"Scientists don't know why a compass points north."

[kiki]

Heard this little gem from some vile "Christian" charlatan on Genesis, one of those wacky cable channels dedicated to churning out bigotry and taking sanctimoinous chumps for every penny they've got. It was offered without any qualification, explanation or evidence.

Yes my friends, the evil homo-lesbo-communo-islamo-judaeo-liberal conspiracy of "magnetic north" is as false as evolution, carbon dating and the idea that the earth revolves around the sun.

The real reason a compass points north, apparently, is that God's thone is situated at the north end of heaven. Or space. Or something.

[Dr. Death]

1. Yes we do! Because god wants it that way!

:sarcasm:

[Giant Robot]

2. Sometimes you just have to say

:wtf:

[kiki]

3. Indeed.

But it's always fascinating to watch the complex and sophisticated techniques of "making shit up" that they use to spread their "message".

[frogcycle]

5. well, "making shit up" is what its all about

think about it - this "born again" stuff.

I am actually not sure what it is supposed to be, but i suspect that 99.9% of those who claim to have been "born again" know damned good and well that nothing special ever happened; they just decided to start saying it had so they could join the club.

(the 0.1% are delusional - they actually believe somebody's german shepherd told them they were born again)


And all those preachers of all faiths who claim "god told me" this or that - every one of them knows damned good and well nobody told them anything. Some may believe god is telling the others something, and that they had better get with the program. Those might be at least trying to guess what god would tell them if they were actually in the in crowd. But I expect a significant number know that god is not telling anybody anything, and are just making shit up to get rich.

[kiki]

6. But they buy it, don't they?

Seriously. Some dude walks up to you, tells you everything you previously believed is wrong, offering no explanation or evidence - then asks you for money.

How do these people survive walking out the front door every morning?

[frogcycle]

19. I got an email from my sister a few weeks after the current occupier of the WH moved in

it was forwarded to her by one of her bible-thumping friends (she's one too)

It was just gushing about how wonderful it was to have a "man of god" - "one of us" - as president, and how the world would be saved.

I wrote back to my sister:

"I am going to throw up"


The thing is, for these really wild-eyed "true believers" it is every bit as wierd and all-consuming as are cults. Jim Jones convinced people knowingly to drink poisoned kool-aid; Charles Manson convinced young women to commit brutal murder...

These people's brains have been taken over. They believe they have angels sitting on their shoulders, that dead people can come back and do stuff, that people can walk on water... they really, truly believe that. They have no capability for reasoned, questioning assessment of facts. If their guru told them to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge, they'd do it.

And they vote!

So if someone they have been led to believe is "one of them" says "vote for Shecky Green" - well, they'll vote for Shecky Green.

[PurityOfEssence]

31. Simple. They're selling a product people desperately want

People are scared of death, and they'll swallow any complete poppycock that says they're going exist forever. They want to be special and know that some guiding force loves them and has glorious plans for them. They rage at the randomness and danger of life and will go along with all sorts of demeaning and laughable stuff just to feel safe.

Add to this the chain-letter mentality, and this dynamic comes into play: some know, deep down, just how ridiculous much of what they espouse really is, so they need others to agree with them and go along just to dispel the fear that their belief is questionable at best. It's sort of like an alcoholic who constantly offers others a drink so he/she can relax and forget how physically dangerous it is for them.

Religion's the best business ever: you can get people on the installment plan for the rest of their lives and you NEVER HAVE TO DELIVER THE PRODUCT. Have a few regular parties and try to corner the market on any fun and you can clean up.

Many people really believe and live good lives, but many are just hucksters out to suck people's blood. Evangelicals are particularly nasty because they intrude upon peoples lives with often rapacious insistence, just so they can get another notch on their belt and please the Big Sky Chief for their own salvation.

Fret not, though, they'll always be there, and with the uncertainty of a future with the increased competition from overpopulation making life more uncertain, certainty will be a popular product. I just try to keep them away from my kids.

