Since you have such a firm grasp on what science is, might I suggest applying it to your own perspective. Through logical deduction you can discern the difference between the "real" scientists and the "fake" scientists by what they do, not whether or not their theory is on the "Approved by Daddy" list.

;)

LOL - Nothing he does surprises me anymore. He screwed up big time when he pulled out of the deal Obama brokered. I remember when the French, the Germans and even the British were like "Dude, WTF are you doing?" That deal had everyone on board - even the Russians and the Chinese. Trump couldn't make a deal like that if his life depended on it. It's incredible how such a doofus can screw up so bad. Now Iran's economy and people are suffering from excessive sanctions and the government is resuming its nuclear program ...unmonitored. That's a volatile combination. Everyone else is telling Trump to pull his head out of his ass and fix the problem he created. Of course Trump has proven his incompetence beyond a shadow of doubt and so Macron appears to be stepping in.

Rose42:
Your imagination isn't really boundless though. You just don't recognize your boundaries.

StraightUp:
No, Rose... there ARE no boundaries. There are only limits to what I have imagined so far. Not the same thing.
==================================================================
Rose42:
And we cannot understand the mind of God whose intelligence is far beyond anything we could ever grasp.

StraightUp:
So in the same sentence you state that we can NOT understand the mind of God AND proceed to describe it anyway. ;)

Rose42:
No I didn't. 

Analysis:
"And we cannot understand the mind of God" = statement that we can NOT understand the mind of God.
"...whose intelligence is far beyond anything we could ever grasp" = describing His mind anyway.

so... yes, you did.
==================================================================

Rose42:
You took exception to something I said yet your post is a string of not so subtle insults. That says a lot about what you believe whether you realize it or not.

Don't take what I say personally. I am only critiquing the claims you are making. Yes, I am also poking fun at some of the absurdity behind Creationism, but I'm not trying to insult you.
==================================================================

StraightUp:
So you are actually telling me that a magic explosion out of nothing is somehow not as feasible as a magic God who has always existed?

Rose42:
Yep.

StraightUp:
So... we're talking about feasibility here... Feasibility is a measurement of something and therefore requires reference, such as mathematical proof or proven examples of similar things.
And all you got is "Yep".

If you were to ask me the same question my answer would have been no because there IS no reference for magic Gods OR magic explosions so there IS no way to measure feasibility of either which makes them equally infeasible.
Thats called logic.

I think your answer, as void of logic as it is, is strongly symbolic... It's you saying "I don't care what you say, I am right." It's a symbol of your faith and loyalty to the Bible.
==================================================================

Rose42:
Scientists focus on what they believe is reality and get frustrated when their guesses about the origins of life are found wanting.

StraightUp:
Which scientists? The ID crack-pots? They are the only "scientists" who's guesses are found wanting.
They also have a much more difficult challenge because all the evolutionist has to do is study evidence and report their findings.
The crack-pots have to go that extra mile and make their findings somehow prove the biblical claims and I'm guessing that's where they fail.
Evolution, whether it's an accurate description of reality or not, has so far withstood ALL the tests thrown at it by the scientific community INCLUDING the crackpots.

They don't "beleive" evolution is real the same way you beleive creationism is real.
They just know evolution hasn't been disproven yet so for them it's a matter of odds, for the faithful it's always 100%.
==================================================================

Rose42:
Its the road to that faith that is filled with MANY questions.

StraightUp:
I'm sure for many people it is...
there are a lot of different roads to get there.
Some of them are the rough roads that cast doubt and spark big questions.
Others are sanitized with censorship thereby eliminating or repressing questions.
But as you know, we were referring to faith itself, not the roads that leads to it.

Faith itself is the will NOT to ask questions.
==================================================================

Rose42:
I know how it works. They work with what they think they know yet when it comes to creation they have no viable answers. Not a one.

StraightUp:
If your talking about the biblical version of creation, it's the creationists, not the scientists, that are making the claim, so it's incumbent on THEM to find the answers to prove it. So far they have nothing. I'm guessing it's hard to convert fiction into fact. On the other hand, if you're talking about creation in the general sense, scientists have all kinds of viable answers based on physics, chemistry and biology.

