Thursday, March 13, 2014

Clueless in Toronto

Larry Moran has a typically nasty blog post demanding censorship of public prayer at city council meetings in Canada.

Of course, the obvious remedy to public prayer (if you're an atheist) is to not participate.

Don't like prayer? Don't pray.

But atheists are totalitarians at heart-- censorship is part of who they are. The really funny thing is that Moran has had a few self-pitying posts about the reductions in public funding for science (particularly bullshit science like AGW "research").

The moron doesn't see that the two issues are related. If you tell the public to shove their religious beliefs up their butts, and that they're idiots, and you link your atheist anti-religious hate to science, why would you be surprised that after a while the public tells scientists to "go get your paycheck from someone else".

Science is a radically over-rated endeavor. Obviously there have been substantial advances, but most of them have been in applied sciences like medical research and engineering that are not entangled in atheist and greenie-infested "disciplines" like climate science and evolutionary biology. Ninety-five percent of the scientific literature is garbage, most of it is irreproducible, and most of the rest is irrelevant except to tenure. A lot of published science is so dodgy with data and logic that if it were financial prospectus the authors would be prosecuted by securities authorities. And of course scientific literature is a prospectus, attracting hundreds of billions of research dollars annually.

And the incompetence and fraud seem to infest particular kinds of science.

Think about it: what exactly have climate scientists and evolutionary biologists done for you lately, except take billions and billions of your tax dollars and compare you to Holocaust deniers if you question them or call you idiots if you believe in God and drag you into court if you talk about God in public or if you don't want their atheist religion taught to your kids in your schools?

People are starting to catch on. There's a simple solution to this atheist/scientistic canker on our culture. Defund the bastards. They hide behind their fake worthless "science". These f*ckers have no marketable skills-- most of them would require remedial training to work at the drive-through window at McDonald's ("Larry, we know you're new to the restaurant, but you really have to be nice to the customers and stop telling them they're IDiots-- they pay your salary").

So aim at the  scientific disciplines they infest and take their money away. We don't need just-so stories about evolution, idiotic crap about surviving survivors and randomness generating all of life, and transparent frauds like the crowd in Climategate.

Strip their funding. Time to pull away the teat. Atheists can find something else to suck on. 

32 comments:

  1. I kind of agree with the gist of your post, but you sound a bit overheated. Calm down.

    Like this for example: >>Defund the bastards. They hide behind their fake worthless "science". These f*ckers have no marketable skills-- most of them would require remedial training to work at the drive-through window at McDonald's<<

    Science is a fine thing, just not this tortured version of science we've been seeing lately. You're right that a great many scientific studies cannot be replicated, which is what science is supposed to be.

    Politics plays too large of a role in science. That's the problem.

    JQ

    ReplyDelete
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    1. Egnor is forced to jump the shark, his readership approaching zero. He sounds like a raving lunatic. Maybe that's who he is deep down inside. Or maybe it's just a show.

      Hoo

      Delete
  2. Here's what I've learned from liberals.

    If you think science should be done in the light of day, you hate science.

    If you think scientists should endeavor to disprove, rather than prove their hypotheses, you hate science.

    If you think that peer review should not be buddy review, you hate science.

    If you think scientists should not manipulate data, you hate science.

    If you are skeptical, you hate science.

    if you ask questions, you hate science.

    If you think science should be reproducible, you hate science.

    Sadly, I believe all of these things, which makes me a born-again science hater.

    Ben

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  3. What rubbish. Scientists are competitive and skeptical; if an observation or experiment is irreproducible we usually find out in short order. The bigger the claim the faster and more vigorously the scientific establishment works to disprove it. It happens all the time. Here’s a big scientific claim withdrawn just this week.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/10/stem-cell-researcher-breakthrough-findings-withdrawn_n_4935460.html?utm_hp_ref=science

    Unlike religion, the scientific establishment will change its mind when provided with new evidence in a system that is self-correcting. We owe everything we know about the natural world to science. I can’t think of a single fact we know about the natural world as a result of religion. Not one. Religion has been and is a ball and chain on the human intellect. Let Egnor’s anti-science post be exhibit A.

    -KW

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  4. Adm. G Boggs, Glenbeckistan NavyMarch 13, 2014 at 8:02 AM

    Egnor, you are right. There is simply too much money in science funding, being handed out by "old-boy" networks.

