551. ELECTION DAY IN THE USA. GO VOTE.

Comment #280998 by Roger Stanyard on November 9, 2008 at 7:05 am

Bonzai, nah, but you got me thinking there. An endorsement by such a handsome person would no doubt do wonders for any business he plans.

Imagine it adorning DP's business premises in the ever popular downtown Kabul. His PR people would have a field day marketing DP's International Bazooka Shop and Gun Emporium (Also Windows Cleaned) Ltd.

Roger

552. ELECTION DAY IN THE USA. GO VOTE.

Comment #280976 by Roger Stanyard on November 9, 2008 at 4:39 am

Laurie says "Strange isn't it that all those economic rationalist reptiles on Wall St. become fine, upstanding socialists, climbing over each other to get their hands on money the taxpayer has put aside to help out those in trouble."

Yep, the place stinks as Warren Buffet has long said. I've first hand experience of working in the City of London - people there basically don't know anything, not even basic people management. It's an environment that attracts the ruthless rather than the talented.

I happen to accept free markets as economically efficient but recognise they limits of that efficiency and the critical dependency on an effective public sector. Moreover, I also recognise the political realities of "free markets".

Seems to me that this approach is best describe as fact and evidence based economic pragmatism.

What bozos like DP don't get is that the party for free market ideologues is well and truely over. It's had a 30 year reign and has not only gone as far as it can, but grossly over-extended itself and failed.

DP's grasp of economics is about the same as a creationist's grasp of science - for exactly the same reason. Both are ideologies where facts that do not fit the ideology are thrown straight out of the window.

The unpleasant fact the wingnuts haven't grasped is that the current bail out of banks and insurance companies is equivalent to one sixth of the world's annual GDP. In the UK it is, so far, half the country's GDP.

That is failure on a truely spectacular scale!


DP hasn't cottoned on that his wealth and his job are now being paid for by the taxpayer. He IS a welfare "scrounger" (until, or course, he gets made redundant and starts scrounging off his family and the local church).

BTW, DP hasn't given any evidence that he has any training in economics whatsoever. He looks to be a rank amateur on the subject.

What is is basically pushing is the Chicago school of economics - that effient capital markets can handle risk. They can't because the underlying theory can't handle uncertainty (which, by definition is not open to probaility) and distinguish from risk (which is based on probaility theory. The two nare basically grouped together as one. It is a fatal flaw as we have seen this year.

Here are some practical propositions to handle the banking failure:

1. Mutualise the financial institutions that have been bailed out with taxpayers' money.

2. Break up the big banks to reduce the risk that they are so big that governments can't bail them out when they go belly up.

3. Sack the management and install new management that grasps what customer service is.

4. Have government/central bank directors on the boards of every financial institution underwritten by the taxpaper.

Notice that all these are actually "right wing" proposals in that they do not involve "better" regulation. They are structural changes to the financial markets that reflect who is stumping up the money for them to operate.

Anyway, over the next few years there are going to be huge layoffs in financial services and the people involved are not gonna find it at all easy to get jobs elsewhere. They basically don't know anything.

Interestingly that organ of capitalism, the Financial Times, was argeuing a day or os ago that British commercial banks have levels of customer service that are well below much of the public sector such as the National Health Service. That speaks volumes about "free market" economics.

553. Does Religion Make You Nice?

Comment #280966 by Roger Stanyard on November 9, 2008 at 3:30 am

"Many Americans doubt the morality of atheists. According to a 2007 Gallup poll, a majority of Americans say that they would not vote for an otherwise qualified atheist as president, meaning a nonbeliever would have a harder time getting elected than a Muslim, a homosexual, or a Jew."

This non-believer has no doubts whatsoever that Americans who think like that are seriously defficient in their own morality.

Indeed, when it comes to the rampant fundamentalism in the USA, they are immoral, full stop. Even from a religious viewpoint, what they believe is heresy and, all too often, plain vile.

554. ELECTION DAY IN THE USA. GO VOTE.

Comment #280964 by Roger Stanyard on November 9, 2008 at 3:13 am

DP "Why would I move to a country that has more government? I want less government, not more. "

Brilliant, DP. Why not then hop on the next camel passing your way and toddle on down to Afghanistan, as visible from Sarah Polin's house? It's a wingnuts paradise and has a booming recreational pharmaceuticals industry, exporting world-wide.

The country's got everything you need - no taxes, no government of any signifiance, no regulators heeping uncessary rules on business...

