Blogger for Bush declares "Science is Dead"

[BurtWorm]

There are no words. But Jon Swift has fun with it.

Here's the shit straight from the horse's anus, left in its ignorant and unedited glory:

http://www.blogsforbush.com/mt/archives/007726.html


August 23, 2006
The Death of Science

Not too long ago the blogosphere was rocking with the great debate of Intelligent Design vs Darwinism. It was an interesting debate, though I doubt much that anyone had the mind changed. Be that as it may, the whole thing got me thinking, and today ii occured to me: science is dead. We have reached the end of the Age of Science - what will come after, I don't know, but I don't think that we'll ever again have a time when Science is enshrined as some sort of god-like arbiter of right and wrong. The question now: what killed science?

A lot of different factors - but the main thing was that science could only thrive as it did from about 1650 until 1850 when everyone agreed on the rules. The prime rule of science was truth - everyone involved in science had to tell the truth to the best of their ability, and always be willing to correct one's views when new evidence called in to question previously held beliefs. What killed science was when its strongest advocates stopped telling the truth.

It was, after all, science and its enthusiasts which fell for the Piltdown Man, Haekel's embryos, eugenics, Population Bomb, ALAR, etc, etc, etc. So many bogus theories, dressed up as science, and greeted by the believers in science as the be-all and end-all of existence. After a while, it was bound to errode the foundations of science - and now it has. Science is now so intertwined with myth and political gamesmanship that whatever judgements are pronounced under the cover of science are immediately suspect - everyone who hears such things wonders when some future science will completely refute what is held as rock-solid science today.

Why did science stray from the path of truth? I think it is because we ceased educating the men of science with a knowledge of religion - a knowledge, that is, of genuine truth, genuine reason, and the relationship of man to creation, and his Creator. When science became a narrowly forcused search for something immediately practical, it was bound to eventually be hijacked by people who wanted to use the cover of science for very impractical efforts. Keep in mind that communism, once upon a time, was considered irrefutable because it was supposedly hard-nosed science about the human condition and destiny - the crackpot theories of an out of touch German intellectual were peddled as if they were on par with the theory of gravity.

The truth will out - and that means that the quest for the truth will continue, and that will mean that efforts in science will continue to yield results...but the Age of Science is over, killed off by lies. I don't regret its passing - hopefully we will soon start to really educate people, so that even as they pursue science, they keep it in perspective, and in relation to the real human condition.

[hobbit709]

1. Then how is he blogging

If science is dead then the Internet must be FM(fucking magic)

[Ghost Dog]

6. The internet is technology (and, increasingly, business

as well as an expression of society). It is not science.

Science is always imperfect knowledge. No scientific theory or hypothesis ever claims to be the "be-all and end-all of existence". The media (and politicians, and economic and even 'national security' interests) may tend to claim that.

Every scientific theory is always perfectible, refutable or supercedable by another on the basis of a). empirical observation and testing and b). better theories that, temporarily, appear to more closely fit the facts as we, at this point in time, have observed them. Read Popper and Kuhn, for example.

The possible ability to achieve direct "Gnosis" amongst certain "Illuminati" (which observation of diverse (in time and space) human societies tells us would, according to practitioners, usually require much study and great self-sacrifice), is, for example, not (yet) disproven. Perhaps a moment of genuine epiphany is indeed possible, occasionally. That would be a research project in which I wouldn't mind participating ;-)

[hobbit709]

8. But technology would be nowhere

without science.

[longship]

16. That's correct. Especially digital technology == Quantum Mech.

Without 20th century physics we'd still be using vacuum tubes (valves, to the Brits). Semiconductor physics is rooted firmly in QM.

But the RW loonies think that QM is rubbish. Amazing ignorance in these people.

[patrice]

10. Yay!!! Thomas R. Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

:bounce: You're the first person I've run across since graduate school who knows this book.

[Ghost Dog]

13. 2 years PhD research in 'Philosophy (& Sociology) of Science',

patrice - in relation to the 'nuclear energy' debate of the 'seventies ('official' science vs. 'eco-' science).

George Schultz and Berger & Luckman were inspiring, also.

I dropped out, on account of the bureaurocracy/government 'scientists' ranged against me at the time - they withdrew my funding for noncompliance - (and because I fell in love with a French girl and felt like farming goats in Provence and writing poetry for a while).

But I've never stopped thinking about the issue...