    Sadly, the university system is a large part of the problem. I don't know what the process is at SUNY, but the universities where I worked skimmed half my grant money right off the top. Of course, they say it went to providing my parking sticker, heat for my office, and water to flush the toilet. But, in reality, it went to hiring nincompoops and incompetents to teach Womyn's Studies and fund left-wing student grievance groups. That's a major part of the reason I started my own company while on faculty, and eventually bailed. There was an interesting article about this very topic in the "Chronicle of Higher Education":

    Both beginning and experienced science faculty members have much to gain in developing consulting relationships with government and industry. In addition to being a good reality check, such arrangements can be an excellent source of ideas, data, and problems, as well as extra money. [heh]

    Consulting also [..] gives [faculty] more credibility while providing them with an important window on what is truly relevant
    . [emphasis added]

    On that last note, the other major issue is what I call "circle-jerk science". Simply defined, circle-jerk science is science whose absence would not be noticed (except by loved ones and friends) if every person doing it disappeared from the planet tonight. Aside from its function as a political cudgel, who cares whether whale sonar is being affected by "global warning"...?

    Will [whales] be competitors for acoustic space, for instance these humpbacks yapping all the time in the same frequency band that bowheads use to communicate? We just don’t know.

    Line up a grant! Call the FCC! We need nautical neutrality! Bandwidth is being controlled by the big whales in the industry!

    And even if whale bandwidth allocation were a problem, who ever thought the Federal government and a bunch of academics could fix it anyway? Look what they've done to Africa. Or, closer to home, look what they've done to Native Americans. I was recently in the southwest, and the reservations have four billboard types: casino advertising, alcoholism recovery, drug counseling, and domestic violence hotlines. "We're from the government and we're here to help you."

    Yes, yes, I know. here's the litany:
    Manhattan Project, alleluia!
    Mercury Program, alleluia!
    Internet, alleluia!

    But note what each of those sainted projects have in common; they were engineering projects. They built A Box. Well, truthfully, they had two things in common: the other was a military application, acknowledged or not. Yes, there was supporting research, but it was focused on building The Box. Such projects are where the government, and in some cases only the government, can bring the resources to bear on building The Box.

    But let's take specific examples. You've heard of Richard Dawkins, but have you ever heard of Charles Townes? Oh, Townes was just the guy who developed the theory leading to the development of the MASER, which gave us the laser, which plays your CDs, DVDs, and scans your grocery items. Neils Bohr and von Neumann (my hero!) thought he was chasing fireflies. So much for settled science. A man of faith, Townes is quoted saying:

    [S]cience and religion [are] quite parallel, much more similar than most people think and that in the long run, they must converge...

    And guess who funded his research... Yes, the NSF. But even more importantly, the Office of Naval Research (oooh, military!!! evil evil evil) and Bell Laboratories (capitalist piggies!!! onepercent onepercent onepercent).

    But which person has broader name recognition? And I ask you, what did Richard Dawkins ever do for you? I ask you... who is a darling of the Progressive left, the "reality party"? "Scientist" Dawkins, or some Jesus freak named Charles Townes?


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    1. Adm. G Boggs, Glenbeckistan NavyMarch 13, 2014 at 8:09 AM

      If it went away tomorrow, which would you miss most:
      (a) Dawkin's "Weasel"
      (b) the laser

      :-D

      Delete
    2. Technically speaking, gramps, the laser was invented by Basov and Prokhorov and by Maiman. Townes and Schawlow were a little behind.

      Hoo

      Delete
    3. Adm. G Boggs, Glenbeckistan NavyMarch 13, 2014 at 8:18 AM

      MASER.

      Delete
    4. At any rate, both laser and maser were invented by physicists. MRI is NMR with an inhomogeneous magnetic field, another invention of physicists. Semiconductor electronics came out of physics research.

      And Egnor is a raving lunatic or plays one on the internet.

      Hoo

      Delete
    5. Adm. G Boggs, Glenbeckistan NavyMarch 13, 2014 at 8:33 AM

      Me: "Townes was just the guy who developed the theory leading to the development of the MASER, which gave us the laser..."

      Whatever. Suit yourself. If you flatter yourself that you know what I'm saying better than I know what I'm saying, fine. Mr Materialist. :-)

      Delete
    6. Of course I know more about masers and lasers than you do, gramps. My master's degree is in quantum electronics. I did research and published papers on four-photon spectroscopy. What's your expertise in that area?

      Hoo

      Delete
    7. Adm. G Boggs, Glenbeckistan NavyMarch 13, 2014 at 8:39 AM

      Whales are getting too many busy signals. We need to regulate fireplaces.

