Hysterical remarks re climate change from our new gov general. She basically said creationists are idiots - which is of course true but a little uncalled for. When she scoffed at divine intervention she knowingly or unknowingly triggered every conservative idiot in the land. To suggest that life came from random chance? That is not going to go over very well in Jason Kenneyland.
Payette wonderin aloud
- Thread starter Hoid
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Probably wasn't helpful. In a semi-democracy, a politician has to find something nice to say about organized groups of hysterical fantasists.
You have to wonder about the journalists who obviously set a trap for her. This is more or less a ceremonial position (with limited but crucial constitutional powers). She ain't elected. "Gotcha" journalism is for smart asses.
I am proud of her for saying her thing. She speaks the truth. Global warming has been a fact in science since the 70's. Carl Sagan discovered it was the cause of the planet Venus's overwhelming heat. He stated global warming as a fact back in his book Cosmos in the late 70's. It is a shame that it was even debated back even 10 years ago.
Its time for science to stand up and put an end to all this crap. It is the lack of scientific knowledge among most of the population that is causing our world to slowly rot.
Sometimes you need to be blunt to get your point across. Maybe it will get some people thinking.
Its time for science to stand up and put an end to all this crap. It is the lack of scientific knowledge among most of the population that is causing our world to slowly rot.
Sometimes you need to be blunt to get your point across. Maybe it will get some people thinking.
Yeah the lack of understanding budget crisises create in university labs
..so when is Micheal ( hockey stick) Mann going to supply his original data that he is in contempt of court for not producing when he sued Canada's senior (ret) climatologist Tim Ball in a "SLAP" law suit that backfired on him immensely?
..so when is Micheal ( hockey stick) Mann going to supply his original data that he is in contempt of court for not producing when he sued Canada's senior (ret) climatologist Tim Ball in a "SLAP" law suit that backfired on him immensely?
****ing right...........and it won't go over well with the population of Canada, over 67% of whom believe in God.
Canadians may be vacating the pews but they are keeping the faith: poll | National Post
You have to be a completely arrogant asshole, which is exactly the problem I have with most atheists, to refer to believers as "idiots". Would you like a short list of the "idiots" that believed in a higher power?
Albert Einstein
John Locke
William Wilberforce
Elizabeth Fry
J.R.R. Tolkien
C. S. Lewis
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Martin Luther King
Tommy Douglas
J. S. Woodsworth
Stanley Knowles
Idiots all, compared to your shining brilliance. BTW, that's called sarcasm.
And atheists have achieved exactly what for mankind? 27 dead in a Baptist church?
Governor-General 101: Don’t insult Canadians
DAVID MULRONEY
David Mulroney is president of the University of St. Michael's College.
The succession to the throne of King George V in 1910 is memorable not so much for what the new monarch said as for what he didn't say. In the wake of activism by Catholics, including many Canadians, throughout the empire, the King broke with tradition by abandoning a nasty anti-Catholic declaration that his predecessors had dutifully intoned for more than two centuries. The formula, which attacked (and misinterpreted) Catholic beliefs about the mass, the Virgin Mary and the sacrament of the Eucharist, was replaced by a text, still in use today, that simply affirms the Protestant succession.
The change owes much to then British prime minister H. H. Asquith's astute reading of the political tea leaves. He understood the importance of keeping a religiously diverse empire united as war clouds gathered over Europe. But the change also marked a milestone in the steady evolution of democratic governance in Britain and its dominions. It advanced the idea that, in a healthy society, the respect that necessarily links the ruler to those who are ruled flows both ways.
Put bluntly, it's not okay for the King to insult his subjects.
Governor-General Julie Payette takes aim at bad science (The Canadian Press)
Julie Payette, newly installed as the Queen's representative in Canada, seems to have missed this page in her briefing book. In a recent speech, she mocked a short list of what she considers to be modern heresies. Aside from the surprising fact the Governor-General would choose to commence her time in office with an attack on some of her fellow Canadians, the comments are particularly noteworthy because her targets appear to include the many Canadians who are religious believers.
During one of her first speeches in the role, the Governor-General adopted a mocking tone to share with a room of scientists in Ottawa last week her observation that, as incredible as it might sound, some people have the temerity to continue to question how life began: "Can you believe that still today in learned society, in houses of government…we are still debating and still questioning whether life was a divine intervention or whether it was coming out of a natural process let alone, oh my goodness, a random process." She continued with an observation that was as gratuitous as it was cruel: "And so many people – I'm sure you know many of them – still believe, want to believe, that maybe taking a sugar pill will cure cancer, if you will it!"
