Old god mythologies caste gods as enhanced humans with big egos and even bigger,,,reproductive organs. They were no more an accurate manifestation of god than would be Angelina Jolie playing the goddess Athena.

My point, Gary, is that if you are going to make up a super being, based upon no evidence whatsoever for such a being’s existence, then one made-up god is just as good as any other. Regardless of whether you believe in one or not, it is impossible to say one version is “no more accurate” than any other….since there is no evidence for either.

Personally, I’d take the Greeks’ pantheon over anything in the grumpy ol’ Middle East. At least the Greeks knew how to throw a good party.

Old god mythologies caste gods as enhanced humans with big egos and even bigger,,,reproductive organs. They were no more an accurate manifestation of god than would be Angelina Jolie playing the goddess Athena.(Angie, there’s a great potential role for you).

Thor, Zues, Heracles,,,all humans with a bit of something extra, like a really big hammer(another metaphor???).

IF there is a real, god intelligence in this universe, I would hope it had much bigger concerns than mucking around with human inadequacies.

,,,and I expect I will never know the answer to that for certain however, I really don’t give a damn about god, or gods. I have all I can do, dealing with the very human inadequacy of small brains and inaccurate apprehension of facts. The best thing to happen in this regard to humans of the past 100,000 years was the discovery of the scientific method.

Use it or lose it.

GAry 7

Putting the welfare of the immediate avian population ahead of the welfare of those in Kampala dying of malaria is sickening

The problem with that statement lies in the fact that the avian population does not exist in isolation. It’s just one link in an incredibly complicated web. Ditto with the wetlands. No wetlands, no fish and amphibians. No fish and amphibians, no small mammals that prey on them. No small mammals, no big mammals…the kind that people eat. Lose one link, you run the risk of unraveling the whole thing.

Mosquito nets have been proven to be incredibly effective in battling malaria. And unless you dump one in the swamp, they have zero impact on the environment.

I’m very glad to hear about your work for DDT. I think that malaria is often overshadowed by AIDS, even though in many areas is often a larger killer.

I recently spent some time working in Uganda, and in Kampala malaria is the number one cause of death (beating AIDS hands down, despite sex workers having an infection rate of 50%). What was tragically ironic was that the health ministry was having a big crackdown on malaria, providing mosquito nets and malaria advice for free, but at the same time the environmental ministry was preventing the health ministry from draining the wetlands that surround the city. This ensured the city remained a perfect habitat for mosquitoes, and no matter what the health ministry does, millions of Ugandas will continue to die needless deaths due to a preventable disease.

I was furious when I came across groups that vehemently opposed DDT spraying in this situation. Putting the welfare of the immediate avian population ahead of the welfare of those in Kampala dying of malaria is sickening (while I was there, malaria was responsible for 13% of all deaths, with AIDS at 11%).

When mosquitoes do not present a deadly risk, then the benefits from spraying a smaller, and so I can understand debate in this situation. But when its life and death on the line, there is no gray area.

Phil, you’re beacon of reason and common sense in the vaccination debate, and if you ever need another cause that is in need of a little reason and common sense, this is one.

A real God would do its best to never be seen.

Or, to quote “God” from Futurama, “When you do things right, people won’t be sure you’ve done anything at all.”

A real God would do its best to never be seen.

That would be entirely up to the god, wouldn’t it? Thor seemed to have a fairly well developed need for visibility, and don’t get started on Zeus, who rather enjoyed getting visible with the young lasses (and the occasional lad).

” But mingling science and religion will remain delusional until we get to the point where we understand enough about consciousness, beliefs, and thought to understand how religion works in human minds.”

Yeah! What he said!

One might point out the obsessive quality of religion. Sin is one of the biggest obsessions we have. We obsess over whether we’re “good” people(a cultural imperative). Religion makes that propensity so much worse by focusing our attention on something that should be barely noticeable.

Is there a God?

If it’s not forbidden, it appears it will be mandatory but that doesn’t mean we’ll ever KNOW about it. A real God would do its best to never be seen. Who (at the intellectual level of a god) would want the worship of a bunch of insects(comparatively speaking)?

,,,besides, it’s so interesting to see how the freedom to choose will affect individual development(the “God as experimenter” argument).

People have the right to choose,,,but then they must experience the consequences of those choices and one of those should be jail time for making choices that kill people,( even if that is an inadvertent result).

Gary 7

So someone did follow your advice about ingesting a large amount of DDT and suffered no harm.

That someone was obviously not an egg-laying avian.

There was a woman in California who tried to win a Wii on a radio show by seeing how much water she could drink without going to the bathroom. She died from drinking too much water too quickly. Read again: shefatally overdosed on *water*.

I use fertilizer on my lawn. Makes it nice and green and healthy. I wouldn’t drink a quart of that, either. Your response to Jack makes zero sense, and is a laughable strawman. So we can only use things in this world that we can safely drink a quart of?

Where did I supposedly say they were? The story is in a South African outlet. I said so. The word “neighboring” might also be a clue that I did not consider this the same country in which I described the cult as operating.

The symbol ‘ != ‘ means ‘not equal to’; therefore, EmTee was saying that Zimbabwe was not the same as South Africa.

The operator “!=” means “is not equal to”. EmTee was saying that Zimbabwe and South Africa are *not* the same.

If praying works, this should be enough. Relying upon medical treatments AND praying is your admission that praying does not work more reliably than random chance.

You’re forgetting how shy gods are: the gods of all religions are always trying to hide – this is the only thing they do consistently – and they can’t do anything obvious, such as healing whenever they’re asked, because it would spoil their hard-earned air of mystique.

” Zimbabwe != South Africa…”

If you are trying to say that Zimbabwe and South Africa are the same country, you are factually wrong, nor is Zimbabwe part of South Africa either politically or geographically. Check the map.

