are they also being hypocrites for charging conservatives with violent and inflammatory rhetoric while leaving their own ranks uncondemned?

[micatala]

It is your problem. You are the one claiming it somehow reflects on Obama because they happened to be in some of the same professional circles.

Obama has called him a friend. Also, what were they doing in this so called "professional circle?" What were the goals of this so called "professional circle?" You make it seem as if they coincedentially popped up onto the same committee, is that so?

I would just point out that Ayers, in his role as college professor, was involved with several dozen other people in submitting the grant appication to the Annenberg Foundation for the Chicago Annenberg Project. Obama was not one of those people, but clearly we had dozens of individuals who were certainly willing to work with Ayers in an effort to improved education in Chicago schools.

Obviously these people were OK working with Ayers in this "professional circle."

Eventuallly both Ayers and Obama were invited to be on the Board that oversaw the disbursement of these funds. That would be another "professional circle."


Now, East of Eden pointed out a couple of examples where individuals or an organization preferred not to associate with Ayers even in these professional ways because of his past. I accept this is not a totally unreasonable thing to do.

However, clearly, dozens if not hundreds of others individuals have felt it was OK to intentionally associate with Ayers, despite his past. Obama's associations cannot even really be termed intentional in the sense that he was invited specifically by Ayers to take part in the activity he ended up engaging in with him.

I will point out the Annenberg Foundation funded the grant app in which Ayers was invovled in, which clearly would be intentionally associating with Ayers. They gave an organization money at his request. Annenberg's daughter was at an official ceremony handing over the check.


The Foundation was founded by Walter Annenberg, who served in the Reagan Administration. Walter is now dead, but his widow, who was still involved in running the foundation as of 2008, endorsed John McCain.





Now, if I were to engage in the same sort of smear association politics that you and East of Eden are, here would some of things I could say that are as justified as what you are saying about Obama..


Leading Republicans give money to an unrepentant terrorist.

McCain supported by prominent terrorist sympathizer, wife of former Reagan Official.

Reagan has ties to former Weatherman Terrorist Bill Ayers.


Now, if you cannot see that your beating this dead horse is just as ridiculous as these facetious headlines, then I submit your position is several light years away from anything approaching objective or fair.

Really simple solution, find a factual error made by Maddow not retracted. As far as Fox News goes we can find dozens of factual errors not only made, but repeated long after having been corrected.

I did, and so did others, and others wrote them off as invalid. Do you disagree with what I wrote: 'No, they are lies that Maddow has made and what you and Grumpy have unknowingly done is show that a persons perspective has a great deal of influence on what actually constitutes a lie. Isn't it strange that all the laws you guys have come up with are made by conservatives, is the rational person really supposed to conclude that no lies have been made by liberal commentators?'

You continue to conflate ideological bias with factuality. It is not the bias of Maddow or FOX that is the problem, nor the bias of any of us here on the forum one way or the other.

The issue is the facts show Maddow has not made anything close to the mistatements of fact that we have seen by the examples shown on FOX. You continue to suggest that the criticisms of FOX and the defenses of Maddow are all ideologically based.


WHy don't you stop playing the bias card and actually address the explicit facts of the examples brought up?

.......Students will be made aware of the gaps/problems in Darwin's theory and of other theories of evolution including, but not limited to, intelligent design........Are you saying that we have no current gaps in our understanding of life,

No. I am saying they are few and being worked on.

And I'm sure you fully expect these gaps in our knowledge to be filled in one day, but at the present moment you're plugging the gap with your anticipation, as indicated above.

I am not sure how this is on topic. I'd suggest arguing ID and evolution in the Science and Religion subforum.


I will simply point out that you are off base in suggesting elsewhere it is only atheists who support the teaching of standard evolutionary science in schools and excluding ID.

THis is not true. A LOT of Christians, including me, think ID has no place in school biology classrooms and that evolution is very sound science. Thousands if not millions of school children learn biology using Ken Miller's text book.

Miller is a professed Catholic.





How is that "atheists running the schools" I am not sure.

[Abraxas]

It is your problem. You are the one claiming it somehow reflects on Obama because they happened to be in some of the same professional circles.

