Wow. Just wow. You need to watch this to — ahem! — believe it. This guy, Steven Fielding, an Australian Parliamentarian, dodges, ducks, dips, dives and dodges so well he could be an American politician!
Did you notice anything about what he said? Like, how he never answered the actual question? I do have to wonder about his exact reasons for dodging Richard Dawkins’ questions about the age of the Earth. It’s almost as if he’s embarrassed by his own beliefs, knowing how old-fashioned, provincial, and downright wrong they must sound.
Tip o’ the Mintie to Michael Rosch.
May 4th, 2010 at 9:49 am
What does a politician beholden to the insanity of his donors look like?
Steven Fielding.
I almost feel sorry for the chirpy, little gnat. He’s trying so hard to not upset the people who put him in office, but yet he clearly sees the silliness of their irrational beliefs.
May 4th, 2010 at 9:56 am
This guy is an absolute moron. This video shows exactly what he’s like, skirting around the issues and never answering questions.
He disputes global warming as a man made phenomenon (with flimsy “evidence” to support his bollocks), he supports internet filters (more freedom being eroded away), and he doesn’t believe in same sex marriage.
The ‘Family First’ party is definitely the nutjob party in this country. Trying to bring back Christian ethics to everyone.
I’m starting to think that it’s a prerequisite to be an idiot to get into politics in Australia!
May 4th, 2010 at 9:57 am
Phil Plait:
British politicians are just as bad if not worse!
P.S. The Scottish comedian Billy Connolly is right when he stated that those who seek to become politicians should be automatically disqualified from becoming politicians.
May 4th, 2010 at 10:00 am
Maybe he could be on the Australian version of “The View”.
May 4th, 2010 at 10:02 am
Except to the question “How can I send you money?”, it has been my experience that no politician anywhere can give a straight answer.
May 4th, 2010 at 10:06 am
Yes, this is the leader of “Family First” (the christian party), we are ashamed of them and its also disappointing that they hold as much power as they do.
for someone else look up Tony Abbott, the leader of our opposition party after the previous one left because his party is full of global warming denialists that block any progress on the environment (well any progress at all)
and as you can hear not many people agree with him or approve of his slimy ways (from the audience reaction). I facepalmed when I watched this the first time.
May 4th, 2010 at 10:18 am
Look I’m a young earth creationist. The guy was clearly not trying to tell his beliefs and isn’t answering a straight question. I hate this about all politicians. Dude tell me what you believe even if you think it hurts your chances for election. I’d rather have an honest evolutionist then a creationist that isn’t willing to say what they believe.
May 4th, 2010 at 10:23 am
Ivan3man at large, thanks for the quote. Billy Connoly FTW, as usual, although I read virtually the same sentence in an Arthur C. Clarke book a few decades ago. Still waiting to see it put into action…
May 4th, 2010 at 10:23 am
Oh.my.SCIENCE!
How.very.FRUSTRATING!!
PLEASE JUST ANSWER THE QUESTION!!!
May 4th, 2010 at 10:28 am
Comment deleted – & put in again with the typo in my username corrected. Sorry.
May 4th, 2010 at 10:30 am
Is it just me or does Prof. Dawkins look like he’s within a few seconds of banging his head against the table throughout this clip?
I mean, I know I was. o.0
May 4th, 2010 at 10:36 am
Well Fielding did say that “science will discover more & more” & he did turn to Richard Dawkins as an expert.
I definitely don’t agree with Fielding on Creationism & I certainly wouldn’t vote for him or his party – and in fairness every nation has its political nutters & politicans are the same around the world – but I do think he has a point on the Anthropogenic Global Warming issue which Fielding has carefully researched from all angles.
Fielding has called for a Royal Commission post-climategate into the validity or otherwise of the “science” of “climate change” / “Global Warming” / whatever else they’re going to call their Scare now. This is something I think should have universal support from both sides Alarmists and Skeptics, Labour & Liberal, scientists and public & everyone.
After all, if the science is suppsoedly so good and legit *why* do the Alarmists seem so scared of public open enquiries? What have they fgot toworryabout enqiuires by Royal Commission in Oz or Inhofe in the US and what need totheyhave to warp peer review, delte thedtaa and hide the decline if what the AGW belivers say is correct?
BTW. A recent poll (in The Australian newspaper & TVnews) found the Australian people generally do NOT believe in or support the faith of Anthropogenic Global Warming which now has only 46% support vs 54% against.