==================================================================

Rose42:
For all the talk of imagination that only exists to a point. They are constrained but don't realize it.

StraightUp:
I can only speak for myself but my imagination doesn't stop before it gets to Creationism. I CAN actually imagine it. But there are a lot of gaps in creationism that can only be spanned by suspending disbelief, which is what imagination does. I don't need scientific evidence to imagine how God may have created the universe OR how the big bang created it or how a big bang might even be Gods method.
I can imagine ALL these things and I consider them all within the realm of possibility with varying degrees of feasibility depending on the gaps. I don't see any gaps in evolution theory. Maybe I just haven't seen it yet. You're more than welcome to help me by pointing to the gaps that you think you see.
==================================================================

Rose42:
Yes scientists do cling to their beliefs. For many of them it is their own religion but many don't see it.

StraightUp:
Then they aren't scientists. They might carry such a title, but if they are not willing to subject their theories to challenge then they have indeed crossed from science to religion.

LOL


1. If you know faith in being right doesn't matter to me then why did you stress the "greater leap of faith" it takes to be believe I'm right?
2. MY imagination is boundless but thank you for confirming my point that it atrophies in religious cultures.
And...
3. just what exactly do you think I am saying you're confused about?


Well, you're certainly welcome to your opinion. We disagree on every point there. ;)

I can't really say I appreciate your baseless assumption either, that I think the way you used to. It's one of those overused "I learned, you didn't" colloquialisms that perhaps you didn't give much thought to, but I am highly doubtful that our history of thoughts have ANY similar patterns.




So, either we disagree again or you're just being contrary. I'll assume the former.


So in the same sentence you state that we can NOT understand the mind of God AND proceed to describe it anyway. ;)

Maybe our thought histories do overlap a little, when I was a kid I used to say the same thing about God and his unfathomable intelligence.


Well, I suppose there wasn't a chair to sit in before he created the universe, right?

In any case... did those dusty scribes actually state that God didn't have to plan out his creation or are you just imagining He didn't? That's pretty much what I was doing as a kid, thinking about God's expansive intellect. It's not that I had seen any proof, or even the slightest evidence... I just wanted it to be true.




So you are actually telling me that a magic explosion out of nothing is somehow not as feasible as a magic God who has always existed?

See, this is why scientists don't care. They focus on reality as they discover it and speculate about the rest. They don't have time for white-knuckled arguments about which magic doodad is the Holy Grail.


Many of them do Rose... I know a lot of religious people personally and they TELL me they do NOT question their faith. They might question themselves, or the world around them. But they don't question their faith. And it makes sense because once they do, it becomes speculation and speculation doesn't have the same power as faith.


With regard to ANYTHING Rose... Not just creation. This has been my point all along. These far-reaching theories are speculations... They are not claims on reality.

Seriously, go back and read through our conversation... You are the only one between us who is claiming to be right about reality. You are the only one claiming that anyone else along with their theories are wrong... Perhaps it's you're obsession with being right that makes you assume that I am too.

But I'm not. So, I don't care if it takes a greater leap of faith to believe the universe came from an explosion because I don't care if it's true or not.


Those gyrations are the various tests that science uses for deduction, which is how science works, it's a process of testing and discrediting. Big bang and evolution are famous theories because they have lasted for so long under the constant assault of scientific testing. Creationism failed to pass the first round because it doesn't have a testable explanation in the first place. Which is why you need faith to believe it. Folks like you get upset with these "gyrations" fo the same reason kids get upset with the teacher that gave them an F on their test.

"Stupid scientists... they just don't want me to be right."


Maybe not to you.

And yes, many scientists are Christians and they don't "believe" in a magical big bang for the same reasons NONE of the scientists do... As I've said so many times already, scientists don't cling to "beliefs" that their theory is "correct".

I wonder if you'll ever get that.


Yes, a question can be both at the same time.

Greater than what? The faith it takes to believe God waved his arms and created the world in seven days?

I already agreed that it takes a giant leap of faith to actually believe ANY of the theories about the origins of the universe are infallible. But your assumption that it even matters to someone like me is where I think you are confused. I don't need faith to believe it's true because I don't care if it is. But I do have the imagination to see it's many possibilities. See the difference now?

