I love it when the Christians on this site rant about the evils of modern science. It's a great insight into the mind of a typical religious nut.

I wish every time they did, all there science would turn off for a week or two.

I agree. Except that "the goods" are relative.

And I don't love it when the abysmally ignorant who have never spent a single day working in any scientific field make foolish judgments. The "evils of modern science?" You mean the genetics I taught or the paleontology or the evolutionary theory? Got news for ya kid, scientists are very very often just "asshats" - a new word I am adding to my lexicon. They destroy evidence, fudge results, take horrendous shortcuts, steal the work of their grad students and are just damned lazy.

Your apostles have feet of clay, you know, they are as imperfect as I am. And you.

but they make things go

Yes, they do. Because a lot of them aren't asshats. God bless 'em all.

Aren't you pretty forthright in the stud forum about your inability to understand or follow a mathematical / statistical based conversation about poker? Or have I confused you with someone else?

Where did you teach genetics, paleontology, evolutionary theory? Do you have a formal educational background in some/all of these subjects?

Of course, YOU DON'T HAVE TO TELL US! But since you brought it up, and these subjects come up quite frequently here, I for one am very curious!

And for a third question - I hope this isn't too much for one message - do you have a list or specific idea in mind of scientists who have been shunned or laughed at or drummed out of work because they attempted to pursue research that you find to be reasonable, but which the establishment found laughable? I'm no stranger to this kind of claim, but it might carry more weight if it were more than a generalization without too much backing up.

For what its worth, I think the story you gave about the 2 year old whose parents claim remembers a past life, does not really demonstrate anything at all. Despite your repeated claim that his "scientific opinion" was based on ignorance ("he saw it on tv"), it is far from clear that he was offering a scientific opinion. In fact, it stands to reason that he was brushing them off as lunatics, and not offering his scientific opinion at all. Again, it comes down to a case of you implying that he is a bad scientist, or that science itself is bad (one or the other? or something else related?), when really all I think you've shown is that all scientists everywhere do not take the time and effort to deal with every claim every made to them. That is, if we take your story at face value.

How many times must a person investigate a certain type of claim, raised by certain types of people (aha! there are patterns to be noticed!) before he can decide it is of no further interest, and so far, they have all been scams or deluded people, and is it okay for them to just go on with other work??? It strikes me that in a sense your anger/disapproval of scientists (in so far as you have expressed it through this particular example) is akin to someone being mad at a celebrity for not answering their mail. I sent them a letter! If they are really a good celebrity, and respect their fans, they owe it to me to write back. what? they get 10,000 letters a week? but so what, they are supposed to Look at them. Looking is the first step. etc.

*If* this is true, I pity your poor students.

Thank you! That was exactly my point! And of course I know of scientists persecuted in one way or another for the direction of their research. It's a list anyone can assemble after a few minutes on Google. How many names would you like?

Plenty of great people have been laughed at, but good ideas manage to rise above it -- sometimes it takes quite a while.

If you believe in magic, fine. But overwhelmingly, everything we know about physics and chemistry and psychology and evolution and history has blown away anything resembling the kinds of stuff you mentioned somewhere (not sure if it was this thread or another). The fact that a given scientist brushes this stuff off as nonsense does not prove that science is too biased to ever discover magic. We used to have magic, and then we found out it was fake or imaginary. If someone thinks there is more to it than that, then it is up to them to investigate it and if they prove it, provide something for the rest of the world to reproduce so they can examine it themselves.

There is not a universal hierarchy of things that are important, that the world must tackle in order. If someone feels passionately about organic food, its no use telling them that factory farming is more of a threat to the environment than pesticides and therefore you are wrongheaded for working on organic food production. We must each follow our passions. If someone out there feels passionately about discovering some new understanding of so called "past lives" then it is up to them to do the training, the research, etc., and figure it out. The world does not owe them anything. If they can't find a financial backer who shares their enthusiasm, so what? If Harvard isn't interested in bankrolling their career, so what?