[siligut]

36. Money washes away sins too.

Think of all the guilt you can rid yourself of if you are born-again? It is these weak egos that being born-again appeals to. That and german shepherds can be pretty convincing in their sincerity.

[peekaloo]

4. Gee whiz, everybody knows about Santa's magnetic pole!!!!

It's why we celebrate his B-Day every year! :dunce:



if only scientists would explain why these people can't find their asses with both hands........

[ChairmanAgnostic]

9. luckily Mrs. Santa has an opposite charge

otherwise, how would they have had all those elves?

[peekaloo]

12. Blasphemer! Those elves are snowflake babies!

:crazy:

[YellowRubberDuckie]

7. Wow. Just when you think you've read the dumbes thing you ever saw...

Another fundy opens his mouth...
:eyes:
What a freaking idiot.
Duckie

[Xipe Totec]

8. Have you any idea how much paranormal research is conducted by NASA?

Most people have no clue how much money NASA devotes to studying the paranormal.






And those who do know how much, know that the answer is....





















None at all.

[TZ]

10. For people that spend all their time reading the Bible..

Isn't it amazing how much they know about what scientists "know" or "don't know"? I wonder if any of these numbnuts could even name a true scientific journal really. Talk about magical thinking...I wish this to be so (my faith must be mysterious and magical or else I am threatened) and therefore it is so, in my mind....:crazy: :dunce:

[Aviation Pro]

16. Because real stuff is just too haaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrdddd....

...waaaaah.

[TZ]

30. LOL! Yeah....

But to quote a friend here someone should tell these idiots that "brains are for thinking!":)

[Mendocino]

11. Actually a compass doesn't point north.

It points to the north magnetic pole, which depending on your location, is not true north. Plus the north magnetic pole is moving further toward Asia. The Aurora in the western hemisphere will diminish as this occurs.

Of course this is the result of theist flying purple unicorns.

:crazy:

[Occulus]

13. I wonder how fundies would handle a flip

Since Heaven doesn't change, at all, ever.

God, redecorating? Moving the throne into the South end of Heaven for a bit?

He needs to do something about those drapes, though; God is waaaay more fabulous than that...

[Mendocino]

23. A flip will be a sort of " polarity rapture."

Fundies will handle it like the rest of the heathens, by dying.

[dsc]

14. I think in fairness what the speaker meant was that we don't know

why there is such a thing as magnetic north without knowing there was a design to the universe. I do have one compass related question though, where does a compass at magnetic south point?

[Mendocino]

20. Simply stated, if you were standing at the south magnetic pole,

(which would be difficult since it is now in the ocean)an ordinary compass would spin freely. A special dip compass would be needed. Elsewhere in the Antarctic, that being a sufficient distance from the SMP, a regular compass would point north.

The SMP moves just as does its northern counterpoint. The position was first fixed by James Clark Ross in the 1840's. It is now about 1200 miles from that point, having moved NW toward Australia.

[bettyellen]

24. have you heard that the polarity flips to an opposite... uhm charge every few hundred thousand years

i saw this on some nature show. they could tell by the way all the fine strands of metal in ancient sediment or lava were aligned that the magnetic field did a 180. so i guess the compasses would point south then... and our appliances won;t work.
that's going to suck.

[frogcycle]

21. well yeah

but that is still stupid

The polarity is there for physically explainable reasons.

There does not have to be a "design" before physical facts can exist.

[KittyWampus]

34. that is incorrect. There are indeed underlying natural laws & principles that exist

and which are expressed throughout the physical world.

Science is the effort to discover and describe those laws and principles.

you are entitled to your Materialist world view/philosophy but Idealism proves more enduring and ultimately less liable to dogmatism.

[Odin2005]

39. "Idealism proves more enduring and ultimately less liable to dogmatism." WTF?

This materialist is going :wtf: right now...

Stupid New Agers, you guys are as stupid as the fundies.