Obama has called him a friend. Also, what were they doing in this so called "professional circle?" What were the goals of this so called "professional circle?" You make it seem as if they coincedentially popped up onto the same committee, is that so?

Handled by Micatala.

You see, every single thing that has surfaced about Obama which harms his character, whether it be associating himself with a terrorist or sitting in a church for an extended period of time where the Pastor is Anti-American and spews Anti-American propoganda, you have tried to justify and make excuses for.

On what basis do you make that claim? How much of his pastor's speech have you heard besides the few soundbytes replayed ad nauseum on the news cycle during the manufactured controversy?

Are you saying that the examples of speech which have been played ad nauseum do no properly reflect his character, is that your argument? If that isn't your argument, then your objection is cavil. [/QUOTE]I think that with twenty years of sermons they could only get out a few minutes worth of controversy generating rhetoric. That to me indicates that they are painting an incredibly slanted view of what took place there.

Really simple solution, find a factual error made by Maddow not retracted. As far as Fox News goes we can find dozens of factual errors not only made, but repeated long after having been corrected.

I did, and so did others, and others wrote them off as invalid. Do you disagree with what I wrote: 'No, they are lies that Maddow has made and what you and Grumpy have unknowingly done is show that a persons perspective has a great deal of influence on what actually constitutes a lie. Isn't it strange that all the laws you guys have come up with are made by conservatives, is the rational person really supposed to conclude that no lies have been made by liberal commentators?'

Mostly handled by micatala, but I will also note, no, it isn't strange at all. Fox lies are much easier to find as they are much bolder and more frequent in making them. Most of the liberal commentators, when errors are made, retract them, as demonstrated by your supposed examples earlier.

What I'm saying is that the repsentation for the representation for the plantiff consisted of an atheist, ultra liberal institution, known as the ACLU. Are you going to say that they're an objective institution as well?

I am, actually. They have intervened on both sides of the political spectrum to uphold the constitution.

I never said anything to the contrary. Now, which side of the aisle have they usually been on a majority of the time?

The side of people who are having their rights trampled. I can't help it that the right seems more inclined to do so.

.......Students will be made aware of the gaps/problems in Darwin's theory and of other theories of evolution including, but not limited to, intelligent design........Are you saying that we have no current gaps in our understanding of life,

No. I am saying they are few and being worked on.

And I'm sure you fully expect these gaps in our knowledge to be filled in one day, but at the present moment you're plugging the gap with your anticipation, as indicated above.

Not really. The gaps are things like the questions as to how much of behavior is genetic and how much is learned from being a part of a group of social animals or a parent. Intelligent design does nothing to address this. The gaps in knowledge are about specific mechanisms within the theory, not within the support for the theory as you want to claim.

and that intelligent design is absolutely an inviable alternative?

Yes. I will say that. ID is a completely unworkable, inviable alternative because it is inherently untestable and completely unevidenced.

Sorry, but what's evolutionary theory based off of Abraxas? Observation, not "testability."

No? We can't see how bacteria adapt to certain conditions or compare geologically separated members of the same species over time to see how they adapt to their unique pressures? Oh wait, we do.

We've observed speciation, we've observed the embryological process, we've observed organs that currently have no functions.

Yes, we have.

ID advocates claim observation as valid evidence in the same way observations have evidenced evolution. So the standards you use to judge ID as invalid equally show evolution to be invalid. And please don't say no evidence has been presented or that it is completely unevidenced. That's just wrong, a more honest statement would be that you personally believe that the evidence presented for Intelligent Design is weak.

No, I will say it is nonexistent. The observations they have made, without exception, have been debunked. They claimed the eye could not have evolved, it has been shown it can and did. They claimed the circulatory system has 26 necessary components and if you take any away, it would fail, and yet we found animals with missing factors that still function. We heard how the flagellum was irreducibly complex but then found out it could be broken down into parts. Every observation ID has but forward has been proven wrong.

The curriculum required alternatives to be presented, not taught as facts or pushed upon the students as true.

Which alternatives? Are we giving air time to the creation myth of every society in human history in a science class?

Yes, thank you for making my point, you've pointed out a clear distinction between ID and Creationism. No ones saying we teach any creation narrative, whether it be of the Christians or the Hittites. ID is not synonymous with creationism, to make an attempt to do so would be to draw false equivolency.