      Delete
    8. Adm. G Boggs, Glenbeckistan NavyMarch 13, 2014 at 9:05 AM

      Toots, everyone who visits this comment board knows what a brilliant, accomplished secret genius you are. Your comments speak for themselves.

      Delete
    9. Gramps, if you doubt my expertise in quantum electronics, feel free to disprove it. Ask a few intelligent questions and show the world that I know nothing about Einstein's coefficients, stimulated emission, population inversion, relaxation times, the Bloch sphere, and so forth. That would be a spectacular achievement on your part!

      Hoo

      Delete
    10. Adm. G Boggs, Glenbeckistan NavyMarch 13, 2014 at 9:22 AM

      Me? Doubt? EVERYBODY knows how brilliant and erudite you are. It's obvious from your comments!

      Whassamatta, Tooter?? Can't take a compliment?

      But you've had enough attention. Go play the "look at me" game with somebody else.

      Delete
    11. So lame, gramps. I was so looking forward to learning from you about T_2 vs. T_2^*, squeezed states of light, and magic angles in spin echo. I guess that won't happen.

      Enjoy your day! Hope the nurse is good looking.

      Hoo

      Delete
    12. Adm. G Boggs, Glenbeckistan NavyMarch 13, 2014 at 5:25 PM

      I see Trollistan University is back online.

      Hoots, if I need to know anything about any of the topics you Googled, I'll visit those same Wikipedia sites from which you copy and paste. That's not actually a "skill", you know. Except maybe at Trollistan University. Besides, I hardly want to get my information second hand filtered through your Lens of Illiteracy.


      Delete
    13. Go ahead, make my day, gramps. Find out on Wikipedia what the phase-matching conditions are in the generation of the second harmonic in a KDP crystal. Also find out what's special about KDP. Report back.

      Hoo

      Delete
  5. And needless to say, Egnor's rants against science are caused to a large degree by his refusal to accept what science tells us: that we share ancestry with apes and other mammals. "I ain't come from no monkey" is what it boils down to.

    Hoo

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  6. Let's mention a few more useful things that came from physicists.

    The transistor. Fiber optics. Computer hard drives. Superconductors. Atomic clocks. X rays.

    Hoo

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    Replies
    1. I have no problem directing funding to physicists who are doing good work.

      Useful things that have come from evolutionary biologists, evolutionary psychologists, and climate scientists?

      Do you equate your work with theirs?

      Delete
    2. Few useful things* came from research on general relativity. Nonetheless, I fully support research in that area of physics. Same goes to evolutionary biology. It goes to the fundamentals of biology, so it's important.

      And climate science? It's highly important. If the world is warming, we ought to know that.

      *The GPS has to take it into account to work correctly, but that's about it.

      Hoo

      Delete
  7. "Strip their funding. Time to pull away the teat. Atheists can find something else to suck on."

    And, considereing their current socio-political enthusiasm, that problem may already be solved. *gasp*

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  8. Larry Moran has a typically nasty blog post…..

    If you read it and the comments you’ll see it only gets nasty when Egnor shows up.

    -KW

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    Replies
    1. "Nasty" is as nasty does.

      I disagree with censors on a public blog on which I allow free commentary.

      Do I sue people to force silence?

      I hate censors.

      Delete
    2. You hate a lot of things. It’s perhaps your most defining characteristic. I sincerely feel sorry for you.

      -KW

      Delete
  9. LOL, you hate censors but you want to censor scientists, because you hate them. Does it get any better than this? Please don't stop being a poster boy for the hatred of your religion of love. As someone at Sandwalk has written, you are a psychotic parasite.

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    1. Adm. G Boggs, Glenbeckistan NavyMarch 13, 2014 at 5:28 PM

      Give me money. Otherwise, you're "censoring" me?

      Loon.

      Delete
  10. Whenever I fall to intemperate outbursts (excepting when watching football games, obviously) or comments; I always regret it.
    Not that I regret being angry.
    Instead, I know I've inched a little closer to 'them'. My lose but not their gain.
    I find being 'actually correct as a matter of fact' is irrelevant.

    I look forward to tomorrow's post.


    J. Richardson

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  11. Egnor is angry that his brand of superstition is losing its privileges. Boohoohoo. Better get used to it.

    And the incompetence and fraud seem to infest particular kinds of science.

    Yes, especially your kind of "science". The magnitude of fraud in medical "research" dwarfs that in all other fields combined.

    ReplyDelete