Ms. Payette seems to be endorsing a form of what is commonly referred to as scientism, the notion that the only valid means of understanding anything and everything is via science and the scientific method. The reasoning here is more than a little circular. If our understanding of the world is limited to what is measurable and quantifiable, it is not surprising that we are forced to deny the possibility of the transcendent. This leaves no room for the proposition that we can approach truth through disciplines like philosophy and theology, or that we might be similarly enlightened by our appreciation of art, literature or music.
The Governor-General also seems to be dismissing the possibility that human reason might itself lead us to ask whether the answer to that ultimate question, why there is something rather than nothing, is adequately addressed by a form of causation that she describes as "random."
We should also acknowledge that scientism itself has a grim history when conscripted by modern governments. As the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century showed, this can lead to a ruthless utilitarianism that strips men and women of their humanity. Even Canada was not exempt from an early 20th-century flirtation with eugenics, a kind of selective breeding that aimed to eliminate classes of people deemed undesirable. Its proponents, some of whom are still lionized today, invoked science to mask racism and intolerance. Indeed, the canard that the Catholic Church, which gave birth to the modern university, is somehow against science, gained new credence in the late 19th and early 20th centuries precisely because of Rome's principled and public opposition to eugenics.
It is also disappointing that, in the wake of the Governor-General's remarks, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau defended her in the name of science, rather than coming to the defence of the many Canadians who are troubled by what she said. He seems oblivious to the fact that the very virtues he himself so regularly extols – things like compassion, tolerance and inclusivity – owe far more to Mother Teresa and Pope Francis than they do to Charles Darwin and Richard Dawkins.
More puzzling, you would think that, as a politician, Mr. Trudeau would know that denigrating a large swath of the electorate – think here of Hillary Clinton and her "basket of deplorables"– is a bad idea.
Former governor-general David Johnston, himself a distinguished scholar, was wonderfully able to connect with Canadians, regardless of their beliefs. Ms. Payette could take a lesson from him and, for that matter, from King George V. Mr. Trudeau might want to brush up on his Asquith.
https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/governor-general-101-dont-insult-canadians/article36838214/
Payette is simply another incompetent appointed by Incompetence Prime.
And I would give you 10 to one odds that Justin has no idea who Asquith was.
Of course, your entire argument rests on the assumption that one cannot believe in a god without also believing in special creation and divine intervention.
I await your evidence that the Devan Patrick Kelley was an atheist.
Seems logical to me. Certainly the entire reason Einstein, while not religious, believed that there had to be a higher power, that the universe simply could not have created itself by accident.
'Intervention", aside from creation, is another question. But I think it follows that if there is an all-powerful, then that entity is resonsible for creation.
Texas church shooter Devin Kelley was an 'outcast' | Daily Mail Online
You're a lawyer, aren't you? Sometimes it is soooo obvious.
Yes, I am. Is there something in my profession that obliges me to read the Daily Mail?
You overplayed your hand. Woulda been classier and more effective just to put the link up and refrain from the clumsy sarcasm.Sometimes it is soooo obvious.
And just to be clear, thank you for the evidence. It hadn't been in the sources I read.
Nope. I wasn't referring to your last posts in particular, nor was any criticism nor offense intended. Thus the
.
78% of Americans don't believe in Canada.
83% of all statistics are made up.
And using statistics like this is just a gussied-up version of argumentum ad populam, one of the more shitheaded logical fallacies.
83% of all statistics are made up.
And using statistics like this is just a gussied-up version of argumentum ad populam, one of the more shitheaded logical fallacies.
So, that smilie is basically the Canadian equivalent of the Great Italian-American Disclaimer: "But I don't mean that in a bad way!"Nope. I wasn't referring to your last posts in particular, nor was any criticism nor offense intended. Thus the
Oh bullshyte.
I cited the article on the poll, and that rendering is the lowest level of belief I have ever seen in Canadian polls.
Or "I mean that in the best possible way".
Still argumentum ad populam.
Or "I mean that in the best possible way".[/QUOTE]
Boy, don't MAKE me bring out the ultimate redneck passive-aggresive insult "Bless your heart!"
ITs perfectly logical to believe in a higher power or inner spiritual belief. The universe was 10 billion years old before our solar system formed, and who knows what was before our universe. It is just illogical to believe in any organized religion in todays age. Nobody can ever know anything about a God, whether it exists or not. You have to be God to know anything about God and make claims about God. An ancient powerful alien could come to Earth acting like God, mean while this alien is not even close to being a God.
Einstein was brilliant to realize this, that is why he found it illogical to believe there is no God. But his heart went for a kind of Spinoza's God. But he did not believe who heartedlly.
It takes a lot of faith to believe in the mathematical impossibility of 0 being divided by 0 with a sum of infinity.
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