Considering God as a creation of our own human minds. (workbook #c)

This comes from a conversation over at CenterForInquiry discussion forum under the far ranging thread headed: Why Did You Choose Atheism?  It’s part of my workshop.

post #117 - Sep 4, 8:33 PM

Write4u comments: “Evolution is established science.”

I offered a slight adjustment.

Citizenschallenge:  Evolution is established by scientific evidence.    : -)

Now if only we really let that lesson soak in, as we think about who and what we are.

As for God, I would suggest that the evidence points to God being the product of our minds. And where did that come from you ask?

Responding to a Christian's missive - (workbook #b)

Unknown commented on "An Honest Look at The Limits To Growth (Ugo Bardi)" 

 Awaiting moderation.

Comment Rejected… on the grounds that I won’t be a billboard, I’m looking for serious dialogue!

but I will build a response post around it.

Since Mr. Unknown’s missive comes at a good time and I’m in this ‘workshop mode’  I’m going to dissect his allegations as an exercise in explaining my ideas.  He and others are invited to share responses, here or at the CFI Forum.

Aug 25, 2021:  Unknown commented on "An Honest Look at The Limits To Growth (Ugo Bardi)"

Mr Unknown writes:  Citizenschallenge, you have been tricked into believing the creator of this earth has limits to what he can and will do. 

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The “creator” of this Earth is star dust and the work of billions of years worth of physics, geology, biology and cumulative change over time, that is Evolution.

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Cc, I used to believe as you do and so started a recycling center in 1974 in N. Calif in southern Humboldt County. I wanted to save the planet but i had much much more to learn and i did. 

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Yes we certainly have plenty to learn when we’re still green behind the ears - oh but what fun years those were.  Fortunately, usually I took grandpa's advice: “Listen!  Even if you already know it all.  Shut up and listen, you just might learn something.”

You have created your own version of who I am, it does not fit the reality.  

Although I’ll admit I know about Humboldt county back in da day: “sinsemilla, send some to me-ia”    ;-). 

And okay it would have been nice to be part of helping save our biosphere, the planet will get by.  The global support systems we depend on, not so much.  It’s truly heartbreaking witnessing how horribly self-centered and greedy and self-destructive our generation wound up being.  Even after all we had learned about the ways of Earth.  

But, that’s another story.

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It took total surrender to the only one who rules heaven and earth. 

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What’s that even mean “taking total surrender”?  

Total surrender to the Bible?  Total surrender to a slick talking preacher who got his hooks into ya?

I didn’t need to surrender to anything, all I needed was to open my eyes and senses to observing, honest curiosity, learning and contemplating nature and Mother Earth.  

Observing, acting, thinking, learning, loving it and so on.   

It’s amazing how much mother nature can teach those who pay attention, sort of like the Bible told me: “Seek and ye shall find.”  Scientist sure have learned a great deal, we should pay attention to them.

Humanist reflects on his path to a "respectable mastery" in culinary arts. 2 of 4

(continued from part one) My German culinary experience.

Mittenwalt, Germany.

That sent me back to Germany, where my “Has Been German Citizen” legal status gave me the right to apply and receive work permits.  Finding an apprenticeship was another matter.

Mittenwald, Bavaria, Germany

Winter was coming and I needed to find some work, which I did at the Hotel Gasathof Mühlhauser in Mittenwalt, Bavarian Alps.  Basically an owner chef, a cook and me prepping for them.  I also washed the pots and pans though I remember more about my moonlight excursions out into the magical countryside and hanging out with other restaurant workers in the evenings drinking beer and puffing on Turkish cigarettes and discussing everything under sun, than I do about the kitchen.  It was a fun Christmas and winter, then back to hunting for an apprenticeship.
   

Gasthof Mühlhausen, Mittenwald winter of 1976/77

Restaurant Zum Burgkeller, Stolberg, Germany.

What about Intelligent Design and Evolution?

Within science respecting Evolution discussions the monster in the closet that's rarely mentioned is Intelligent Design - and when it is, it's immediately beaten right back into the closet.  Why?  What do scientists have to fear?  Don't we have a rational "Intelligent Design" to point to?  Namely Mathematics!  Why not confront the faith-shackled with that reality?