Also the Rudd government has now itself joined the ranks of us Climate Skeptics by very recently abandoning its own ETS scheme – correctly described as “a Great Big Tax” by Tony Abbott the leader of the opposition who in another recent newspoll has now got more support than the ALP Rudd government.
Tony Abbott became leader of the opposition when Malcolm Turnbull – an AGW zealot – failed miserably in his quest to get his Liberal party to adopt the Rudd govts ETS policy. Since winning the party leadership, Tony Abbott has succeeded in turning his party’s fortunes around (they were very unpopular under Turnbull whose personal satisfaction levels were exceedingly low) and they are now in a winning electoral position for the first time since the Rudd government was voted in at the last election. Averdict many Aussies are now regretting and it maywell turn out that the Rudd government is a one-term aberration.
Plus Australians now have a Climate Skeptics party to vote for in the Senate – which started in the South Aussie election earlier this year.
See : http://www.climatesceptics.com.au/index.html for more incl. some real info. from the skeptical side.
I think (& hope) the tide is increasingly turning against the Alarmists politically as well as climatically.
May 4th, 2010 at 10:47 am
How the hell can a politician from AUSTRALIA believe that the world is less than 10,000 years old? There’s evidence that aborigines have been there for over 40,000 years. How surprised they must have been to see the entire universe created 30,000 years after they got there.
May 4th, 2010 at 10:52 am
@Iason above, I completely agree. You would think Australians of all people would know humans have been around for more than 10,000 years.
May 4th, 2010 at 10:54 am
On an American TV show he’d be getting applause instead of laughter.
May 4th, 2010 at 10:54 am
Wow, climatesceptics.com.au is still referencing the great global warming swindle?!?!? That all by itself should dissipate any serious consideration they might have once had.
Iason,
samein france where there are cave paintings that are about 30k years old, I wonder how those folks painted that before the universe existed.
May 4th, 2010 at 10:56 am
Typo correction that’s meant to read :
Let’s hold the enquiries – in Oz and the USA and everywhere else!
Let’s have all the information, hear equally from both sides and have all the details out in public in the open and assessed by everyone not just a small tightly restricted club of political activists pretending to be objective dispassionate “scientists” then see what happens.
Let’s do that before we shoot our economies and our chances of future prosperity in the foot or in the head & thereby gift the next few centuries of global dominance to China and others not so gullible and foolish as the Western Green lobby.
Why not? What possible reason is there for NOT holding these inquires and finding out for sure what the real truth is? What is the Alarmist side so afraid of Joe or Jilleveryman discovering?
Fielding is right on that issue if nothing else.(As is Sen. Inhofe in the US.)
*IF* climate change /AGW is real (& I don’t think it is) & *IF* it turns out, on the whole, to be a bad thing and a real problem (& I don’t think it will) then the answer surely lies in adapting toit like we have for past climate changes and/or using scientific and technological measures not imposing taxes and laws.
We know for a fact that legislating morality – whether Puritan extremist, Sharia Muslim or Watermelon Green morality – just never works and never will.
(Exhibit A : The US Prohibition against alcohol.)
Human nature alone rules out any action on AGW other than intelligent scientific measures (geoengineering I think its called) from working. The Copenhagen summits failure is proof of that.
May 4th, 2010 at 11:35 am
Wow, you guys are jerks. I personally believe in evolution (I believe evolution is the science that explains God’s will), I also believe the Earth is millions of years old… but is it really necessary to bash this guy like this? What problem do you people have with him? He expressed his views and said you are entitled to his own… does this freedom of belief and speech SCARE you?
May 4th, 2010 at 11:54 am
@PP – but don’t we legislate morality on a daily basis with prohibitions on murder, stealing, etc (we call them laws)?
May 4th, 2010 at 12:13 pm
He said he doesn’t want to “force people into one way or another” and that he isn’t trying to “force that issue onto anyone” but isn’t forcing compliance with issues precisely what he does in the legislature? Are not the laws he helps to enact backed by deadly force?
Not only is he a witless buffoon, but highly disingenuous as well.
May 4th, 2010 at 12:33 pm
Here is the quote that worried me the most:
“I believe in creationism, I think, the prime minister does as well.”
Reminds me of this quote from Monty Pythons’ sketch “Bruces”:
Second Bruce: That’s a strange expression, Bruce.
First Bruce: Well Bruce, I heard the Prime Minister use it.
