Of course I’m not accusing scientists of doing anything. I’m not even accusing you of doing anything. I’m simply quoting what you yourself said. Hell, I’m doing you a favor by making you aware of your misstep. Trust me, there are lurkers on here who are looking back at your previous posts for clues to your identity.

And I love how you use quote marks around “cures” and “health-related” and “guilty.” Here’s how I use quote marks: Your defense boils down to “everybody does it.”

You know, all of what you claim may be true – the wink-wink, non-nod unspoken agreement to fund research. The difference is you didn’t leave it unspoken. You mouthed off about it on the internet and that kind of thing comes back to bite people all the time. That’s your blind spot, that arrogance.

And you don’t even have to worry about me reporting you – you’ve probably made a ton of enemies over the years with that attitude. This is a public blog post, all it takes is for one person to follow one link. How many people do you know would love to have your job, your facilities, your funding?

That’s your problem, I want nothing to do with you.

But as far as just this blog goes, is we can happily disregard any of your opinions on science communication. Your distain for Mooney’s work is shredded by the hypocrisy of “framing” your research “dishonestly” in order to get NIH funding. It’s OK to do that but not improve science advocacy through science communication?

Pfft! You don’t even rise to the level of troll. And I wouldn’t insult the New Atheists by putting you in their camp.

I have always thought that when one uses “” to highlight a word, this is clear sign that its meaning is not to be taken literally… I may very well be wrong though, I am not an expert in the study of language…

The reasoning behind it does not change the nature of what it is, and thus matters little; it’s just an exercise in rationalization at that point. Unless you really want to go down the road that process doesn’t matter, only results? That kind of reasoning ends up with “might makes’ right”, both logical conclusions from your line of reasoning, but you might not like that – thus the need to actually do the work and take your thoughts all the way to their conclusions. You may not want to, though don’t blame us when we end up confused if you don’t feel it is important. I only ask that you be consistent in your thinking and don’t throw out contradictions between differing threads.

I see very little contradiction in my thought If it looks like there is a contradiction to you, it is the result of blog conversation being so fragmentary in its nature, and of people taking things out of context.

However, I have not time about the “that kind of reasoning leads to the “might makes right”" crap. If there is no objective morality, as all the evidence points to, then that’s the way the world is. Period. You have to follow the evidence, not see things the way you wish them to be. See below for more on that.

As I said, you are so far off base in what is going on in theology (as are most) I’m not even sure where to begin.

So can you enlighten us on what exactly is going on in theology right now other than desperate scrambling about how to keep it at least somewhat relevant?

First you have to do quite a bit of study in language and philosophy – both topics you find no use for. Though why you find the second of no use is quite surprising as all of our sciences did come out of one of the two branches of Philosophy (natural).

Can you please show me where I have said that philosophy is useless? Exactly the opposite, I have always stated that scientific education these days suffer very badly from science being disconnected from its natural philosophy roots, for a long list of reasons that there isn’t time and space to discuss here.

This is not to say that all of philosophy is meaningful, because a lot of it is utterly useless as it deals with nonexistent things.

It has only been in the very recent history of things that “moral” and “natural” philosophy split off into all the various “schools” that make up what we call modern education (science, politics, sociology and on and on). Thus the fact that it all got rather mixed together over the course of centuries of study and work shouldn’t be very surprising. In fact you can see the split (eventually leading to all the “soft” and “hard” disciplines) in the underlying question of all knowledge: “how do I truly know \ what is ultimately real”.
That doesn’t mean it did justice to either the hard sciences or the soft (social) sciences. Both suffered. You see the result of the mixing and feel one is pointless and misled the other, rather than seeing they were both sidetracked into dealing with things they weren’t designed to deal with. One has to do with the “objectivity” of things (science) and the other attempts to look at the “subjectivity” of things (social).

That’s a utterly false dichotomy that is only valid if the “subjectivity” of things (the social) is on equal level with the “objectivity” of things (natural world). It is not. You can only think that the study of the “social” is as important or informative as the study of the natural world if you suffer from what I call extremely ignorant anthropocentric arrogance. If you don’t suffer from that, and you claim that the “social” is still important., you have to study the “social” in ants, plants, bacteria, etc, on equal ground. Those are already very well covered by ecology and evolutionary biology though.

Science is great at giving us objectively reasoned answers, but does little to deal with the problem of subjectivity. The second problem, “subjectivity” can trace it’s complications all the way back at least as far as Socrates dialogs, in for example, “Lysis”, where every attempt to determine what a “friend” is ends in failure. Such “life” issues just do not work like a math problem, and for every rule you can likely find an exception even in your own life (something math doesn’t allow). Anytime the two concerns cross the result is bound to be confusion.

See above.

When you start treating “subjective” questions as an invitation to do objective reasoning you will end up in trouble as Socrates tried to show us all those centuries ago. Thus when you hear “God” and go looking for a thing you are already lost. Unfortunately it’s actually worse than that, religious language is a very specific type of speaking (why the study of language is mandatory for anyone wanting to make sense of any of it). I’m not going to get into a huge debate with you over it, I’m not interested in trying to teach a four+ year program to someone in a blog. I am only pointing out you know not what you speak about. I will leave you with a couple clues, take them or leave them…

“The religious dogmatist characteristically holds to philosophical viewpoints developed by empiricism or rationalism (without being circumspect about the consistency of the two). A usual manifestation of their dogmatism is in the philosophical notion that words stand for objective meanings. Language is referential or representational. The notion of the literal interpretation of the Bible requires this philosophical position.”