Absoluetly perfect for the average Joe the Plumber Republican bigot - no gun controls, no educmacation, no liberals, no pinko universities, no commies, no socialists, no gays, no gay marriages, no socialised health care, no money wasted on public infrastructure (roads, bridges, schools...), no evilutionists, no science, no scientists, no economically illiterate liberal economists, no reds under the bed intellectuals, no atheists, no namby pamby oponents of the death sentence, no troublesome legal system, no failed public sector employees, no interfering bureaucrats, no welfare scroungers, no minimum wage, no feminazis, no Hollywood, no unions, no blacks, no illegal immigrants, no biased liberal media, no democracy...

It's also full of hillbillies, rednecks and Godly fundies and you can pay them peanuts to work for you. Why, with your sound business thinking and economics, you would be a sucessful and world-famous billionaire in no time at all.

The business opportunites for a dynamic and talented business leader like your good self are boundless - burkas, execution devices, car bombs, heroin needles, bullet proof glass... Need I go on!

Nor will you have to worry your tiny litle head off about about the morality of what you are doing. The free market will take care of that for you.

And, of course, as an American who knows how to save the world, the Afghans will give you a warm, friendly, welcome.

Alternatively, you can stay at home, wait for Barak Obama to fail and vote for Sarah Palin or Mike Huckabee to implement the same economically efficient free market system in the USA. Your family clearly won't mind you scrounging off them in the meanwhile.

555. ELECTION DAY IN THE USA. GO VOTE.

Comment #280954 by Roger Stanyard on November 9, 2008 at 2:24 am

DP claims "The free market has its ups and downs, but the good thing is that you can always count on it to go back up when its down."

Ah!! Vodoo economics. Free market micro-economics creates self correcting macro-economic cycles. All without the help of central banks and governments (taxpayers).

Strange, isn't it that all the business lobbyists are all screaming for government action to stem the economic downturn, using taxpayers' money. Strange isn't it that business is utterly silent in calls to allow the economy to fix itself without government (taxpayer) intervention. Utterly silent worldwide.

556. ELECTION DAY IN THE USA. GO VOTE.

Comment #280648 by Roger Stanyard on November 8, 2008 at 2:05 am

DP claims "Are you serious? China is a capitalist paradise? Do yourself a favor and actually look up china's economic system. Try to find out the role the government plays in the economy"

Which economy is this, DP? Um, beeen looking at the Chinese economy for 10 years.Gues whatt, it has been bailing out the USA economy big time. Funding your staggering trade deficits, your staggering fiscal deficits...

Guess what? The Chinese are gonna want their money back. How is that gonna affect your taxes? How are you gonna pay the money back? Scrounge it off your family?

557. ELECTION DAY IN THE USA. GO VOTE.

Comment #280631 by Roger Stanyard on November 8, 2008 at 1:30 am

DaRWINSpUTbILL SAYS "The free market does not give a shit about your story, your upbringing , or the hardships you endured."

So? Neither does the British National Health Service, nor the cooperative movement, nor mutual building scoieties....

There is more than one way to skin a cat.

So, er, the very core of US free market capitalism, its financial markets are:

1. Doing brilliantly just on their own.

2. Been bailed out by taxpayers money to avoid economic meltdown of the USA?

Which is it DarwinsPitBull?

Who is footing the bill?

How do you think that this affects the taxes you pay?

558. ELECTION DAY IN THE USA. GO VOTE.

Comment #280445 by Roger Stanyard on November 7, 2008 at 2:18 pm

DarwinsPitBull tells us "Lets take a simple example:"

You mean a simple minded example.

By your utterly potty idiocy, everyone in the Western World should now be out of work because real wages have been rising ahead of inflation for the last 200 years.

559. ELECTION DAY IN THE USA. GO VOTE.

Comment #280430 by Roger Stanyard on November 7, 2008 at 1:58 pm

DarwinsPitBull comments "No its simply that liberals know absolutely nothing about how the economy works."

I have never heard in the whole of my life such a pig ignorant comment amount economics and business.

560. Gay Marriage Outlawed in California

Comment #280189 by Roger Stanyard on November 7, 2008 at 6:15 am

Stephen Green = Ayatollah Wanabee

561. Bad Faith Awards 2008: Vote now

Comment #280143 by Roger Stanyard on November 7, 2008 at 3:13 am

I went for Palin in the poll on the grounds that she proves beyond any conceivale doubt how utterly, utterly stupid and bigoted fundies are. And she seems to be thinking she will run for president in 2012.

Too stupid to realise that the fundies are now politically dead. Too stupid to realise that the average American is not a small town rural hayseed straight off a turnip wagon.