You mean like it should be up to the parents if the kids get food or shoes? I fail to see how depriving kids a of life saving medical intervention and letting them die is any different from depriving them of food or water and letting them die.

@Ian
If it’s “thy will be done” doesn’t that mean that god will do what he wants regardless of whether you pray or not?’

“As a Catholic I would rely upon appropriate medical treatments and invite people for pray for me”
If praying works, this should be enough. Relying upon medical treatments AND praying is your admission that praying does not work more reliably than random chance. “Thy will” is sure great.

Other notes:
- prayers != miracles (but it is minior nitpicking – both are equally worthless)
- “investigated”? I do not think it means what you think it means.

I did not say DDT was a panacea. What I did say was the ill advised ban on DDT resulted in the death of millions of children who died of malaria who otherwise would not have died.

Your suggestion I drink a quart of concentrated DDT is so typical a response of someone without an argument. You disagree with me, so you wish me harm simply because I’m suggesting a viewpoint different than yours. A rational approach would be to ask why I believe what I believe.

In any event, many safe treatments for disease, at the proper dosage, are quite dangerous in large quantities. For example, what do you think would be the result of administering say, a thousand dosages of the vaccination being discussed on this thread to a child in one day? How about 10,000 aspirins in one day?

It is rather ironic you would suggest the ingestion of an immoderate amount of DDT. From http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/articles/Fall02/Mosquitoes.html:

As a result of such studies, I felt that it was safe for me to ingest DDT. I was delivering addresses to various audiences almost every week. I carried a commercial box of DDT onto the stage, dug out a tablespoon of DDT (about 12 mgs), swallowed it, and washed it down with water before beginning my talk about DDT’s lack of toxicity to vertebrate animals. Esquire magazine, in September 1971, pictured me ingesting a tablespoon of DDT. The text explained that I had “eaten two-hundred times the normal human intake of DDT, to show it’s not as bad as people think.”

So someone did follow your advice about ingesting a large amount of DDT and suffered no harm.

You can examine other details about the compelling evidence for the argument DDT is completely harmless to vertebrates in the link above.

It is also harmless to birds.

From http://dwb4.unl.edu/Chem/CHEM869E/CHEM869ELinks/www.altgreen.com.au/Chemicals/ddt.html:

In actuality, however, declines in bird populations either had occurred before DDT was present or had occured years after DDT’s use. A comparison of the annual Audubon Christmas Bird Counts between 1941 (pre-DDT) and 1960 (after DDT’s use had waned) reveals that at least 26 different kinds of birds became more numerous during those decades, the period of greatest DDT usage. The Audubon counts document an overall increase in birds seen per observer from 1941 to 1960, and statistical analyses of the Audubon data confirm the perceived increases. For example, only 197 bald eagles were documented in 194111; the number had increased to 891 in 1960.12

So why was DDT banned? Because, like you Doug Watts, the person making the decision did not bother informing himself about the facts.

From the second link above:

Two months later EPA head William Ruckelshaus—who had never attended a single day’s session in the seven months of EPA hearings, and who admittedly had not even read the transcript of the hearings— overturned Judge Sweeney’s decision. Ruckelshaus declared that DDT was a “potential human carcinogen” and banned it for virtually all uses.32

So we can thank William Ruckelshaus for the death of millions of people because of his very poor decision.

Doug, you are victim of decades of misinformation produced by the environmentalists. I don’t know you well enough to know if you willingly accepted the propaganda, or were a well meaning but poorly informed victim. In any event, I suggest you inform yourself about the facts.

To help you get started on your education regarding DDT, here are some other links:

The Lies of Rachel Carson

http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/articles/summ02/Carson.html

Bring Back DDT, and Science With It

http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/articles/summ02/DDT.html

And to all:

You do not have to be a religious person to have objections to forced vaccinations.

Some might object based on the notion parents are responsible for their children and the state should respect their right to make medical decisions for them. These should be informed medical decisions.

Others might object to vaccinations because they are ineffective or present a greater danger to their children than the disease they purport to prevent.

I personally believe the H1N1 vaccinations are ineffective and dangerous to anyone taking them, particularly to children. I have not taken any flu shots for that reason and would not permit them for my children.

I do not know if my granddaughters have had flu shots. That is a decision for my children to make for their children. I might disagree with those decisions, but it is their right to make those decisions.

None of us should suppose we have all the facts parents have regarding the treatment of their children. Perhaps this religious group felt the government was intruding in their lives, a good assumption considering that government in question. Perhaps their flight into their religion was an escape from an oppressive government.

Maybe they did make a mistake in believing prayer would protect their children.

But as any experienced parent knows, we all make mistakes in raising our children.

However your comment “It has been proven over and again that prayer does nothing to heal disease over the placebo effect” needs some clarification. First – how does the placebo effect work? Last time I looked into this, no-one knew. Second, this does not include the countless miracles documented by the Catholic Church and investigated by secular medical doctors.

As a Catholic I would rely upon appropriate medical treatments and invite people for pray for me – but the prayer is never selfish, it should always be done with a sense of ‘Thy will be done’, not ‘My will be done’. The purpose of prayer is not to get what you want, but what you need. I would suggest most ‘sects’ do not understand this.

Furthermore, again as a Catholic, I am encouraged by the fact that many of the great physicians were Catholic … Paré, Nelaton, Larney, Semmelweis, Carrigan, O’Dwyer, etc. Not to mention those that improved our quality of life though drugs or processes – Pasteur and Fleming for example.

The Catholic faith holds a high view of man’s vocation to science. Far from a begrudging acquiescence to the claims of science, Catholicism recognizes that man is called by God to engage on an endeavor of discovery about the world around him.

Off soap box now … and keep up the great work.