May 4th, 2010 at 12:42 pm
Hello,
>jillianswift Says:
>Is it just me or does Prof. Dawkins look like he’s within a few seconds of banging his head >against the table throughout this clip?
>I mean, I know I was. o.0
I had the impression as he would prefer to bang the politician’s head against the table.
I mean, I would have preferred it ….
^_^
May 4th, 2010 at 12:47 pm
It bears repeating that everyone, including a smarmy politician, is entitled to his own opinions, as Fielding is so quick and spineless to point out. But we are not entitled to our own facts.
Evolution has occurred. Humans and apes evolved from a common ancestor. The Earth is several billion years old. These are facts, not opinions. They are not in dispute. They are not up for debate. They are not decided by poll. Fielding can backtrack all he likes about “some people believe” this or that, but if he can’t recognize very basic facts, he is an utterly useless moron, and he shouldn’t come anywhere near a voting booth, let alone a legislative body.
May 4th, 2010 at 1:04 pm
Pluto says:
“Let’s have all the information, hear equally from both sides and have all the details out in public in the open and assessed by everyone not just a small tightly restricted club of political activists pretending to be objective dispassionate “scientists” then see what happens.”
What information do you think is missing? I think you mean “Someone should spoon feed me because I am too lazy to go an actually look up the claims from climate scientists on my own”. Could you point to exactly which claim is not backed up by public sources?
It doesnt matter what a pol of joe schmoes says. In america 65% of the people don’t think evolution exists or if it does its a guided process. Shall we poll muslim countries to see if they think hindu’s are right? The point is that a small percentage of the populaton actually bothers to go and check the claims of the scientists, and when they do, as you should, you will see that the case for man made global warming is very strong.
I know you have not because you linked to a site that relies on The Great Global Warming Swindle as a reference for why AGw is false. This movie, has been thoroughly ripped apart, and the distortions have been blatantly exposed. And yet, for the uninformed they keep it there as if it has some sort of relelvance at all.
You can sucessfully legislate morality, what matters is whether you should or not and for each topic that is up for debate. Smoking rates have plummeted since it has been legislated and taxed and funding has gone towards education about it. Bottles are recycled at a higher rate when bottle bills are enacted. Cap and trade has successfully been implemented for SO2 emissions in the US for decades. Acid rain and the ozone hole have both been measurably reduced since the implementation of the emmissions laws without any measurable effect on the economic growth we experienced in the 90 and mid 2000′s and are certainly not to blame for the recent crash.
So give us a break.
May 4th, 2010 at 1:21 pm
@Todd J
It’s sounds to me like our freedom to make fun of him scares you.
May 4th, 2010 at 1:29 pm
Yes, because science is a belief! *rolls eyes* You don’t have the right to your own facts, you don’t have the right to your own facts, you don’t have the right to your own facts. Well, guess I could say it over and over and over and they wouldn’t get it. Oh well. o.o
May 4th, 2010 at 2:22 pm
I love the Dawkins response there – sit back, let the guy just say what he wants to say.
Dawkins is often accused of being ‘strident’ and aggressive. He never, ever is. He asks a simple question, and sits back and lets the other guy lose the argument just be stating his position.
Do you know what’s great about that? The audience. The audience give the guy’s answer a *laugh track*.
May 4th, 2010 at 2:33 pm
Pluto,
Please do try to stay on topic and save the climate change comments for threads on climate change.
May 4th, 2010 at 2:50 pm
@Carey #23
What he said. Taking a stance that puts you against basic facts is simply not on. That implies that when a policy needs to be implemented that has a firm basis in science, and that science happens to go against your religion (as a lot of science does), then you will be voting *against the public interest*.
What part of having politicians in office that will vote against the public interest *is a very bad thing* do people not understand? It’s that simple.
May 4th, 2010 at 3:21 pm
The very definition of willful ignorance.
May 4th, 2010 at 3:49 pm
@ Todd:
Try BILLIONS!….not millions….and I don’t care what you believe…but I do care when someone else’s differing belief causes them to bully, suppress, and persecute others or when the holders of those beliefs attempt to promote them in education, law, GOVERNMENT, employment, or health.