562. Obama the Secularist

Comment #280141 by Roger Stanyard on November 7, 2008 at 3:05 am

Seems to us that the fundies are now politically dead in the USA. Chimpie in practice gave very little to them over the last eight years. Most of the Republican Party thinks they are bonkers and it will almost certainly have to ditch them if it is not to turn into a regional party of angry, uneducated white men.

Obama doesn't give a stuff about the fundies who, indeed, didn't know which way to turn during the hustings.

Watch the fundies scream and scream and scream over coming months (start with fundies Say the Darndest Things!).

Let them. The Americans have told the ideological wackjobs to go shove it and there is nothing they can do about it.

PS: The fundies will behave like all ideologues - they will blame everyone else except themselves.

563. ELECTION DAY IN THE USA. GO VOTE.

Comment #278785 by Roger Stanyard on November 5, 2008 at 7:34 am

Annabanna - is that what Chimpie was saying - "'Merica"

I thought he was saying "Pelica" as in "Mah Fellah Pelicans".

564. Quentin Letts ranks Dawkins 30th on list of 'people who have wrecked Britain'

Comment #278116 by Roger Stanyard on November 4, 2008 at 12:16 pm

I've read Quinten Letts' book. He's what is known in the UK as a hack. It's a seriously derogatory term.

565. For many evangelicals, it will be the end of the world if Obama wins

Comment #277043 by Roger Stanyard on November 3, 2008 at 3:25 am

"I think that 200 million figure represents Dobson's yearly audience...i.e. a listener that tuned in once a week would be counted 52 times."

Nah, it's basically a fabrication that does noteven meen that. The whay the fundie television broadcasters work is that they buy half hour (usually) slots on eveneglical V channels (amuch the same as a commercial company buys advertising slots).

The TV channels are free to air. So if they buy a sloy on, say , the fundamentalist revelation TV channel in the UK, they claim that it gets into all households with a satellite dish pointing at the satellite used by Sky Television.

Say, 10 million households. What they don't tell you is that nobody watches Revelation TV. Moreover, they include satellite dishes on the mainland of Europe where English TV is rarely watched. The figures are even more fictional for places like Africa where nobody knows how many satellite dishes there are.

Finally, many of the fundamentalist TV channels are so tiny that they can't even afford audience reserach statistics that show how many people watch their channels. In other words, they have no idea how many are watching the crap put out by Dobson and other nutters.

I strongly suspect that the crap broadcast by Dobson and other fundies is almost entirly unwatched outside of the USA. For starters, even in the UK, audiences much prefer to listen to English rather than US accents. The English fundies prefer to listen to their own nutters.

If anyone thinks that the arrangements are inherently unprofitable (advertisers won't touch TV channels without decent audience research), that's not the way fundie broadcasting works.

The full time fundie TV channels make their money basically by selling half hour slots to the likes of Dobson and Pat Robertson. They in turn make a profit not by advertising but begging for donations (credit card payments, etc..) They reason why some of these religious broadcasters are so rich ius that, in effect, they are giving daily sermons word-wide and passing round the collection plate several times a day (the half hour programmes are frequently repeated and also broadcast across several channels in each market).

Nowadays, the fleece the public scam has extended to broadband programming.

The UK regulator OfCom (and its broadcasting poredessor) knows all about the money making scams (there are more than I have suggested here) and is very tough on the fundie channels.

Roger Stanyard, British Centre for Science Education

566. 'People say I'm strident'

Comment #276669 by Roger Stanyard on November 2, 2008 at 11:08 am

IsThatClear/Wooter posts "tıtanıa

no worries I am always here to watch over evolıns. You too."

Patronising creep. Wooter, you are so utterly stupid that even if you accepted evolution everyone here would still think you are bonkers.

567. Sarah Palin's War on Science

Comment #276102 by Roger Stanyard on November 1, 2008 at 10:05 am

Epeeist - It happened too long ago to remember where I got the figure from (it was probably He Economist or the FT in 1986) but the Thatcher administration actually put a cost on "privatisation" of the NHS. It would have cost 20% more to run, mostly because of the cost of collecting the insurance premiums by private companies.

IIRC, she decided that she just could not have sold the "privatisation" to the public.

568. Sarah Palin's War on Science

Comment #276080 by Roger Stanyard on November 1, 2008 at 8:52 am

"Thing is, when I hear people complain about the poor not paying their fair share, I usually can't help but smirk...mainly because these are the same people who acknowledge that there are hard-working poor people, but advise them if they don't want to be poor to work smarter not harder."

Heard it all before. Alas, it's a hard fact of life that the better off get more benefits from public expenditure than the poor.