[mondo joe]

40. What a dogmatic thing to say. NT

[KittyWampus]

42. MondoJoe, if you read this. I love you. if only we could argue togther over beverage of your choice.

[frogcycle]

43. I actually have no idea what you said

but my point was that the facts are there and that yes, there are explanations, whether we have found them all or not, and they do not require some freaking "intelligent design" in order to exist.

I am neither Materialist nor Idealist, and have no idea where you make that leap.

Idealism may be "enduring" but it is pretty much wishful thinking. And if belief in reality is dogmatism, well, then call me guilty.

[kiki]

45. Don't worry, I got ya

But that's the fundie game, isn't it? "Scientists know X with 99% certainty; therefore there is 1% uncertainty about X; therefore X is potentially untrue; therefore X is definitely untrue; therefore Y must, in fact, be true."

("Y" always equals "Jesus".)

[Aviation Pro]

15. Haysus Marimba....

...it's as if they think everything happens by magic. Well, this is what happens when you substitute several addictions during one's formative high school years (drugs, alcohol) for the big addiction (religion). (I'm not even going to waste my bandwidth on polarity, lines of flux, magnetic variation and dip or the molten iron core of the earth...oops, I just did).

[BlooInBloo]

17. American rule number one: Assume everybody is as stupid as you are.

[lonestarnot]

18. What they gona say when the compass flips?

[frogcycle]

22. that god is now a woman!

and transgender people are acceptable!

:rofl:

[lonestarnot]

28. They'll call her a flip flopper, implore Congress to provide more war funding for the earth's

relative roundness, and announce "Mission Accomplished on North."

[phaseolus]

25. As to why the earth's magnetic field exists --

as I understand it, there is a plausible explanation having to do with currents in the molten iron outer core of the earth that fits everything we know about electromagnetism. So, Mr. Fundie might be technically correct -- while scientists surmise the reason we have a magnetic field - and hence why the compass needle points north - we don't really *know* it with 100% certainty. It's kinda hard to peer down that deep.

I'm a layman, so I'll defer to anyone who knows what they're talking about.

Incidentally, without that magnetic field protecting us from solar radiation, Earth wouldn't have any life, or even an atmosphere.

[originalpckelly]

27. We know why the compass points to magnetic north...

we do not know with 100% certainty how the field that causes that is generated. So the fundie is still wrong.

[papau]

29. The concept of "field" works - but this is likely a quibble about a concept/not a proof n/t

n/t

[originalpckelly]

26. Oh I don't know, maybe the same reason that microwaves work?

Or the way that a common screwdriver made of the right metal can be magnetized? Or the way that filings placed above a magnet will align themselves to the field as well?

[tjwash]

32. I expected to see Kirk Cameron's picture here when I opened this post.

nt

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

33. Actually, it's a pointer to God's toilet. He's gettin' old, ya know, prostate and all that.

Not to mention loss of memory and going broke.

Pass the basket if you want that condo in heaven.

[OxQQme]

37. If the magnetic field flips

all of our car horns will suck, engines will run backwards, microwave ovens will become fridges, and Windoze might be aligned correctly and finally work.
:o)

[glowing]

35. Hate to point this out, but our magnetic poles have reversed more

than a couple of times in the earth's history.

[petronius]

38. The magnetic pole drifts slowly over time - is God rearranging the furniture?

:shrug:

[Eurobabe]

41. This sounds like one of those "why do dogs lick their balls" jokes n/t

[Crabby Appleton]

44. The other end of the needle points south

[gollygee]

46. What is really sad

is that some people are so willfully ignorant. They have to know somewhere inside them that this is all bullshit, and yet they choose to suspend reality and believe this kind of thing anyway.

[EstimatedProphet]

47. Oh yeah? Well, scientists don't know why things fall down either!

Or why leaves are green! Or why there's seasons, or why ice floats, or...

Wait, yes they do.

[donheld]

48. NO! The real reason a compass points north is

Santa and his elves are :D