There are many pleasure walkers here who seem to be so upset at the guile of someone who dares criticize their beloved pastime that they completely missed the point of the article. The author's issue is with walking "culture" that encourages walking for walking's sake. In other words, walking that ignores surroundings and is more concerned with either the concept of walking or an interior journey where surroundings are just a backdrop to encourage thinking. I completely agree. These type of walkers aren't walking to see nature or observe new surroundings, they're walking to just "be". It reminds me of running hikers or mountain bikers that blow past you on beautiful hiking trails oblivious to the beauty around them. Walking or hiking to these people is more about the personal narcissistic pleasure they can wrench out of their surroundings rather than being receptive and "taking in" the beauty of nature. It's about "running" or "walking" and consuming views. I actually prefer Instagram hikers over runners. At least the Instagrammer is looking for beauty to share with others. The runners, pleasure walkers and mountain bikers are blazing over nature, the rest of you be damned.
I think it's the opposite. There are scientists who are obsessed with finding extraterrestrial life because of their philosophical views regarding man's place in the universe. The fact that our universe seems primed for life has bothered so many gung ho atheistic scientists that they've conjured all sorts of semi-pseudoscientific multiverse theories (Sean Carroll). That's one part of it. The second part it's reducing abiogenesis to a simple process that just "takes time" and is almost inevitable. The goal is to try to shove bare faced facts into a dusty drawer while you trot out the latest sensational theory. This is why there's been constant attacks on the Big Bang theory even though it's one of the triumphs of modern cosmological science. It all becomes so easy to justify when you define science as "what atheists believe."
The perception that all scientists are atheists comes from a small number of loud dogmatists. This is exactly like the perception that all Christians are literalist fundamentalists or hold right wing political beliefs.
All scientists are not atheists, just the smart ones. Depends on your interpretation of the word though. I don't consider atheism to be a complete abscence of philosophical pondering. I believe we haven't explored emergent consciousness enough and that makes it a mystery. But a scientist believing in a God from an ancient textbook is a red flag for me
How would microbial life on mars be a confirmation of atheists beliefs?
The nature of general religious beliefs is that they're essentially non-falsifiable.
And particularly in this case, life on mars wouldn't be shocking due to the fact that there is life on earth and there is a small amount of mass transfer. If there isn't some amount of microbial life on mars it would only because of the dumb luck that there hasn't happened to be anything on earth that could get transferred, survive the transfer, and survive on mars.
Why would a position on athiesm have any negative bearing on whether the universe is teaming with life? Atheism would likely posit that finding life all over the place hints that it's a common natural process.
People could also see it as evidence for a creator, e.g. that the universe is obviously fine tuned for life. Theism isn't scientifically testable or falsifiable, so science can't say much of anything about it.
Moving the goalpost doesn't prove much. Going from how special we are vis a vis Adam and Eve, to accepting life is actually everywhere and has been since well before Earth was a thing is itself a huge leap to make.
Is it really different than any other retcon that's occurred in the last 500 years? At least in Christianity anything can be de-emphasized or treated as metaphor if it is inconvenient.
What I find interesting is the people that decry metaphorical book burning (censorship, banning) are the same ones that want to destroy authors and prevent their books from being published. It's like they think that if they can prevent a book from being published, they can't be counted among the Firemen - which IMO is rather bad logic.
The parent comment seems pretty clearly an opinion as well. But this is why I often end up writing "I think" and "I believe" even though people often say to avoid doing so: I'm always afraid that if I don't someone will accuse me of stating fact without evidence when I only mean to be expressing opinion.
I believe the rule is to avoid it when you're trying to persuade because by default it makes you sound less convincing.nif you're just discussing, then to hell with the rule.
"Dylan Davis (@JennaMagius) is a senior security analyst at RiskSense. He has performed a variety of Fortune 500 incident response engagements, discovered new CVEs in major software, and performed vulnerability analysis on a wide variety of embedded devices."
"Dylan Davis (@JennaMagius) is a senior security analyst at RiskSense. He has performed a variety of Fortune 500 incident response engagements, discovered new CVEs in major software, and performed vulnerability analysis on a wide variety of embedded devices."
The author of the article is using words as a tool for propaganda. He connects very complex situations that are entirely dissimilar to paint Churchill as a mass murderer:
"Dealing with unrest in Mesopotamia in 1921, as secretary of state for the colonies, Churchill acted as a war criminal: “I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against the uncivilised tribes; it would spread a lively terror.” He ordered large-scale bombing of Mesopotamia, with an entire village wiped out in 45 minutes."
In Churchill's own words, he approved of gas to prevent deaths. When reading the article it's hard not to connect the words "bombing", "poison", "terror", "wiped out" and come out thinking Churchill was a mass murderer. But the bombing of Dresden was a bit more complicated, no? And including "poison gas," an ambiguous term, in the same paragraph as "an entire village wiped out in 45 minutes," is extremely dishonest.