Work has long been done on this in the UK - they use the National health Service much more, they live longer and therefore receive public pensions and health care for longer, they make much more use of state-funded education, they use state funded roads a lot more, they use state funded railways a lot more, they use public libraries a lot more...

That's before we get onto the hard fact of life that businesses they run earn much of their revenues from the public sector, their employees are educated and trained by the public sector and that they hold (by definition) the best paid jobs in the public sector. In fact, they are past masters at screwing everything they can out of the public sector.

Flat tax be damned. The rich and powerful can look after themselves. They are the pigs with snouts in the trough of public money (see Wall Street so far this year).

569. Sarah Palin's War on Science

Comment #276079 by Roger Stanyard on November 1, 2008 at 8:35 am

Tintania - you forgot to add about Joe the Plumber's ambitions;

Joe decides he is going to buy out the plmbing business he works for.

The money comes from a bank which has been bailed out and underwritten directly or indirectly by government/taxpaper money.

Joe needs insurance cover for his job - obtained from an insurance industry bailed out and underwritten by taxpapers money.

Joe gets business installating plumbing in newly built houses, financed by mortgages provided by a bailed out state owned mortgage market - Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Joe gets work plumbing in a local army/air force base. All paid for by the taxpaper.

Joe's plumbing works because it connects to public utilities provided by local government.

Joe drives to and fro from wherever he is working on roads paid for and maintained by the taxpaper.

Joe thinks he shouldn't pay taxes because he would earn more money.

Joe has a heart attack when he works out that he is in business because of huge dollops of taxpapers' money.

Medicaide and Medicare then keep him alive for the rest of his life - well, until the commies in China refise to lend more money to the evil tax raising liberal government in Washington DC.

Joe then calls for huge tax increases to nuke and bomb commie China out of existance.

And so life goes on for wingnuts until Jesus returns and saves them all.*

* Except that he decides all wingnuts should, deservedly, rot in hell for being so utterly stupid.

(It would be very interesting in a few years time to find out what happens to Joe the Plumber.)

570. Sarah Palin's War on Science

Comment #276074 by Roger Stanyard on November 1, 2008 at 8:13 am

Steve Zara points out some examples of what wingnuts think is "socialist" re-distribution of wealth.

Um, well the wingnuts all seem to forget that "their" idea of a free market also involves redistribution of wealth.

How about simple insurance policies. They are based on most getting no money back and a few getting most of it. My house insurance is based on me paying (let's say) £200 a year, alongside hundreds of others, with a quick and massive redistribution of wealth my way me in the unlikely event of it burning down.

Likewise with private health insurance although there is also includes a massive redistribution of money from the young and middele aged to the young and the old.

This is what the wingnuts (particularly American) cannot grasp. Much of public expendisture is actually a form of insurance - you can include the NHS or unemployment benefit or search and rescue or any number of activities in this.

What's more, it is cheaper that equivalent "private" insurance cover. Even Thatcher worked that one out with the NHS. Unless of course, the wingnuts think that AIG doesn't cost the taxpayer or the consumer anything.

let's also be a bit more honest about it all as well. The reason why New Orleans was not rebuilt after Katrina was that it is predominantly black and Democrat.

The wingnuts would have had their town/city rebuilt PDQ had they been white and in politically red areas. In English, public insurance and quick redistribution of wealth their way.

571. Swatting attacks on fruit flies and science

Comment #276031 by Roger Stanyard on November 1, 2008 at 5:18 am

Sarah Palin claim - ""In a conservative radio interview that aired in Washington, D.C. Friday morning, Republican vice presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin said she fears her First Amendment rights may be threatened by "attacks" from reporters who suggest she is engaging in a negative campaign against Barack Obama.""

Just another dubious politician avoiding responsibility and try to shoot the messanger. Odd isn't it that apart from US wingnuts, the rest of the world regards the US media as almost totally right wing.

(PS - I work in the media and much of that work has involved US broadcasting and broadcasters as well as broadcasters throughout the rest of the world. I've got a lot of experience behind making this claim. I cannot recall a single US TV channel that I would evenly remotely describe, by world standards, as left wing. They are either centre-Right or extreme right. Much of what constitutes US broadcasting (Rush Limbaugh, for example) is indistinguisable from what Goebbels put on the airwaves.)

572. Swatting attacks on fruit flies and science

Comment #275713 by Roger Stanyard on October 31, 2008 at 12:43 pm

The Financial Times today did an op-ed piece that was absoutely scathing about Palin (and the Republicans in general). It stated that Palin was exceedingly ill-read (despite, BTW, the woman bneing a journalist), adding that she did not regularly read any magazines or journals. It basically presented a picture of a woman who is little better than a brainless bimbo.