No, it wouldn't. ID is, in its entirety, life is to complex, something smart must have put it together. It makes no effort to explain the mechanisms of life, no effort to explain how things work, or how they work together. Its one feature is a posed source coupled with an argument from incredulity.

As Micatala said, we can continue this in another thread if you want to discuss ID further.

[WinePusher]

I did, and so did others, and others wrote them off as invalid. Do you disagree with what I wrote: 'No, they are lies that Maddow has made and what you and Grumpy have unknowingly done is show that a persons perspective has a great deal of influence on what actually constitutes a lie. Isn't it strange that all the laws you guys have come up with are made by conservatives, is the rational person really supposed to conclude that no lies have been made by liberal commentators?'

Mostly handled by micatala, but I will also note, no, it isn't strange at all. Fox lies are much easier to find as they are much bolder and more frequent in making them. Most of the liberal commentators, when errors are made, retract them, as demonstrated by your supposed examples earlier.

Did you hear about O'Reilly retracting his false reporting on Shirley Sherrod? But again, it's nice to see the goalposts being shifted around, makes the game more lively. You admit liberal commentators make errors but they are justified in doing so because they retract them.

I never said anything to the contrary. Now, which side of the aisle have they usually been on a majority of the time?

The side of people who are having their rights trampled. I can't help it that the right seems more inclined to do so.

Thanks for tacitly admitting that the ACLU is an institution of the left. I think that you guys may have forgotten the key concept in political and social theory that says that people can committ actions that alienate themselves from their rights. Like Anwar Al Awlaki, you know, the terrorist whom the ACLU wants to defend because the government has deemed it appropriate for him to be put on a "kill list." Do the precious rights of these terrorists (who are by no means innocent) overide the safety of the American citizen?

And I'm sure you fully expect these gaps in our knowledge to be filled in one day, but at the present moment you're plugging the gap with your anticipation, as indicated above.

Not really. The gaps are things like the questions as to how much of behavior is genetic and how much is learned from being a part of a group of social animals or a parent. Intelligent design does nothing to address this. The gaps in knowledge are about specific mechanisms within the theory, not within the support for the theory as you want to claim.

This doesn't address what I said. A gap refers to a lack of understanding and our lack of understanding of behavior is only a minor subset of the entire issue. There are huge gaps in our knowledge when it comes to our origins, and when we're talking about this specific area atheists tend to cite the speculations of a specific scientist and tout them to be facts when they are no more viable then ID.

Sorry, but what's evolutionary theory based off of Abraxas? Observation, not "testability."

No? We can't see how bacteria adapt to certain conditions or compare geologically separated members of the same species over time to see how they adapt to their unique pressures? Oh wait, we do.

I don't understand what you're saying. Do you mean "we can see" or "we can't see?" When I read your initial post, I saw "test" as being interchangable with "experiment" and if that was what you were implying then you are wrong. In an experiment you must manipulate and control the factors. The idea of evolution sprang into Darwins head when he observed the characteristics of animals, unlike how the idea of independent assortment sprang into Mendels head when he manipulated and experimented with different pea plants. So there's an important distinction between these two terms.

ID advocates claim observation as valid evidence in the same way observations have evidenced evolution. So the standards you use to judge ID as invalid equally show evolution to be invalid. And please don't say no evidence has been presented or that it is completely unevidenced. That's just wrong, a more honest statement would be that you personally believe that the evidence presented for Intelligent Design is weak.

No, I will say it is nonexistent. The observations they have made, without exception, have been debunked. They claimed the eye could not have evolved, it has been shown it can and did. They claimed the circulatory system has 26 necessary components and if you take any away, it would fail, and yet we found animals with missing factors that still function. We heard how the flagellum was irreducibly complex but then found out it could be broken down into parts. Every observation ID has but forward has been proven wrong.

Please understand how much a persons individual persective will influence their ideas, so if either you or I speak in absolute terms and say something is debunked or true we are speaking from areas of inherent bias. You are also confing yourself to life. I'm sure you've heard of the Fine Tuning Argument, has that been debunked without any exception?