:hi: tell me yours?

[patrice]

18. I taught advance placement highschool Psychology for 5 years.

The "nature of proof" is an essential issue when you want to make statements about human behavior and/or mental processes, especially to "kids" who are taking 4-5 AP classes, inclding things like AP Chem and AP Calc.

There was a professor in the first grad classes I took from OSU (extension classes in Tulsa at the time) who refered to Kuhn frequently and it appealed to me because of concerns I'd had as an undergraduate Psych major, years earlier during the ascent of Behaviorism, that had turned me off on research at that time (so I switched my major to Language Arts and got dual certification for secondary English and Psychology).

More grad school at Texas A&M with the author of a major college Psychology text-book, Dr. Ludy Benjamin, gave me better appreciation for what it is that Psychology TRIES to do and how, because of its subject matter, psychology is a pretty good example of the challenge of Science in general.

Professors at The University of Kansas were talking about Paolo Freire when I completed my M.S. in Curriculum and technology there and that put the whole issue in the context of how knowledge is constructed, within an economic frame, at the grassroots level.

All of that took a couple of decades. Rasied my boy and my girl; lost my husband to lung cancer. I've been to France only once, but I know what you mean about falling in love.

I'm a technical writer now, but kind of active on the **issues**, so the whole thing about what/how we "know" stays relevant.

[GOPBasher]

17. Good question, and I have another...

How will they develop all those really cool weapons? That is, how will we maintain our military technological advantage over the rest of the world, without science? Hmmmmm. Maybe if we pray really hard God will just kill and smite all of our enemies for us without having to build cool smart bombs. (The sad part is, some people in this country actually believe that last sentence.)

[bananas]

21. To most people, it is fucking magic.

edit: it occurs to me that could be interpreted many ways.

[angstlessk]

2. Yeah, and if we allowed religion to trump science we would still think

the earth was flat..and the sun revolved around the earth...same thing different time.

Edit..to correct a finger on a wrong key..I think that is called spelling?

[WCGreen]

3. Science is not and never was the arbiter of right and wrong....

It presents the truth in a clear, concise way, backed by a structure of experimentation and discovery...

[progdonkey]

4. um, ok...

"It was, after all, science and its enthusiasts which fell for the Piltdown Man, Haekel's embryos, eugenics, Population Bomb, ALAR, etc, etc, etc. So many bogus theories, dressed up as science..."

Exactly, Piltdown Man was a fraud, Eugenics was terribly misguided (to say the least), but they weren't actual science, so they had to be "dressed up" as science. "Creation Science/Creationism/ID" or Astrology or whatever other pseudoscience need to be "dressed up" as science, because they are just as fraudulent as Piltdown Man.

[C_U_L8R]

5. Science Declares Republicans Braindead

Good gravy... you'd think they'd be ashamed to be so freekin' dumb.

[unhappycamper]

7. "Everything that can be invented has been invented."

Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. patent office, 1899 (attributed)

I find sites that say it's a real quotation & sites that say is not a real quotation. :shrug:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=quotation+%22everything+that+can+be+invented%22&btnG=Google+Search

[MADem]

9. I thought a KID wrote this--some homeschooled nitwit at Patrick Henry

University....

To my shock, I look this asshole up, and discover he's forty years old, and actually made it through four years in the USN (a stain on that service). Oh, and his little biography says nothing about a J-O-B....but it does talk about his "ambitions." Is he living in Mama's basement, or what?

Mark Noonan, 40, is a senior writer for Blogs For Bush.

Born absurdly in New York State, he grew up in California, served four years in the United States Navy and has lived in Las Vegas, Nevada for the past ten years. He is a student of history with ambitions of writing both historical works and fiction novels.


http://www.blogsforbush.com/mark.html


Ah, but wait...I found MORE on this dolt: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Mark_Noonan

"To pay the bills, he works as a credit underwriter; he is soon-to-be married and has no children but does have a small dog to provide both humor and grief.

He is not related to Peggy Noonan."

According to a September 28, 2004, profile written by Noonan for Pop + Politics (http://www.popandpolitics.com/articles_detail_archived.cfm?articleID=1270), "Mark Noonan is a 39-year-old man who lives in Las Vegas, Nevada. He is of rigidly Catholic theology, mighty disappointed to note he'll soon be 40, and to steal from Douglas Adams a bit he is almost, but not quite, exactly unlike anyone you've ever met. His favorite recreation is to write commentary about current affairs."