The FT, which has already endosed Obama, went on to argue that the Republican Party in the USA is now in the process of imploding.

Today The Economist also came out and endosed Obama - IIRC it has consistently endorsed republic presidential candidates since I first starting reading it way back in 1981.

Anyone know what the position of the Wall Street Journal is in endorsing the candidates? What's its view on Palin?

573. 'People say I'm strident'

Comment #275290 by Roger Stanyard on October 31, 2008 at 3:55 am

Fundies Say the Darndest Things!

Wooter - Bugger off and debate with your intellectual equals elsewhere rather than wasting your obvious brilliance here.

Creep.

PS - Never heard of the ninth commandment then?

574. 'People say I'm strident'

Comment #275278 by Roger Stanyard on October 31, 2008 at 3:39 am

Wooter claims "In the first place, I tried to reason with atheists but none of them have the same IQ as me."

Arrogant pilloch.

575. Turek vs. Hitchens Debate: Does God Exist?

Comment #274655 by Roger Stanyard on October 30, 2008 at 9:26 am

Well some in this forum may well be also interested in how creationists think they should debate with scientists.

Here is a list of 10 ways "to debate against evolution" that we found on the WikiHow wiki.

Note section 10 ("Quotemine Relentlessly. Quoting out of context is a great way of winning arguments.").

Not very honest are they!

How to Debate Against Evolution

Debating against Evolution does not use the same principles as other debates. Formal debates specifically prohibit certain types of arguments known as "fallacies", many of which are necessary in order to win a debate from a pro-creation position.

Rely on the good will of your audience. There are different kinds of audiences, and the way you talk would depend on that. If they're a "lay-back" audience, speak simple. If they're an audience of experts and scientists, speak either simple or complex.

Find out what the parameters are. Evolution falls under biology, keep your arguments biological.
Move the goalposts. If you don't like what the evolutionist said, move the goalposts, they can't win if you keep making your requests more specific.

Research the content of the parameters, both on your side and your opponents side. Be sure to research enough that you know the subject like the back of your hand.

Study the debator if they've made books or debated about the same subject before. Each debator has their own style, so if you study on your opponents strong and weak points, you won't get caught off guard.

Study similar debates. Their are a lot of Evolution debates on YouTube and other websites.
Ignore the fact that the evolutionist always wins. Remember that your arguments are different to those used for the last century, because ID produces loads of new research.

Practice verbally. You'll gain confidence for your presentation and you won't be nervous.
Know the format of the debate. It could be back and forth arguing or a 2 minute presentation from both sides.

Quotemine Relentlessly. Quoting out of context is a great way of winning arguments.






Censor. Censorship is the strongest form of argument, if it's not going your way ignore the evolutionist or leave the debate entirely, faith unscathed.



[edit] TipsDon't badger your opponent. You might win the debate, but you might not win the audience. Remember, your trying to convince the audience.
When using a quote, say who the person is, their degree from school, and their position (evolutionist, creationist, etc.) However, do limit the quotes. 1 1=2 is correct regardless who said it and what degrees they have. 1 1=3 is wrong regardless who said it and what degrees they have. A child can say 1 1=2 and it would be correct. A PhD can say that 1 1=3 and it would still be wrong.
Don't quote the opposing side. In other words, quoting evolutionists who apparently say things against evolution. The vast majority of these quotes are truncated, taken out of context and incredibly mangled. For example: "There is no God." (Psalms 14:1). However, the entire passage reads "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good."

576. Turek vs. Hitchens Debate: Does God Exist?

Comment #274648 by Roger Stanyard on October 30, 2008 at 9:16 am

alabasterocean, they don't come from Great Britain either. The full name of the country is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Northern Ireland is part of John Bull's other island.

577. Sarah Palin's War on Science

Comment #274593 by Roger Stanyard on October 30, 2008 at 8:21 am

Al-Rawandi - the Laffer Curve is central to "supply side economics".

Still, its Vodoo Economics as well.

578. Sarah Palin's War on Science

Comment #274568 by Roger Stanyard on October 30, 2008 at 7:46 am

"IPV4: It isn't as simple as you work out. There is, of course the idea that lowering taxes causes economic growth and in the end, more taxes are collected from a larger economy."

How much evidence does it take to show that supply side economics doesn't work? It's hot air.

How about the evidence of a melt down of your financial institutions and a vast Federal bail out at taxpayers' expense (i.e. increased taxes!).