May 4th, 2010 at 4:35 pm
Oh that episode of Q&A was painful to watch. The host is a respected science journalist (and atheist) and they had Richard Dawkins on there so my husband and I were very keen to watch it. But the rest of the panel on that show were three religious politicians that didn’t want to admit to being religious in front of Richard Dawkins and an Australian of the year who wanted to talk about boat refugees. It wasn’t the best Q&A episode I’ve seen.. Also check out Julie Bishop’s Death Stare that came out of the same episode of Q&A. There was a facebook group too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBgqHJSyovk
Todd J, I think the point was that Fielding didn’t express ANY views.. He just wormed his way around them.. He had the oppurtunity for free speech and he chose not to take it.
May 4th, 2010 at 5:45 pm
The Earth, the Sun, and solar system is roughly 4.5 bilion years old. The Earth less than 10,000 years old??…that’s like saying the distance from New York to San Francisco is 28 feet.
The creationists have no evidence whatsoever, not a scrap, just sheer blind belief. Science has the evidence and answers, and is making new discoveries all the time. The human race really needs to grow out of this rubbish and get with the real world, and to be honest it really does scare me when I see people in power or people who want to be in power, spouting primitive superstition.
..but yes Fielding definitely did look positively embarrassed !!
May 4th, 2010 at 5:55 pm
Yep – he’s one of our boys! Though fundamentalist beliefs are VERY uncommon among the general Australian populace, we somehow happen to get these guys sitting in the senate every now and then. It is because they actively play down and hush up their fundamentalism, and they get the more mainstream Christian vote based on their ‘family values’ line. As Australian voters are fairly evenly divided between voting for the two major parties, these minority parties often find themselves with the balance of power in the senate. This can be good when the government is trying to swindle us – they generally keep them in check then, but more often than not it is bad.
Still – he’s better than most of our politicians – at least he’s simply misguided. Most of our politicians are outright crooks who’d torpedo your life and the country for a shot in the paper.
May 4th, 2010 at 6:18 pm
The election of Senator Fielding is entirely the fault of the Labor Party. Voting in Australia is compulsory. Senate voting allows you to vote for a party instead of a particular candidate. This means the party gets to decide how your vote is distributed. The two most dominate parties get the majority of the votes. This translates to 2-3 Senators each (12 Senators per State, but only 6 are up for election each term). The remaining votes are distributed according to the party’s wishes. In the 2004 election, the Labor Party preferenced Family First ahead of all the sensible minor parties, and Fielding was elected with less than 2% of the primary vote. He’s been a thorn in the Labor Party’s side ever since, so it’s unlikely to happen again. His term is also up at the election this year, and there is no chance he will be re-elected.
Senator Fielding is known for stupid stunts and lack of intelligence. Whenever he has said incredibly stupid things he has blamed a learning disability he had as a child. It will be very good to see the end of him after the next election.
May 4th, 2010 at 7:56 pm
Fielding belongs to the “Family First” party – and as you may expect it is an anti-abortion anti-immigration anti-homosexual anti-science party.
May 4th, 2010 at 8:55 pm
It’s PC gone mad!
May 4th, 2010 at 9:04 pm
Silver described the background well.
The man is an embarrassment to us aussies.
(Puts paper bag over head in shame).
The audience reacted well, though.
May 4th, 2010 at 10:18 pm
Thanks for the shout-out, Phil!
I’m also reminded of this old clip from CNN where another creationist couldn’t answer that question:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40Q8p3GqPqQ&feature=player_embedded
May 4th, 2010 at 10:38 pm
As Silver mentioned Stephen Fielding was elected with less than 2% of the vote. If the figures I read a correct he only received 2500 first preference votes. The party as a whole only received about 56000 votes (the 2% number). Most of the time our preferential voting system works quite well. Sometimes it will throw up a doozy like this little quirk.
May 5th, 2010 at 12:55 am
If that makes you mad I wouldn’t watch the rest of the episode, I was very surprised that Dawkins didn’t lose it and start kicking heads in.
Conversely check out the episode with Christopher Hitchens; he savages everyone on the panel and then starts on the audience.
Steve Fielding is a man who is incapable of any thought and it is my hope that he is dumped from parliament in the coming election. The problem in Australia is out two largest political parties have ties to religious organisations and aren’t afraid to cater to them.
May 5th, 2010 at 2:27 am
Silver, yeah – this man, thankfully, does NOT represent the views of the majority of Australians! Even the religious population is a bit less nuts than Family First – they really are a congregation of fruitcakes. (I’d use harsher words, but I’m trying to stay within the guidelines.)