Yes, thank you for making my point, you've pointed out a clear distinction between ID and Creationism. No ones saying we teach any creation narrative, whether it be of the Christians or the Hittites. ID is not synonymous with creationism, to make an attempt to do so would be to draw false equivolency.

No, it wouldn't. ID is, in its entirety, life is to complex, something smart must have put it together. It makes no effort to explain the mechanisms of life, no effort to explain how things work, or how they work together. Its one feature is a posed source coupled with an argument from incredulity.

Let's get our preliminary points straight. I don't claim ID debunks evolution or is a better explanation for biodiversity. When competing with other areas of speculation, such as our origins, it's a viable explanation because all we are doing is speculating. In fact, read what Dover High School actually required in their curriculum: 'Intelligent design is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin's view.'

[Wyvern]

Let's get our preliminary points straight. I don't claim ID debunks evolution or is a better explanation for biodiversity. When competing with other areas of speculation, such as our origins, it's a viable explanation because all we are doing is speculating. In fact, read what Dover High School actually required in their curriculum: 'Intelligent design is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin's view.'

Well see there you go the ID proponents don't even know what theory they are challenging. The ToE does not address in any way the origin of life, that would be abiogenesis. Even in this aspect ID has big problems the main one being not how life began here but how life began for this supposed intelligence that created life here. Unless you fall back and admit the intelligence you are talking about is god and then ID magically transforms into creationism.

[East of Eden]

Let's get our preliminary points straight. I don't claim ID debunks evolution or is a better explanation for biodiversity. When competing with other areas of speculation, such as our origins, it's a viable explanation because all we are doing is speculating. In fact, read what Dover High School actually required in their curriculum: 'Intelligent design is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin's view.'

Well see there you go the ID proponents don't even know what theory they are challenging. The ToE does not address in any way the origin of life, that would be abiogenesis. Even in this aspect ID has big problems the main one being not how life began here but how life began for this supposed intelligence that created life here. Unless you fall back and admit the intelligence you are talking about is god and then ID magically transforms into creationism.

If scientists see evidence for design that points to a designer, so what? Should they reject this conclusion because of an a priori rejection of God? Funny to hear evolutionists say we know it looks like design, but there isn't really a designer.

[Wyvern]

Let's get our preliminary points straight. I don't claim ID debunks evolution or is a better explanation for biodiversity. When competing with other areas of speculation, such as our origins, it's a viable explanation because all we are doing is speculating. In fact, read what Dover High School actually required in their curriculum: 'Intelligent design is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin's view.'

Well see there you go the ID proponents don't even know what theory they are challenging. The ToE does not address in any way the origin of life, that would be abiogenesis. Even in this aspect ID has big problems the main one being not how life began here but how life began for this supposed intelligence that created life here. Unless you fall back and admit the intelligence you are talking about is god and then ID magically transforms into creationism.

If scientists see evidence for design that points to a designer, so what? Should they reject this conclusion because of an a priori rejection of God? Funny to hear evolutionists say we know it looks like design, but there isn't really a designer.

I've said it before and more than likely I'll say it again, even if evolution were to be completely disproven creationism is not the default position. If you want your god to be taken seriously in a scientific way then you have to prove it exists in a scientific way. If you would stop wasting all your time trying to disprove evolution and instead put all that effort into trying to prove creationism/ID who knows what you people could do. Creationists really need a paradigm shift in their approach to this issue if they want to be taken seriously.

[Abraxas]

I did, and so did others, and others wrote them off as invalid. Do you disagree with what I wrote: 'No, they are lies that Maddow has made and what you and Grumpy have unknowingly done is show that a persons perspective has a great deal of influence on what actually constitutes a lie. Isn't it strange that all the laws you guys have come up with are made by conservatives, is the rational person really supposed to conclude that no lies have been made by liberal commentators?'

Mostly handled by micatala, but I will also note, no, it isn't strange at all. Fox lies are much easier to find as they are much bolder and more frequent in making them. Most of the liberal commentators, when errors are made, retract them, as demonstrated by your supposed examples earlier.

Did you hear about O'Reilly retracting his false reporting on Shirley Sherrod? But again, it's nice to see the goalposts being shifted around, makes the game more lively. You admit liberal commentators make errors but they are justified in doing so because they retract them.