...Anjeanette Damon, "Bloggers poised to be players on state's campaign landscape," ( http://news.rgj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051120/NEWS10/511200360/1016/NEWS ) Reno Gazette-Journal (NV), November 20, 2005: "And Mark Noonan, a 40-year-old underwriter from Las Vegas, who already has a national following as a writer for Blogs for Bush and GOP Bloggers, is gearing up to launch Battleborn Politics by the first of the year. ... 'I'm a conservative Republican,' he said. 'This will not be a balanced blog. I will give the other side their due, but I'm here to support my side.'" Note: This new website has not been located online.

Here he is with his new bride!

http://www.pahrumpvalleytimes.com.nyud.net:8090/2006/02/24/photos/noonan1.jpg

http://www.pahrumpvalleytimes.com/2006/02/24/news/wedding.html

Creepy.

[JHB]

23. In other words, he's what used to be called a "crank"...

...i.e., someone with no particular expertise on a subject, but doesn't let that deter them from commenting on (especially in the form of "complaining about") it.

[BurtWorm]

24. aka, a crackpot.

[MADem]

29. Heh, heh...the GOP seems to have a lot of those! NT

[NoPasaran]

30. Science is dead?

Then how do you explain his hair?

[fasttense]

11. Obviously spelling and grammar are dead for this "blogger for

bush" as well as science.

I wonder if he even read his own post? He contradicts himself regularly. He writes that science is dead but then admits that there are "So many bogus theories, dressed up as science." So is it science that is dead or bogus theories dressed up as science? He writes, "it was bound to eventually be hijacked by people who wanted to use the cover of science for very impractical efforts." So is it the use of science as a cover that is dead or science itself?

In addition to all the english and science he has killed off, he has killed off common logic.

[rodeodance]

12. idiots all around us nowadays.

[threadkillaz]

14. Religion Kills - Science Saves

nt

[stopbush]

15. I wouldn't get on this guy too harshly. He may be a teenager just

learning to express himself. I'm sure his parents have their hands full with him right now, what
with knowing all that stuff that parents never seem to know but teens seem to take as gospel. Give
him another 6 months and he'll learn about rhetorical arguments and straw men.

BTW - interesting that the writer believes that - apparently with the aid of religion (and that's
"The" religion, not just any old religion) - "we will soon start to really educate people." One wonders why
the religious types have waited over 2000 years to start the important work of really educating people. Maybe
they needed to wait until religion did the R&D on communication devices like TV and the internets so they
could reach critical mass with their message.

Also interesting how he notes that "science and its enthusiasts which fell for the Piltdown Man, Haekel's embryos, eugenics, Population Bomb,
ALAR, etc, etc, etc." I wonder if he has similar feelings about the hoaxes that run rampant through his religion? The difference, of course, is
that science eventually admitted to all of those "hoaxes" and moved on. One wishes we could say the same of religious adherents when their myths and
hoaxes are similarly exposed.

On edit: I see from an earlier post that the writer is actually 40 years old. I won't believe it until the good Lord himself tells me so. We all know that
in this day and age the whole "age thingy" can be faked.

[JitterbugPerfume]

19. he is a 40 yr old idiot

:wtf:

[Liberal In Texas]

20. Science doesn't care what your belief system is. Science truths exist and

mankind has always sought to discover them.

The use of science for evil or good is a decision made by people. The cons like using it for evil; to advance their own agendas and enrich themselves.

Religion, by definition, is a system of belief that does not stand up to tests of verification. And therefore it has no place in science and scientific thinking.

The blogger wishes his belief system to trump scientific thinking. His premise is bunk.

[Julius Civitatus]

22. Dumb, uneducated idiocy

Some people are not afraid to say the dumbest, most ignorant stuff and even display a sense of pride for their idiocy.

[kineneb]

25. But gravity still sucks

and mixing mentos and cola makes one hell of a big mess.

What a dolt; back to the Dark Ages for him, and with no biscuits either.

Guess he expects to float out of bed and stick to the ceiling someday, or have the breakfast coffee pour up. Hummph.

[Blue-Jay]

26. HAHAHAHAHA

"Since the media is biased I get all my news from Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and Jay Leno monologues."

:rofl:

[BurtWorm]

27. Check out his archives.

;)

There are more gems in there.

[Blue_Tires]

28. we are all dumber after having read that