Once again, I have no time for that crap. Especially from people who claim that it is important to examine the history behind ideas. The history here is very clear. A bunch of ignorant goat herders wrote down their creation and historical myths (and they did in quite incoherent form), it then by historical accident happened to have an enormous influence on the way otherwise smart, but not much better informed people thought over the centuries. The same happened dozens and hundreds of other times in other parts of the world, it is just that those just as uninformed and ignorant people who produced different sets of incompetent creation myths didn’t end up ruling over the whole world.

How one can claim both that “One has to be aware of the intellectual history” and “You shouldn’t take the Bible literally” is beyond me. It has been only relatively recently that the Bible has stopped being taken literally, as it has become intellectually indefensible to do so.

“The struggle to bring meaning to that which is empty of meaning defined religion and made its beliefs, concepts, and rituals conspire to fasten meaning in life. An individual’s confrontation of his/her own nothingness remained a perpetual prospect, not a developmental task; but only as an individual confessed an ultimate emptiness did an authentic religious language provide cogency to efforts to think about their state of being. This is why religion in some form pervades the world’s cultures. The existential condition of meaninglessness knows no cultural bounds. It is “the human condition”. Nevertheless it is easily ignored.”

That’s a direct admission of intellectual bankruptcy. If it has no meaning, it has no meaning. It by no means follows that elaborate collections of completely false fairy tales have to be made up because of that

The result of the ignorance of philosophical history is in all of these conversations (and much of the modern literature concerning it all) almost everyone is really just arguing over historical philosophical schools. And I think that is rather funny.

Ah yes, it is all “difference between philosophical schools” so we’re going to keep our superstitious ignorance safely hidden behind this excuse.

If something is “dishonest” it is generally termed to be “less than true” – more commonly just referred to as “a lie”. The reasoning behind it does not change the nature of what it is, and thus matters little; it’s just an exercise in rationalization at that point. Unless you really want to go down the road that process doesn’t matter, only results? That kind of reasoning ends up with “might makes’ right”, both logical conclusions from your line of reasoning, but you might not like that – thus the need to actually do the work and take your thoughts all the way to their conclusions. You may not want to, though don’t blame us when we end up confused if you don’t feel it is important. I only ask that you be consistent in your thinking and don’t throw out contradictions between differing threads.

As I said, you are so far off base in what is going on in theology (as are most) I’m not even sure where to begin. First you have to do quite a bit of study in language and philosophy – both topics you find no use for. Though why you find the second of no use is quite surprising as all of our sciences did come out of one of the two branches of Philosophy (natural). It has only been in the very recent history of things that “moral” and “natural” philosophy split off into all the various “schools” that make up what we call modern education (science, politics, sociology and on and on). Thus the fact that it all got rather mixed together over the course of centuries of study and work shouldn’t be very surprising. In fact you can see the split (eventually leading to all the “soft” and “hard” disciplines) in the underlying question of all knowledge: “how do I truly know \ what is ultimately real”.

That doesn’t mean it did justice to either the hard sciences or the soft (social) sciences. Both suffered. You see the result of the mixing and feel one is pointless and misled the other, rather than seeing they were both sidetracked into dealing with things they weren’t designed to deal with. One has to do with the “objectivity” of things (science) and the other attempts to look at the “subjectivity” of things (social).

Science is great at giving us objectively reasoned answers, but does little to deal with the problem of subjectivity. The second problem, “subjectivity” can trace it’s complications all the way back at least as far as Socrates dialogs, in for example, “Lysis”, where every attempt to determine what a “friend” is ends in failure. Such “life” issues just do not work like a math problem, and for every rule you can likely find an exception even in your own life (something math doesn’t allow). Anytime the two concerns cross the result is bound to be confusion.

When you start treating “subjective” questions as an invitation to do objective reasoning you will end up in trouble as Socrates tried to show us all those centuries ago. Thus when you hear “God” and go looking for a thing you are already lost. Unfortunately it’s actually worse than that, religious language is a very specific type of speaking (why the study of language is mandatory for anyone wanting to make sense of any of it). I’m not going to get into a huge debate with you over it, I’m not interested in trying to teach a four+ year program to someone in a blog. I am only pointing out you know not what you speak about. I will leave you with a couple clues, take them or leave them…

“The religious dogmatist characteristically holds to philosophical viewpoints developed by empiricism or rationalism (without being circumspect about the consistency of the two). A usual manifestation of their dogmatism is in the philosophical notion that words stand for objective meanings. Language is referential or representational. The notion of the literal interpretation of the Bible requires this philosophical position.”