Considering the Contrarian Mindscape

This is about Intellectual Confrontation and my pal 'n sparing partner over at CFI, MikeYohe, who's tenacity in the face of my steady stream of explanations, references, links, counter-questions has been impressive.  He stands his ground where other climate science contrarians have slunk away in silence.

I'm appreciative of the opportunity it allows me to unpeel his layers of self-deception.  He also makes a bad habit of slandering Dr. Michael Mann with outlandish, but widely believed fabricated nonsense. Thus I've promised myself to share that discussion over here, but it takes time he's so good with the gish gallop.  In the meanwhile, I want to start the ball rolling with this recent exchange.  It's a screen shot and not of the best quality but the link is there, come on down, join the discussion. ;-)  Food for thought.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Breaking news, released November 4th: 

Climate Science Special Report

Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA4), Volume I

This report is an authoritative assessment of the science of climate change, with a focus on the United States. It represents the first of two volumes of the Fourth National Climate Assessment, mandated by the Global Change Research Act of 1990.

https://science2017.globalchange.gov

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http://www.centerforinquiry.net/forums/viewthread/19555/P420/#237363

My response to Mike's ramble are in red,
click for clearer image.

                                                                                     

Diary 8/11/2017 - Center for Inquiry Forum, Cracking the Contrarians' Code.

Due to obligations and commitments crowding my reading and writing time down to the bottom of my get-it-done list it has remained scattered and lately mostly confined to commenting over at the Center for Inquiry forum.  Recently conversations have gotten a bit livelier and occasionally even constructive since a few more people are getting involved.   

Check it out sometime.  Faith based vs Fact based.  Climate skeptical challenges add some spice, civility and feigned civility, facts and fiction, devious rhetoric and touche's, sometimes genuine learning, insults and ruffled feathers, usually for effect, occasionally heart felt, sturm und drang and all that fun stuff.

Still, at the end of the day we’re left with the same challenge that started long ago with the first strategic attacks on the scientific understanding of tobacco smoke dangers - though at the time no one realized it, too many still don’t.  ( For those details see: http://www.merchantsofdoubt.org.  It's all been documented, though contrarians prefer to dismiss the book as meaningless ad hominem attacks {on their right to lie I presume}, all the while ignoring all evidence presented.)

The challenge is: How to engage in a constructive intellectual dialogue with characters who are dedicated to disparaging and dismissing serious science with what ever words and tactics are required at the moment, merely because it’s what their jobs depend on?

Good faith learning holds no interest.  Sowing doubt and confusion is the goal and it’s such an easy thing to achieve if one possesses no scruples and limitless chutzpah.

Resentment towards and dismissal of evidence is a given. 

"Exxon’s Climate Concealment"… So what?

A couple days ago I started a thread over at the CFI Forum titled "Exxon’s Climate Concealment" with an introduction and the following quote:

The Opinion Pages New York Times

Exxon’s Climate Concealment

By NAOMI ORESKES |  OCT. 9, 2015

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/10/opinion/exxons-climate-concealment.html

"The same thing has happened with climate change, as Inside Climate News, a nonprofit news organization, has been reporting in a series of articles based on internal documents from Exxon Mobil dating from the 1970s and interviews with former company scientists and employees. 

Had Exxon been upfront at the time about the dangers of the greenhouse gases we were spewing into the atmosphere, we might have begun decades ago to develop a less carbon-intensive energy path to avert the worst impacts of a changing climate. Amazingly, politicians are still debating the reality of this threat, thanks in no small part to industry disinformation. 

Government and academic scientists alerted policy makers to the potential threat of human-driven climate change in the 1960s and ’70s, but at that time climate change was still a prediction. By the late 1980s it had become an observed fact. …" 

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One comment it received is worth mentioning over here: "Imagine that, pass thousands and thousands of regulations, make it so you have attorneys running the big business and the country. And you have a company that employees thousands of scientists and engineers covering up the truth. What the hell did you expect would happen? The lawyers to tell the truth and do what is morally right?" 

________________________________________

To which I responded: 

What about the simple matter of scientists having a right to have their papers and information honestly represented?

My point is, it’s one thing to come up with every conceivable bias driven argument you can dream up to support one’s doubts.

It’s quite another to deliberately and repeatedly LIE about the work and information of bonafide experts 

in critically important scientific fields.