I suppose if you lack imagination, or if your natural-born capacity to imagine has been beaten down over time by religious dogma it would be hard to grasp how a field of gas can eventually form planets with complex climate systems.

Insisting that there HAS to be a design is an inability to let go of our own limitations as humans. Some people think that because humans rely on designs to build things, God does too.


How do you know? Seems to me that it takes even more faith to believe that out of the thousands of stories about how the world was created the one you chose to believe, the one where God created the universe like a magic trick is even farther fetched than Big Bang.


Why would you need imagination? The story is already laid out for you. There's nothing left to imagine. Of course you can fantasize about it, which is a type of imagination I suppose, but I was referring to the type of imagination that leads to new ideas, challenges old ideas... the type people use to explore reality, the type that can probably best be described as innovation. Fantasy and innovation are both forms of imagination but they are also different.

Not too worry though, as I said you don't need imagination to believe that God waved his hands and created the Universe in 7 days, a measure of time that is based on the rotation of a preexisting Earth.


We don't know. Then again we aren't the ones insisting that we DO know... That would be you. But since our imagination isn't restricted by the unbending assertion of scriptures from ancient people who couldn't even figure out how to make a toilet we are still free to explore ALL the possibilities.

Also, in thousands of years since people were coming up with stories about how the universe was created we've developed a massive body of knowledge and theories to utilize in our exploration... E=mc2 for instance, that says matter and energy are exchangeable as the atomic bomb has abundantly proven to us... just to point out one.


Valid questions are the best kind ;)

Yeah, he really doesn't have a good record.

I think you're confusing a need for a deeper imagination for what you're calling a leap of faith. The difference is practically defined in the difference between science and religion. Science is exactly what you are saying it is... a bundle of "educated" guesses.. No true scientist, none of those warning us about climate change, or hurricane paths (ha, ha) will deny this. They KNOW it's a process of best guesses.

For that reason, they are NOT actually expecting the EXACT and ABSOLUTE truth about ANYTHING they study! The game is matter of imagination, dealing with possibilities. This hang up about THE ONE and ONLY TRUTH, despite your awareness of the scientific method, precludes you from the very nature of science - that is if I'm reading it right, it seems your entire point is that it takes a greater leap of faith to believe everything started from nothing. Well, yes it does. 'Thing is... believing that everything started from nothing isn't the point of science.

Give a scientist a bucket of faith and he won't know what to do with it. Stir-fry it? make a bong out of it? For faith to have any real value there has to be a driving need to believe that what your daddy told you is the absolute truth no matter how absurd it may seem to others. This is what we call religion and for that you need faith.

Just for fun... let me ask you something...

If everything didn't come from nothing where DID it everything come from?

I've always been able to find the scientific holes in the efforts people make to validate the biblical claims.

Intelligent Design in my opinion is an arrangement of partial models, big words and a heavy reliance on the lack of imagination in the audience - by that I mean their inability to fathom the expanse of time and space that allows the improbable. They feel more comfortable with something closer to the human capacity, as if the universe was intentionally baked like a cake in 30 minutes.

I'll watch the Privileged Planet though - I haven't seen it yet.

What exactly are you calling leftist pseudo-science?

OK... I can see that. I don't know how strictly these rules will be enforced but if you're right, that would render the entire strategy pointless. It means, American and Canadian auto workers still face a potential 10% drop in pay and the factories will stay in Mexico where the labor is still cheaper.

Not even with the new regulation imposed by Trump's USMCA?

That's what the white-nationalists want. I think Trump just wants to be a big, giant hero, which wouldn't be so bad if he wasn't such a liar. Naturally, it's easier to act like a hero than to be one. So, I agree, a better deal for America really doesn't seem to be the point of renegotiating.

"It's a disaster. ... We will either renegotiate it, or we will break it. Because, you know, every agreement has an end. ... Every agreement has to be fair. Every agreement has a defraud clause. We're being defrauded by all these countries."

- Trump talking about NAFTA during an interview on 60 Minutes in 2015

So, here we are 4 years later and not only has Trump made good on his promise by renegotiating a deal, he went so far as to replace NAFTA all together with a new agreement called the USMCA.