Or, er, how about growth in GDP per head in the USA in the last eight years - 1% a year. Not much of an acheivement, is it?

The cost of a prosperous and successful economy in the developed world is high taxes. The alternative is Vodoo Economics, low investment, poor education, decrepit public infrastructure, poverty, mass unemployment, inflation and economic stagnation.

For those in here with a knowledge of economic history, that is exactly what happened in the UK between 1919 and 1939 - a 20 year recession.



Joe the Plumber should know all about this.

579. Sarah Palin's War on Science

Comment #274551 by Roger Stanyard on October 30, 2008 at 7:30 am

DP - Good luck to Joe the Plumber if he buys out the business and earns himself US$250,000 a year.

Unfortunately, he may need a lot of taxpayers money to do so. If he finances the buyout with money from a bank, that money is likely to have either come from the taxpayer or underwritten by the taxpayer. He'll need some sort of insurance cover, prsumably from the state financed and controlled AIG or its likes.

And if he is a plumber, much of his business is likely to come from new build housing, financed by state-owned, underwritten and financed mortgage companies such as Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.

Moreover, a healthy house building market is likely to be dependent on a Kenynsian backed pump priming of aggregate demand - all financed with taxpayers money.

So how is a reduction in tax gonna help him? It's likely to put him out of business because he can neither finance his business without extra taxpapers' money (meaning higher taxes) or Federal demand management policies (also resulting in higher taxes).

Alternatively he could operate in an environment where there are no taxes, no government help and no federal interference or regulations. Somehow, though, I doubt he would make much of a go of his business in Liberia or the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

580. Why We Believe

Comment #274513 by Roger Stanyard on October 30, 2008 at 6:18 am

"Perhaps you don't believe that Semkiw is the reincarnation of John Adams."

Nah, I couldn't possibly believe that.

Napoleon Bonaparte, British Centre for Science Education.

581. 'People say I'm strident'

Comment #274495 by Roger Stanyard on October 30, 2008 at 5:51 am

Wooter says "To Roger
If Roger does not have a low IQ, how dare he will try to write books every year to impose his delusions, since one book of his delusions is not enough. "

Now what the heck are you talking about, creep?

582. 'People say I'm strident'

Comment #274491 by Roger Stanyard on October 30, 2008 at 5:49 am

Wooter tells us "The reason you do not understand is your level of IQ not the language. If you still do not understand what I wrote above, my gifted class students can help you out."

Well, Wooter, tell them to join this forum so we can, er, all learn to understand English fluently.

(I bet the creep doesn't.)

583. Turek vs. Hitchens Debate: Does God Exist?

Comment #274479 by Roger Stanyard on October 30, 2008 at 5:40 am

alabasterocean - you state that McGrath and Lennox are English.

That's a big mistake. Neither are English. They both come from Northern Ireland, a province renowned for religious extremism and bigotry.

They are, indeed, very "un-English" when it comes to religion.

Lennox is nothing more than a creationist, the ultimate in fundamentalist extremism. Northern Ireland is the centre of creationism in the British Isles.

Roger Stanyard, British Centre for Science Education

584. New Simonyi Chair appointed

Comment #273759 by Roger Stanyard on October 29, 2008 at 8:35 am

Frankus 112 says "Does he have to confront?
Will this confrontation work? Has it?"

Given who Richard has publicly debated science with, it doesn't take ANY imagination to suggest that he will end up publicly debating with his fellow Oxford mathematician, Lennox.

One also suspects that he will be under considerable pressure to debate with Lennox.

585. New Simonyi Chair appointed

Comment #273742 by Roger Stanyard on October 29, 2008 at 8:08 am

Steve comments "Promoting maths does not raise the hackles of the religious in the way that promoting cosmology or biology can."

Up to a point. He's got Dembski and Lennox to handle.

586. New Simonyi Chair appointed

Comment #273736 by Roger Stanyard on October 29, 2008 at 8:02 am

This is purely a personal opinion. I very much doubt if Richard's sucessor will be able to avoid taking on religious fundamentalism.

The fundamentalists are an extremely well organised and well funded movement dedicated to systematically mis-representing and lying about science to the public.

They are hell bent on underming Richard's sucessor. Ignoring them is playing straight into their hands.

Moreover, their movement is highly political (read the Republican War on Science).

My bet is that they are going to target Richard's succesor from day one of his appointment. They are not going to leave him alone.

They will use every scam in the book to do so, starting, no doubt, with his statement that he is an atheist.

The fundamentalists, as I keep saying, are ideologues and ideologues work on the principal that they can never be wrong - it is people who don't accept their view (crapola) who must be wrong.

