On Mar 12, 1:56 pm, Lloyd wrote:

I don't pretend to speak for bloggers and media types -- simply
counting them would be exhausting.

However, disagreeing with the conclusions of however august a body of
eminences does not make one a liar

It does if you state something that is false. Like "the earth is 6000
years old." Is that a lie?

(see wikipedia entry under
"Galileo" -- the "authorities of the time had some pretty compelling
evidence that the sun revolved around the earth -- a repeatedly
observed phenomenon).

Oh come on. Science? Scientific authorities? It was church dogma.

Do you really think science is just like it was back then? If so, I
assume you refuse to use any technology, any modern medicine, etc.


You're being rhetorical, and poorly, that.

The "Church Dogma" was based on Aristotelian cosmology coupled with
poor interpretation of scripture bound to daily observation from the
surface by every person on the planet with eyes to see. The sun looks
like it is moving across the sky, Jerusalem is the center of the world
(thus the tern "orient" a map), and the earth is the center of the
heavens. Simple, and fit the philosophical underpinnings of the Church
and of the elite. There was order in the universe, and it was
hierarchical.

Any knowledge or learning happening at the time was the product of
those educated in the Universities founded, funded, and run by the
church. So yes -- they were the authorities of the day. Who would
gainsay them? Some illiterate peasant?

There's plenty of evidence that others in the Roman Catholic Church
agreed with Galileo -- the problem was saying it out loud. The
established order was nothing to be trifled with and this was quite a
blow.

As far as the age of the earth, nothing you say can be a lie -- since
a lie by definition is stating something that is known to be untrue.
(By the way -- this number is held only by those who clung to Usher's
faulty addition. There is plenty of room in the Genesis account to
accommodate countless millennia, to wit, "1:1 In the beginning God
created the heaven and the earth. 2 And the earth was without form,
and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.").

And as far as "Do you really think science is just like it was back
then? " I answer people are no different now then they were then --
deceitful, with hidden agendas, proud, unthinking, unfeeling,
ignorant, and so on.

The difference today is that we can counter preposterous claims and
appeal to the reasons of any that will listen. But this assumes
reasonable debate, not a shouting match.

Gore's movie showed all sorts of natural events that have absolutely
nothing to do with Global warming -- nothing -- and since that
propaganda came out people have latched on to all the doom and gloom
and shout "we must do something for the sake of the children!"

Let every mouth be stopped.

And yet if dare make the case that the jury is most definitely out on
the effects -- long and short term -- the trends, and the possible
consequences of modification of current activity (though even the IPCC
stated that there would be no change to current warming trends even if
all CO2 output were constrained to 2000 levels), you will endure
censure.

Yet the "high priests" who try to run public opinion will decry anyone
who dare challenge their suppositions, no matter how reasonable the
critique.

How is that so different?


Dan