In my view, if you start making sense, the world will come around to your way of thinking (not you in particular; anyone who feels they are being laughed out of academia for researching taboo subjects). If the facts stand up on their own, if others can reproduce meaningful results, it won't matter how determined the mainstream is to keep you out.

Right. Soooooo - when you asked this... ....you didn't really want an answer and still don't? You just assumed I wouldn't have any names or references and now that it seems as if I do you aren't interested (because that's where you might find some information that contradicts your beliefs) and just wish to wax philosophic?

okay Nice post - who wrote it?

I don't really know what you're talking about. I asked you a question - actually I've asked you many questions - and you can obviously answer it or not.

As far as I know, the kinds of people who would have us believe that the things that illusionists and conjurers do by trickery can be done "for real" by people with a "6th sense" (fine, maybe no one calls it a 6th sense, but hopefully I'm making sense!) have been given since the dawn of science until the present day to find a shred of evidence, and as of right now, everyone is still just laughing at them. I'm open to the idea that mainstream science has missed somethings, drawn some hasty conclusions, etc., but you'd think a with so many people claiming to have powers, or with you making vague references to many miracles occurring (possibly in other threads; I can't keep them straight) someone would find an uninterested observer, maybe a couple grad students, and a video camera -- and actually produce a result that will stand up to any kind of reasonable scrutiny.

I can't claim to know that this has never happened, but as a kid I think it is quite natural to be interested in this kind of thing. By the time post of us grow up, having met with nothing but fakers and crazies along the way, can you blame us for becoming jaded and skeptical of the motives, and indeed the trustworthiness, of someone who claims to know that this kind of thing is real, and claims to have proof all around for anyone who would just open their eyes and look for it?

The mother of one of my childhood friends informed us one day that she had destroyed our Dungeons & Dragons books, because she recently learned that those books are tools of the devil. She specifically told us, "in one of those books, they have you draw a card which requires you to chant something backwards if you want to advance to the next stage of the game." And that, she informed us, was devil worship. I, having read all the D&D books, and knowing full well that you were never required to chant things backwards, should not be faulted for thinking she is an easily manipulated person who is desperately looking for some magical answer that will make her life not suck so hard, and will make the futures of her children brighter than it looked to her right then, in her heart of hearts, whether she'd admit it or not. (Okay, you can't really deduce all that from the D&D thing, but I deduced it from the D&D episode and many many other things). With that background, do you honestly think that in order to consider myself a reasonable person, I need to investigate her claim that the 7th grade art teacher in our middle school is a Satanic agent, because she asked the students to close their eyes and let anything just pop into their head, and then draw it (yes, that is evil - some bull**** pop religious self-help Satan is around every corner idiot book told her so) -- or can I just assume it is more of her desperation? Her desire to understand, to control, and to make better, a world where she has very little understanding, control, or power? I think I am well within my rights to consider myself both open minded and reasonable, after completely ignoring her claim about the art teacher.

I have made a conscious effort to be conversational since I started posting here on RGT, as opposed to concise and factual and witty... I think now it is ruining my ability to write in a concise or useful way... Ug. Whatever, I don't care, I'm leaving this semi-related story about my friend's mom IN!

I love that story - thanks for taking the time. I like "voice" in writing - being a writer - I like natural flow and feeling and personality - now that's what I call a nice post. And it really crystallized your position for me so I finally kinda get where you are coming from. Thanks, again.

If you go to my profile and either PM me or email me, I will send you links to real scientists using real scientific methods who have done very real research on the things we are talking about. Now - science argues with itself constantly - so I'm still not offering "proof." But if you want to explore, I'd be happy to give you a couple references to truly non-nut websites.

Maybe you'll understand some of the math - I of course - don't!

Ok. What is it you don't understand?

Maybe I can help.

nope. we dont. and we never have. so why even begin postulating such entities?

So Jib, are you thinking over the last few volleys of attacks- I mean replies? Or have you withdrawn from this thread?