Du Sautoy, in their book, is on the wrong side and wrong. He can't walk away or ignore that. They won't let him.

Finally, his new chair is now irrevocably associated in the fundamentalists mind with atheism. They will want to continue to attack it for that very reason.

587. Interview with John Lennox

Comment #273667 by Roger Stanyard on October 29, 2008 at 5:11 am

Scottishgeologist: He's an Intelligent Design advocate. I take the view that ID is just a front for creationism "designed" deliberaly to hide differences of opinion between creationists on the age of the earth - "Deception by Design" if youy like.

Lennox has written a book on the issue. It was published last year, IIRC, but I can't remeber the name. I've read it, though. I don't think the scientific world has taken it seriously.

588. New Simonyi Chair appointed

Comment #273658 by Roger Stanyard on October 29, 2008 at 4:35 am

Titania, thanks for clearing that up. My apologies to Hellene.

589. Interview with John Lennox

Comment #273657 by Roger Stanyard on October 29, 2008 at 4:33 am

Question on Lennox's comment "Professor Lennox, who is conducting a second live debate with Professor Dawkins in Oxford this week, said it was world view, and not science, which divided the two."

What is the difference between a "worldview" and an ideology?

Let me list some ideologies - Lenninism, Maoism, Fascism, Nazism, following Pol Pot, Religious Funamentalism, Trotskyism, Falangism, extreme Nationalism, Jihadism....

They all have two things in common - they hate liberalism and have no truck with democracy.

Lennox is a religious fundamentalist. He is a member of the Plymouth Brethren and a creationist.

I haven't heard Richard's debates with him, but I suspect that the real debate underneath is between the liberal world (Richard) and the Ideological world (Lennox) with science being no more than the framework in which it is set.

590. New Simonyi Chair appointed

Comment #273652 by Roger Stanyard on October 29, 2008 at 4:18 am

Hellene - I'm not in the business of bashing religion but I am very much in the business of showing that fundamentalism and its subsets of creationism and Intelligent Design are bogus.

The "encouragement" method doesn't work. I can only recall a couple of cases in the last 20 years or so where committed creationists have changed their mminds and accepted evolution theory. It is an utter waste of time and space trying to "change" them.

The real target is those that have little understanding of science (or religion) who may be taken in by the hocus pocus. That requires very firm, robust, arguments which antagonise fundamentalists by definition.

Moreover, the fundamentalists play very dirty. They lie habitually, repeatedly and out of necessity. You are not dealing with honest people. It's worse than that, though, because, at the end of teh day fundamentalism is a political movement - the fundamentalists want to impose their views on the rest of society through the political process. I'm afraid that politics is a hard business and we have to fight very hard as a consequence.

When the cretinists appear in this forum, call them what they are, lying bastards, rather than wasting your time explaining science. They are not here to learn or listen, they are here to preach crapola".

Methinks Steve Zara's position is absolutely right. The fundamentalists are a dangerous, politicised, backward looking menace. It needs to be spelled out to the rest of the world. You're dealing with kooks and crackpots, not reasonable people.

BTW: Anyone who has ever done any serious research on the creationists and fundamentalists in the USA will quickly find that the movement is just an "evolved" form of racism. They way they think about gays, for example, is exactly the way they thought about black people in the 1950s and 1960s. The rhetoric uses exactly the same grammar, just with "black" replaced by "gay".

The same I could say about their demonisation of "liberals".

If youy think that the way to treat the Nazis in Europe (or any other bunch of ideologues) was to try and encourage them to be reasonable, then you have exactly the same problem with the fundamentalists. It's utterly naive and unworkable.

Roger Stanyard, British Centre for Science Education.

591. 'People say I'm strident'

Comment #272427 by Roger Stanyard on October 27, 2008 at 12:03 pm

Ah Ha - another classic Wooterism : "Look pal, your man, dawkins started it. And while trying to mock the believers in his low IQ level, I would turn my head, move on. He is gonna be losing more argument battle against me and other believers since he cannot defend himself and ET against logic."

Um, suggesting that Richard Dawkins has a low IQ is the ultimate in cretinist idiocy.

Strange isn't it that a cretinist (in Wooter's case, fantasist as well) who can't string a sentance together thinks that he can "beat" someone who palpably and brilliantly can.

Do, do, IsThatClear, tell us all your track record in this matter apart from posting incoherent banalities in this forum. We are all ears.

(PS, he won't.)

592. Children need to be sprinkled with fairy dust

Comment #272398 by Roger Stanyard on October 27, 2008 at 10:53 am

Jabber says "of course, the ultimate villain for teh americans would be a black, oxford educated, homosexual scientist..."