“The struggle to bring meaning to that which is empty of meaning defined religion and made its beliefs, concepts, and rituals conspire to fasten meaning in life. An individual’s confrontation of his/her own nothingness remained a perpetual prospect, not a developmental task; but only as an individual confessed an ultimate emptiness did an authentic religious language provide cogency to efforts to think about their state of being. This is why religion in some form pervades the world’s cultures. The existential condition of meaninglessness knows no cultural bounds. It is “the human condition”. Nevertheless it is easily ignored.”

The result of the ignorance of philosophical history is in all of these conversations (and much of the modern literature concerning it all) almost everyone is really just arguing over historical philosophical schools. And I think that is rather funny.

Wow…

Here is what I said for those with very short attention spans:

44. GM Says:
June 15th, 2010 at 7:19 am
Yes, my research is funded by the NIH, and yes, I don’t feel bad about it all. And yes, grants are “dishonestly” written in the “it is health-related” frame all the time so that people can get money to do actual science

From this to using the word “lying” it takes quite a huge leap across the gap between intellectual honesty and Creationist Debate Tactics 101.

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100. ThomasL Says:
June 16th, 2010 at 8:49 pm
GM already acknowledged his opinions are likely unethical. It doesn’t take too much reasoning to get that if such is the case when he ponders the big questions of life (remember, it’s all just a math problem and morality is meaningless…) his actions are likely less than what most would consider ethical as well. That was several threads ago. His attitude about twisting truth to obtain funding and being perfectly O.K. with it is thus not very surprising. I mean such is all just a meaningless game after all, isn’t it? I tried to point out to him working ALL the way through a thought and recognizing ALL of its implications is an important aspect of being “educated”… It is how one gains consistency in thought.

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FYI, nobody is defrauding anyone. What many people fail to realize is that spending on “useless” basic research is what will eventually get the “cures” because the cures typically result from better understanding of basic biology. Everybody who knows a little about the way science progresses know this. Including the people who run NIH and how are just as “guilty” in what you accuse me of as I am. Right now the majority of NIH budget is going into things that are directly “health-related” and which as a general rule do not produce anything. There is a good argument to be made that those funds should be redirected to basic research, the public should be told to not expect quick returns in the few decades and the science should be let to take its course towards actual understanding of basic biology, which once it is achieved, will make “finding the cures” much easier.

But it’s not going to happen because it is politically impossible to “sell” to the public anything involving expenditure of money with expected returns 30-40-50 years away from now.

You can accuse scientists in “defrauding the public” so that they can play with their expensive toys at public expense, but it does not work that way.

You sound a lot like certain republicans and their outrage over Drosophila research….

P.S. For the record, what I have said is that such thing as absolute moral law does not exist and that ethics is a vacuous discipline. That moral law does not exist is a necessary conclusion based on what we have learned in the last few hundred years. It is extremely poor science to claim otherwise.

This does not mean that we should go out and start raping and robbing each other. In fact, as far as I am aware, people who reject the the existence of absolute moral laws do not exhibit a unusual propensity towards committing crime, quite the opposite; the prisons are where the highest concentration of religiosity can be found .

Reading his ongoing commentaries on theology does provide me with quite a bit of humor though. I wonder if he realizes he sounds as ignorant in such ponderings as he professes everyone else is in regards to science (although we have all had far more serious science education then theological training – and sorry, Sunday school isn’t serious anything, and most never go farther…). When discussing science the only opinions allowed are those who achieved PHD status, yet when discussing religion and theology or ethics and the humanities we are supposed to only deal with the most pathetic thinkers to be found. Rather funny.

This argument has been throughly dismantled so many times that one start to seriously doubt the intellectual abilities of anyone who brings it up again. To claim that “you have to have theological education to speak on the subject” is pure BS. I don’t need any training in astrology to tell you that it is nonsense. Nobody has yet demonstrated that religion should be taken more seriously than astrology.

Not only that, but is a safe bet that many theologians are atheists. It is highly unlikely that so many otherwise intelligent people would have studied the subject for centuries and none of them would have come to the inevitable conclusions that there is absolutely no reason to think that gods exist.

BTW, nobody here claims that the opinions of those who have “achieved PHD status” should be taken seriously when talking about science. Competence does not equate having a PhD. What is asked for is basic intellectual discipline on one side and respect for expertise when you don’t have it.

P.S. I am not sure where you came up with the “Sunday school” thing. I have been raised in the complete absence of religion. This means nobody has been indoctrinating me in believing in God but nobody has told me that God doesn’t exist either, it is just that I didn’t really hear about God until I was 6 or 7, at which point I had read enough science to be only able to laugh at the idea.

—–

I think he did more than just acknowledge being unethical, he’s pretty much outed himself as a troll – simply quoting that comment back to him every time he posts will be enough to discredit anything he says.

And IF he’s a real scientist, then his scientific findings should be suspect as well. After all, IF he lies to get funding (and we have no proof, just what we can infer) then what will he do to keep receiving that funding?

The challenge is a straight forward one. That none of youll are willing to meet it is probably because you dont consider yourself good communicators (if so a surprising moment of honesty) or that you know it wont work or perhaps you may have some other reason, if so go ahead let me know. Don’t bother about religious people attempting to tell other religious people whats good science and whats good religion with “timeless truths”.