It’s sort of unbelievable. He’s from AUSTRALIA. We have the oldest rock grains in the world – 4.35 Ga (billion years) for zircon crystals in the Pilbara. Our Indigenous population is about four times as old as he believes the Earth is. I have six fossils sitting in my room, a metre or two away from me, that are many times older than that! (Two fish fossils from the Green River Formation (Eocene), three Cretacious ammonites (one pyritised, it’s very pretty), and a Cambrian trilobite – give or take, about five hundred million years old.) I’ve held a piece of the Acasta Gneiss in my hand. There’s such thing as, you know, radiometric dating. Isotopic evidence. FOSSILS. The evidence that the Earth is old is ALL OVER – but he willingly chooses to ignore that.
Hey, America? D’you want to take this nutter off our hands?
May 5th, 2010 at 3:02 am
Say, WTF?
O_O
May 5th, 2010 at 7:26 am
@ Iason Ouabache
How the hell can a politician from AUSTRALIA believe that the world is less than 10,000 years old? There’s evidence that aborigines have been there for over 40,000 years. How surprised they must have been to see the entire universe created 30,000 years after they got there.
Hmmm … as far as a lot of people on the right are concerned, the universe came into being for the Aboriginal people approximately 220 years ago.
May 5th, 2010 at 8:04 am
@Todd Jay:
The problem with having someone like this in government is this: In order to maintain his belief, he needs to have the capacity, or a tendency to, irrational thought processes, deceptive rationalisation and straight-out actively illogical thinking.
Now, people like that are a real problem at the best of times. What damage could one of them do in a position of real power?
Now he says the PM is one too? Well, it could be just the sort of behaviour I’m talking about coming out, or it might be true. I hope it’s the first one, or it’s back to the Greens for me. Where’s Don Chipp when you really need him?
May 5th, 2010 at 9:42 am
Yep, we’ve got those nutjobs, one of whom sits in the middle of our Senate and gets a great deal of legislation modified to fit his party’s policies so that they’ll let it through.
The Senate here is small (76 Senators), they almost always vote in party blocs, and the Government doesn’t have majority at the moment (it’s 37 Opposition, 32 Government, 5 Green, one Independent, and one Steve Fielding). So someone’s always wooing him, because if they don’t have him or Xenophon *and* all the Greens on side, legislation doesn’t get through. You can imagine how this affects his already overblown sense of importance.
We’ve other weirdos too. If you’ve not had your daily angry yet, check out Corey Bernardi’s anti-Earth-hour effort, “Human Achievement Hour” -I don’t want to hotlink it, but it’s http://www dot conservative.org.au/human-achievement-hour.html.
May 5th, 2010 at 10:49 am
Freddo:
Actually, that’s kind of an interesting twist on Schrödinger’s cat: Did the Aborigines exist prior to the British prison ships arriving?
Of course it’s total nonsense, but still…
Oh, and Todd J? Lighten up, Frances. He sounded like a twit, we called him on it, get over it.
May 5th, 2010 at 11:14 am
Oh, as soon as I saw the ‘Family First’ line I rolled my eyes. Pretty much the Aussie version of the Bible belt in politics. Sigh… I’m so glad there are very few of these ‘politicians’ in government, because most people here realise how ridiculous their views are. (Ah Family First… it’s just another One Nation)
I enjoy watching Dawkins’ expression as the questions get ducked.
@Capital Dan, #1
I suspect it’s the other way around: that he does believe in YEC, since the people voting for him are a small minority of Christians; but that he realises he’s only going to piss off the majority of people (some of whom are sitting in front of him) who know it’s nonsense. We have a very good education system in Australia (luckily). I suspect it would also be intimidating to be sitting right next to Dawkins and not want to be too honest on live TV (if you’re unaware, the show is filmed live). Surprisingly, most politicians who appear on this live show are not as duck-and-weave as this guy was.
@ Todd J, #18,
It might interest you to know that in Australia, there is NO constitutional right of free speech. Although judges will usually side with free speech, the fact is that it is NOT a right as given by our legislation. He has no right to free speech in our country. Not to mention the fact that he is being laughed at – by the audience of the show itself yet – because most Australians are smart enough to understand how science works. It’s not that we’re afraid of him saying it: it’s that we disagree with what he’s saying. (Sadly, our libel laws are very similar to the Brits… so we also have less of a right to laugh at him for his beliefs.)