I'm not saying he has never retracted anything. There are, however, a great number of falsehoods from Fox that have not been retracted.

Yes, humans make mistakes, admitting those mistakes is acceptable. However, when you have the mistake pointed out and continue to make it, it becomes dishonesty.

I never said anything to the contrary. Now, which side of the aisle have they usually been on a majority of the time?

The side of people who are having their rights trampled. I can't help it that the right seems more inclined to do so.

Thanks for tacitly admitting that the ACLU is an institution of the left.

Honestly, I don't know if they are or not. From what I have seen they seem pretty even, however, I have not looked at their whole case load.

I think that you guys may have forgotten the key concept in political and social theory that says that people can committ actions that alienate themselves from their rights.

I don't accept it. If rights exist at all they must exist in all cases unless voluntarily waived. Nobody else can decide they waive their right for them. Perhaps you have forgotten the phrase "unalienable rights"?

Like Anwar Al Awlaki, you know, the terrorist whom the ACLU wants to defend because the government has deemed it appropriate for him to be put on a "kill list." Do the precious rights of these terrorists (who are by no means innocent) overide the safety of the American citizen?

Absolutely. Once you give the government the authority to kill anyone it deems dangerous, there is no going back.

When did conservatives become for such large government? Allowing it to kill people because of accusation instead of conviction, allowing them to strip away rights from anyone they deem dangerous, denying them right to legal counsel to mount a competent defense... you know 1984 wasn't an instruction manual, right?

"]And I'm sure you fully expect these gaps in our knowledge to be filled in one day, but at the present moment you're plugging the gap with your anticipation, as indicated above.

Not really. The gaps are things like the questions as to how much of behavior is genetic and how much is learned from being a part of a group of social animals or a parent. Intelligent design does nothing to address this. The gaps in knowledge are about specific mechanisms within the theory, not within the support for the theory as you want to claim.

This doesn't address what I said. A gap refers to a lack of understanding and our lack of understanding of behavior is only a minor subset of the entire issue. There are huge gaps in our knowledge when it comes to our origins, and when we're talking about this specific area atheists tend to cite the speculations of a specific scientist and tout them to be facts when they are no more viable then ID. [/QUOTE] Except they aren't speculating, they are experimenting and observing, producing testable, repeatable results. Saying "too complex, goddidit" is giving up which is all ID is.

Sorry, but what's evolutionary theory based off of Abraxas? Observation, not "testability."

No? We can't see how bacteria adapt to certain conditions or compare geologically separated members of the same species over time to see how they adapt to their unique pressures? Oh wait, we do.

I don't understand what you're saying. Do you mean "we can see" or "we can't see?" When I read your initial post, I saw "test" as being interchangable with "experiment" and if that was what you were implying then you are wrong. In an experiment you must manipulate and control the factors.

We don't manipulate and control the factors when we study evolution in bacteria? What are we doing then?

The idea of evolution sprang into Darwins head when he observed the characteristics of animals, unlike how the idea of independent assortment sprang into Mendels head when he manipulated and experimented with different pea plants. So there's an important distinction between these two terms.

There is, and we do both.

ID advocates claim observation as valid evidence in the same way observations have evidenced evolution. So the standards you use to judge ID as invalid equally show evolution to be invalid. And please don't say no evidence has been presented or that it is completely unevidenced. That's just wrong, a more honest statement would be that you personally believe that the evidence presented for Intelligent Design is weak.

No, I will say it is nonexistent. The observations they have made, without exception, have been debunked. They claimed the eye could not have evolved, it has been shown it can and did. They claimed the circulatory system has 26 necessary components and if you take any away, it would fail, and yet we found animals with missing factors that still function. We heard how the flagellum was irreducibly complex but then found out it could be broken down into parts. Every observation ID has but forward has been proven wrong.

Please understand how much a persons individual persective will influence their ideas, so if either you or I speak in absolute terms and say something is debunked or true we are speaking from areas of inherent bias. You are also confing yourself to life. I'm sure you've heard of the Fine Tuning Argument, has that been debunked without any exception?

If we are discussing an alternative to evolution, we must confine ourselves to life. If and when cosmology gets taught in schools and ID tries to worm its way in as an

alternative to that, it will be pertinent to the discussion of the politics of what gets taught in schools.