Well, you can add liberal, with a posh English accent and who is an atheist to that list.

593. 'Probably' the best atheist bus campaign ever

Comment #270986 by Roger Stanyard on October 25, 2008 at 4:42 am

David Robertson "It used to be the case that the default position in polite British society was that there was either no God or that he made no difference (except to keep the masses in their proper place). It is a sign of how much things have changed that the oh so frightened atheists have to resort to this kind of advertising."

For heck's sake grow up. Many people are scared of the Abrahamic religions these days. The London and Madrid bombings and other attempted mass murders in the UK are very real reasons for fearing religion, just as the polticisation of the Evangelicals in the USA is, the crude ignorance of creationists trying to undermine science and education, the fundamentalist extremists of all trhee of the Abrahamic religions, the arrogance behind the attacks on the Danish cartoons, the fatwas against Salman Rushdie et al, the 9/11 bombings...

The list is endless.

594. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #270375 by Roger Stanyard on October 24, 2008 at 5:35 am

Curiosorange says "Perhaps someone someday will be able to create everything out of nothing - isn't that what the CERN project is all about'!!"

No.

595. Bill Heine interviews Richard Dawkins

Comment #268581 by Roger Stanyard on October 22, 2008 at 2:14 am

Just to get some facts right about Nazism and Darwing:

1. Hitler never mentioned once in Mein Kampf evolution.

2. There is no evidence to suggest that he ever understood evolutionary theory.

3. He left school at 16 in 1906 with no qualifications whatseover.

4. It is unlikely that the school(s) he went to taught evolutionary theory. It was only just coming into mainstream science at the time, having been somewhat sidelined for years.

5. Hitler's "bent" was art not science.

596. All aboard the atheist bus campaign

Comment #268577 by Roger Stanyard on October 22, 2008 at 2:08 am

As PZ Myers has pointed out, where such advertisements on buses are most needed is in backward rural America. Unfortunately (except for bus manufacturers) there would be a lot of burned out buses as a result.

597. From Science Fiction to Science Fact

Comment #267038 by Roger Stanyard on October 20, 2008 at 6:15 am

Tagred - science education is available to all adults in the UK at a moderate cost. Try signing up for a few Open University short courses. They are very good, indeed, and a science background is not necessary (at least for many of them).

598. [UPDATED] Richard Dawkins on Harun Yahya's Atlas of Creation

Comment #266982 by Roger Stanyard on October 20, 2008 at 3:54 am

Daabahh quotes Kevin Padian as "confesing" and supporting his creationist crapola. So you are lying yet again Yaba Daba Do! Kevn Padian is president of the National Center for Science Education, the biggest critic of creationist crapola in the world. Why are you so stupid that you think you can fool anyone, let alone the people in this forum?

(Shakes head at Yaba Daba Do's untter banality. You can't get more stupid than this.)

599. God is not the enemy of reason

Comment #266487 by Roger Stanyard on October 19, 2008 at 4:09 am

Some facts that people in here might find useful:

1. The Discovery Institute was initially part of the Hudson Institute.

2. Melanie Phillips seems to change her politics according to whoever is paying her. As one time she was a left wing jourbnalist on the Guardian.

3. The chief scientist has suggested that Phillips "campaign" against MMR has resulted in the deaths of between 50 and 100 children.

4. Phillips' response was to say that she was "only reporting". No apology has been made.

5. The family that ownes the Daily Mail supported Hitler and fascism for years in the 1930s.

6. Phillips is a Jewess.

7. The Daily Mail only changed its tune over fascism when Jewish busiensses started pulling the advertisements from the paper (the most notable was Joe Lyons).

8. Money seems to speak louder than integrity at the Daily Mail.

9. The foul mouthed editor of the Daily Mail, Paul Dacre, refuses to discuss in public the paper's or his, position on anything.


Not a pretty picture, is it?

600. Interview with John Lennox

Comment #266173 by Roger Stanyard on October 18, 2008 at 7:49 am

Shane,

The astonishing thing about Lennox's book IIRC was his quote mining - it was along the lines of Yabba Dabba Do or the infamous Laurie Appleton - taking a quote totally out of context to support Lennox's position. It was embarresingly bad.

At the end of the day, Lennox is a creationist (insofar as he is an IDers) and the people who he was quoting are largely not and do not support his position.

Moreover, at the end of the day the issue of creationism is not between religious believers and atheists. It's between religious extremists and the rest of the world. To suggest otherwise is a pack of lies.