May 6th, 2010 at 4:59 am
It’s unfortunate that in the public arena this discussion has polarized into extremes. I’d love to see rational discussion on the gray areas. I firmly have my feet planted in the world of science and the pursuit of truth, while my head is in the blue skies of all possibilities. As an aside, for a large portion of my life i frequently had extra-bodily experiences. They spontaneously happened after i willed them to happen. It’s easy to dismiss them as a product of slightly altered brain function. As a student of science i studied the experiences with careful observation, i can attest of how “real” the experience is. Even with that wealth of observation, i couldn’t conclude either way to the nature of the experience. However there is one curious episode, i “visited” an extremely vivid place. The next day i spoke of my experience to a friend, she pointed me to a website on Judaic Mysticism. This website spoke of the “Tree of Life” and described exactly in detail the place i had “visited” the day before, Malkuth. It also described who i might find there, the very person it described, i crossed paths with. So my friends, in conclusion, a certain over quoted Shakespearean phrase springs to mind, which i wont quote here.
May 6th, 2010 at 7:00 am
I think those who say Fielding is an idiot or a moron are off course. He is intelligent enough to have a degree in electronic engineering and an MBA. Which makes his views all the more mystifying. He’s not alone, of course – there are many highly educated people (even with science, medicine or engineering backgrounds) who believe the Earth was created on a Tuesday in 4050BC.
They believe this, of course, because it was written in the bible.
- But can can they know the bible is true – because it’s the word of God!
- Yes, but how can you know it’s the word of God? – Because it says so in the bible!
May 6th, 2010 at 10:18 pm
He must be one of yours America, do you want him back?
As for him researching climate change, he didn’t, he did what all those like him do and obtained his information from those who already agree with his point of view. Stupidity it would appear just like misery, loves company. What i can’t understand is where all of these morons are coming from. Suddenly they seem to be breeding in plague proportions, and threatening to consume all common sense in the world.
May 7th, 2010 at 4:42 am
Phil, why do you post a video labelling the guy “idiotic”? You’ve broken your “no jerk” rule.
Don’t do it again, as it shows the irrational bias and tendency to ad hominem of you so called “scientists”.
I mean come on, give the guy a break. He was civil, even if he dodged a few questions. So why post something calling him an idiot?
May 7th, 2010 at 4:25 pm
@50: I am going to get all nerdishly pedantic and point out that in fact the Bible certainly doesn’t set a date such as a ‘Tuesday in 4,050 BC’ for the Creation.
If memory serves, an Irish (English?) bishop calculated that God began the work at some gentlemanly hour (9:00 AM) one fine day around that year (give or take a year or five).
Not sure how he arrived at that calculation (especially a specific time!). It probably involved some sort of horse-puckey number “crunching”. But the Bible itself certainly doesn’t mention any specific days or years – how could it? The earliest books are, to my knowledge, transcribed from oral histories.
You are correct, however, that an obstinately circular reasoning is used to come to the YEC conclusion and I only wish I could say it was bizarre that people continue to accept it.
May 8th, 2010 at 8:44 am
Plutionium being from Pluto Says:
“BTW. A recent poll (in The Australian newspaper & TVnews) found the Australian people generally do NOT believe in or support the faith of Anthropogenic Global Warming which now has only 46% support vs 54% against.”
My dear boy, since when did the support or belief of the public mean anything with respect to that scientific theory being correct or not?
May 8th, 2010 at 8:56 am
Plutonium being from Pluto Says:
“Let’s have all the information, hear equally from both sides and have all the details out in public in the open and assessed by everyone not just a small tightly restricted club of political activists pretending to be objective dispassionate “scientists” then see what happens. ”
My dear boy, you know the scientists in question quite closely do you? I thought not. The ad hominems you foist upon them are ungentlemanly to say the least. You should be ashamed of yourself . Slandering someone, who you do not know, because they do not agree with your non scientific lack of understanding is a blackguardish unspiffing thing to do! And yet, no doubt you label yourself a “skeptic”. You, sir, need a lesson, or eight, in manners.
May 16th, 2010 at 9:21 pm
it’s common in Australia for people to be laughed at when they talk about their beliefs, his response was very typical of that attitude of trying to be diplomatic about his beliefs and not embarrass himself… maybe the Americans should adopt the same attitude we have to religion down here and maybe *your* politicians will refrain from stating their stupidity until they are put on the spot as well, after all, your beliefs *are* supposed to *private* things, well that’s what the bible says, apparently… ps. say hi to Sarah Palin for me