“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.

“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?

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.

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!

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.)

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.