Yes, thank you for making my point, you've pointed out a clear distinction between ID and Creationism. No ones saying we teach any creation narrative, whether it be of the Christians or the Hittites. ID is not synonymous with creationism, to make an attempt to do so would be to draw false equivolency.

No, it wouldn't. ID is, in its entirety, life is to complex, something smart must have put it together. It makes no effort to explain the mechanisms of life, no effort to explain how things work, or how they work together. Its one feature is a posed source coupled with an argument from incredulity.

Let's get our preliminary points straight. I don't claim ID debunks evolution or is a better explanation for biodiversity. When competing with other areas of speculation, such as our origins, it's a viable explanation because all we are doing is speculating. In fact, read what Dover High School actually required in their curriculum: 'Intelligent design is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin's view.'

However, it is not scientific and so has no place in a science classroom.

[East of Eden]

Let's get our preliminary points straight. I don't claim ID debunks evolution or is a better explanation for biodiversity. When competing with other areas of speculation, such as our origins, it's a viable explanation because all we are doing is speculating. In fact, read what Dover High School actually required in their curriculum: 'Intelligent design is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin's view.'

Well see there you go the ID proponents don't even know what theory they are challenging. The ToE does not address in any way the origin of life, that would be abiogenesis. Even in this aspect ID has big problems the main one being not how life began here but how life began for this supposed intelligence that created life here. Unless you fall back and admit the intelligence you are talking about is god and then ID magically transforms into creationism.

If scientists see evidence for design that points to a designer, so what? Should they reject this conclusion because of an a priori rejection of God? Funny to hear evolutionists say we know it looks like design, but there isn't really a designer.

I've said it before and more than likely I'll say it again, even if evolution were to be completely disproven creationism is not the default position. If you want your god to be taken seriously in a scientific way then you have to prove it exists in a scientific way. If you would stop wasting all your time trying to disprove evolution and instead put all that effort into trying to prove creationism/ID who knows what you people could do. Creationists really need a paradigm shift in their approach to this issue if they want to be taken seriously.

ID should be one option if the evidence points there, real scientists don't discard theories because of preconceived biases.

[Wyvern]

ID should be one option if the evidence points there, real scientists don't discard theories because of preconceived biases.

Once ID is shown to be a valid scientific theory it will be taught but until that time you have your work cut out for you. So far all that the ID proponents have done is spend all their time trying to disprove evolution, their continued inability to understand that for any theory to become established they have to do more than disprove the current theory baffles me.

[micatala]

I did, and so did others, and others wrote them off as invalid. Do you disagree with what I wrote: 'No, they are lies that Maddow has made and what you and Grumpy have unknowingly done is show that a persons perspective has a great deal of influence on what actually constitutes a lie. Isn't it strange that all the laws you guys have come up with are made by conservatives, is the rational person really supposed to conclude that no lies have been made by liberal commentators?'

Mostly handled by micatala, but I will also note, no, it isn't strange at all. Fox lies are much easier to find as they are much bolder and more frequent in making them. Most of the liberal commentators, when errors are made, retract them, as demonstrated by your supposed examples earlier.

Did you hear about O'Reilly retracting his false reporting on Shirley Sherrod? But again, it's nice to see the goalposts being shifted around, makes the game more lively. You admit liberal commentators make errors but they are justified in doing so because they retract them.

Yes, I did see O'Reilly acknowledge that he erred in his reporting on the Sharrod issue. I saw it that day or the next.

That is a good thing, and should be acknowledged.


However, he has never acknowledged as far as I know, and in fact repeated several times his claim that "nobody on FOX ever said people would go to jail for not buying health insurance."

I am also not sure that O'Reilly or anyone else on FOX acknowledge the real problem with the SHarrod reporting, namely, that they used a video without screening it from a source they should have known was unreliable. They DID acknowledge they jumped the gun on reporting on the issue without known all the facts, but I am not sure they said anything about why that happened in the first place.



I have never seen an acknowledgement by anyone on FOX of the death panel lies, or the lies about how much it cost taxpayers to fund Obama's trip to Asia.


I do think FOX will acknowledge an error when they think it is in their interest to do so.