Hooray!
...really?
Yeah, why not? Remember what he said? NAFTA was a disaster.
...in what way?
Uh... it's bad for America!
...and the USMCA fixes that?

And so that's the kind of vague conversations I've been finding since the glorious "renegotiation". But not being easily satisfied with cheesy rhetoric I decided to so some research... and to no surprise I found my suspicions confirmed... The changes are so minimal that it's ludicrous to think it was even worth changing the name of the agreement. USMCA is in fact a slightly edited revision of NAFTA.

Of course to be celebrated as a heroic dragon-slayer, people would have to believe the evil NAFTA dragon was utterly defeated and replaced and so the name at least had to be changed to support that illusion. And so Trump proceeded to rename the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). Apparently, this created some dispute about which country should appear first in the acronym. In Canada, the agreement is officially recognized as CUSMA. LOL! Well, we didn't have THAT problem when we were calling it NAFTA (which BTW, is also easier to say)

But enough of the nit-picking let's get to the actual differences shall we?

I'll start with the difference that isn't. A history of lawsuits under NAFTA that seemed to favor the Canadians was driving a lot of the Trump assault on NAFTA. It was the source of all that talk about being defrauded and it was most likely the dragon that Trump's sponsors wanted him to slay.

The name of this dragon is the "dispute process", the part of NAFTA that has by far been the biggest complaint south of the Canadian border. So what did Trump do for us there?

Apparently, nothing.

Of course Trump himself won't mention it but it's clear that he lost that negotiation to Trudeau. The dispute process remains in place exactly as it was under NAFTA. So really, this isn't a difference at all, but I mention it for the same reason all the other reports do, because more than any other aspect of NAFTA, that WAS the dragon to slay.

But still, a few differences were made. I may as well list them all because it's not much...

Dairy: Canada has agreed to ease restrictions on it's dairy market and allow American farmers to export about $560 million worth of dairy.
So, I dunno... I'm guessing this is good for our dairy farmers, right? Anyone else? Should we just wait and see if anything happens?

Automotive: Companies can now qualify for zero tariffs if 75% of their vehicles' components are manufactured in the US, Canada or Mexico. Under NAFTA that figure was 62%
OK, so an existing regulation get's increased by 7%, the Mexican factories get 7% more work and the U.S. consumers get dick.

But wait, Trump had another card up his sleeve...
30% of vehicle production must be done by workers earning an average production wage of at least $16/hr.

OK, I see the angle here. Not a bad idea. In fact it gives credence to the previous point as well. It's curious because I've been advocating this strategy for a while, but the response I keep getting back is that old rant about a one world government. Seriously... every time. So I'm surprised to see this come out of the Trump team.

To explain... Trump has written a heavy-weight regulation that will force all the factories on the continent to flatten their pay, so everyone gets the same... in all three countries. [ALERT: MARXIST IDEA] Yes, I know, and maybe it's a slippery slope to communism... but let's suspend that for the moment so I can explain how this idea can work.

If you lay a regulation on one company and not the other. The later will gain competitive advantage. This is what can make a regulation unfair. But if you put it on both companies the competition stays level, or at least - unaffected. This is what this regulation will do for all of the business that can be captured by the other regulation that was just increased by 7%.

So, yes it's a step closer to a world government and it's a step toward Marxism, but fire is another dangerous place and yet it's good sometimes to step toward a fire to get warm.

In any case, I'm going to give Trump a nod for this one... as one would give to a barnyard pig that miraculously cooked and served a chicken dinner.

As for me personally, I'm not sure what impact all this will have. The cars and the truck I have are made from parts that mostly come from North America as per NAFTA, including the Honda Civic that I am leasing, much of which was assembled in Mexico. I'm guessing my next lease will be affected by the higher cost of labor in Mexico, which I expect will drive the price up.

Currently, the hourly wage in Mexico was $3.41 for parts and $7.34 for assembly. In the U.S. and in Canada the wage for both is $20.



So by setting everyone to $16 the USMCA will increase the cost of assembly in Mexico by 54% and for parts the cost will increase by 78%. so yeah, from my personal position as an American consumer, it's probably not such a good deal, but I feel worse for the American (and Canadian) auto-worker who will now be exposed to a potential 10% drop in wages. For them, I'd say, not a good deal at all. Zooming way out to the pontifications of Marx, sure - it seems Americans and Canadians are taking a glancing hit for the benefit of pulling the Mexicans out of the mud. The global-humanist perspective wins on this deal.