With Sharrod, because of the egregiously bad nature of the editing of the video by Breitbart

I never said anything to the contrary. Now, which side of the aisle have they usually been on a majority of the time?

The side of people who are having their rights trampled. I can't help it that the right seems more inclined to do so.

Thanks for tacitly admitting that the ACLU is an institution of the left. I think that you guys may have forgotten the key concept in political and social theory that says that people can committ actions that alienate themselves from their rights. Like Anwar Al Awlaki, you know, the terrorist whom the ACLU wants to defend because the government has deemed it appropriate for him to be put on a "kill list." Do the precious rights of these terrorists (who are by no means innocent) overide the safety of the American citizen?

I'll let Abraxas comment on the ACLU's ideology if he wishes, but again, that is beside the point.

The issue is factuality and a reasonable amount of temperance with respect to rhetoric. A lack of these things is not equivalent to being biased. One CAN be biased and still be accurate and avoid the use of inflammatory rhetoric.

This doesn't address what I said. A gap refers to a lack of understanding and our lack of understanding of behavior is only a minor subset of the entire issue. There are huge gaps in our knowledge when it comes to our origins, and when we're talking about this specific area atheists tend to cite the speculations of a specific scientist and tout them to be facts when they are no more viable then ID.

Again, this is off topic, but I will comment that it is somewhat fallacious.


Does not knowing the birth place of a historical figure, say Euclid or Archimides or John the Baptist, negate what we do know about his life?

Know, of course not. Just like not knowing what a murderer had for breakfast on the day of the crime makes it impossible for us to convict him or her.

It is a fallacy to think that what we don't know about the history of life on earth means evolution is false or even highly questionable.

ID advocates claim observation as valid evidence in the same way observations have evidenced evolution. So the standards you use to judge ID as invalid equally show evolution to be invalid. And please don't say no evidence has been presented or that it is completely unevidenced. That's just wrong, a more honest statement would be that you personally believe that the evidence presented for Intelligent Design is weak.

No, I will say it is nonexistent. The observations they have made, without exception, have been debunked. They claimed the eye could not have evolved, it has been shown it can and did. They claimed the circulatory system has 26 necessary components and if you take any away, it would fail, and yet we found animals with missing factors that still function. We heard how the flagellum was irreducibly complex but then found out it could be broken down into parts. Every observation ID has but forward has been proven wrong.

Please understand how much a persons individual persective will influence their ideas, so if either you or I speak in absolute terms and say something is debunked or true we are speaking from areas of inherent bias. You are also confing yourself to life. I'm sure you've heard of the Fine Tuning Argument, has that been debunked without any exception?

Once again, even if there were the bias you claim there is, that is different than the claims being wrong or not supported by evidence.

You once again try to deflect discussion of the facts by trying to level the playing field to one where "everyone is biased so we can't really say one way or the other."



I will also suggest one could redefine ID to include standard evolutionary theory. The ID people at the Discovery Institute artifically define their notions in anti-evolutionary terms because their ultimate goal, as documented by their own writings, is to take down evolution in particular and redefine science in general to mean something other than what it has for several centuries.

Let's get our preliminary points straight. I don't claim ID debunks evolution or is a better explanation for biodiversity. When competing with other areas of speculation, such as our origins, it's a viable explanation because all we are doing is speculating. In fact, read what Dover High School actually required in their curriculum: 'Intelligent design is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin's view.'

But ID is not a scientific explanation, nor has it been tested, as testimony at the Dover trial revealed, nor have ID proponents even given any clear idea HOW it could be tested.


Personally, I actually agree with the general notion that the universe shows features of being designed. This is admittedly a subjective opinion on my part. I view evolution as part of the process of design, not anti-thetical to it. I also admit my opinion is not really a scientifically supportable one, but more of a theological or philosophical assumption.

The problem with ID is they are trying to redefine science to add philosophical assumptions that are not testable into an area of knowledge where that is the paradigm.

As Behe admitted in the Dover trial, if you let in ID using their preferred notion of "science", you also have to admit that astrology is a scientific theory.


If the ID people were not motivated by anti-evolutionary ideology, then they wouldn't need to push their notions into science, where they don't belong.