Even so... there is one other perspective I want to mention here... By pulling the Mexicans out of the mud we could be lessening their reasons for migrating to the U.S. which I personally think is a good approach to that particular issue, though in this case, I don't think the difference will be all that significant since Mexicans working at Honda are probably not the ones making a run for the U.S. I dunno... one step at a time? More communism maybe?

I'll let you draw your own conclusions.

The third and the ONLY other difference the USMCA makes is a deal on intellectual property... The regulation of ideas. So corporations that own patents can monopolize the market for longer, law enforcement officers in any of the three countries can stop "suspected" counterfeit (I'm not sure yet to what extent or if this infringes upon our 4th amendment rights as Americans) And of course there will be harsher punishments for pirated movies and satellite/cabel signal theft.

How does this affect me? I'm not sure yet. One thing I can say is that I'm approaching that age where I'm going to need medicine for whatever ailments are around the corner. I have always kept an eye on supply-chains outside the jurisdiction of U.S. commercial law because out there, you can get therapeutics at near cost. Typically an OTC therapeutic will cost 300% more in the U.S. because that's the markup over the cost that we are forced to pay for. Now with the USMCA we can expect the market in Mexico and Canada to also be forced to pay homage to big-pharma or suffer. NOW where am I going to go to get my medicine without getting shafted for it?

Oh and before anyone gets into that "big-pharma needs to pay for innovation" argument - just... don't. I've already been through the whole analysis on this. In fact, don't listen to me - just have a look for yourself at the stock indices for big-parma... You will not find evidence of starving innovators. At the very least we can certainly say they don't NEED more time than they already have to monopolize and gouge.

So these are the changes... the rest of the 300+ pages of agreements and regulations that make up NAFTA are left unscathed.

So let's tally those changes up...

dispute process - No change. Trudeau and Canada wins.
dairy exports - US dairy farmers can export more milk to Canada where the consumers probably won't buy it anyway. US wins (sort of maybe IF your a dairy farmer).
automotive - global communist strategy for labor. Auto workers in Mexico win. US consumers take a hit, US auto workers take a bigger hit.
intellectual property - big-pharma wins... Trump learns that his IQ is not based on the intellectual property he owns.
name change - Trump wins big with his base. If he can just rename everything he can probably convince his base that he's changed everything.

In summary it looks like Trump gave Americans a worse deal than NAFTA. But it's probably not a big deal for Trump since his static 30% base probably won't be paying any attention to the details like I just did and any such concerns such as mine can easily be out-gunned by a simple tweet from the king to his loyal subjects saying something like "I just slayed the dragon. hooray for me!" But I write anyway because there's the other 60% that might actually be interested in reality.

I agree, although sadly we're looking at a tall order here. The EC itself (as I keep saying) doesn't make any difference - the problem is with the unfair distribution of representatives. But how do we get the side that currently benefits from this unfair advantage to give it up?

It would be nice if we could just switch over to a popular vote, but that would take a major change to the Constitution which clearly states that the House of Representatives elects the president (by way of the EC), not the people.

Of course, I'm not saying we shouldn't try, but I think it will come to blows long before we'll see a fair deal.

Yeah, sure? Here you are trying to tell me that we need the EC so citizens in one state aren't out-voted by citizens in another... So, I show you an example of how that's already happening right now, and all you can say is "Yeah, sure"? That tells me that you don't really care about the problem unless it serves as an excuse to defend the status quo. You're a true conservative.


LOL - You really need to think about this one... When a government says a resolution can't pass without a 2/3 majority it means that it will take an even bigger mob majority to rule. Simple math Seth... I'll hold back on the "retard jokes" while you think this one over.


The education system is managed at the state level and below and I doubt all of it is controlled by Democrats. That's just the impression that self-victimizing Republicans get when confronted with Democrats that resist the Republican pressure to introduce religious indoctrination to our education system.


Again, I wouldn't call an education in science, propaganda. Then again, I'm not a Republican trying to replace science with religion either.


Aren't illusions wonderful?