Fox's Bill O'Reilly considers lynching Michelle Obama

[socal swimmer]

religion aside, i still view homosexuality (and marriage by extension) as wrong. while there is homosexuality in the animal kingdom, two males are completely incapable of conceiving offspring together, regardless of species. thus, with no possibility to create life, then the sole purpose MUST be pleasure. so to round off this argument, and to hedge against you "evolutionists" i offer this though:

 

if evolution is real, and life evolves what it needs to survive, and throws away what it doesn't need, then homosexuality is not natural because you have two sexual genders. if one sex only needed someone of the same sex to survive and reproduce, then by the rules of evolution and natural selection, there would be only one sexual gender. since gendered species need an opposite sex to procreate, then logically speaking, nature did not intend us to be homosexual. those that do it do it for some degree of pleasure

...

 

so if a sterile woman wants to get married, is this wrong?

 

She can't possibly have kids, which means that she is just having sex for pleasure, which is wrong, right?

 

Also, there are many things that are evolutionarily disadvantageous that we enjoy in our society: health care and welfare being two important examples.

[capt_cope]

On a lighter note: I love it! Welfare and universal health care go against evolution. So true, and rather amusing. Someone should bring that up in a presidential debate.

 

"Um. Mrs Clinton... why would you try to defy evolution?"

"excuse me" *evil Hitlery glare*

"Well it's just that the entire premise of welfare and universal health care stands in direct conflict with evolution"

"I'm afraid I don't follow..."

"Survival of the fittest ma'am. Survival of the fittest."

[dark4181]

On a lighter note: I love it! Welfare and universal health care go against evolution. So true, and rather amusing. Someone should bring that up in a presidential debate.

 

"Um. Mrs Clinton... why would you try to defy evolution?"

"excuse me" *evil Hitlery glare*

"Well it's just that the entire premise of welfare and universal health care stands in direct conflict with evolution"

"I'm afraid I don't follow..."

"Survival of the fittest ma'am. Survival of the fittest."

 

lol, i think i'd pay to see that event

 

as for a sterile person, if you can't have kids, there's nothing wrong with adopting. in the animal world, some will care for the offspring of others within the group. not always, but it does happen, much like with humans

 

as for sex for pleasure. would anyone have sex if it didn't feel good? (masochists nonwithstanding) ...even as a Christian, i'm not against having sex for pleasure. though i do believe there should be more meaning behind it than "hey, wanna get your toes curled?"

 

 

on the topic of evolution, it's been a long while since i was in school, but i know there are many even in the scientific community that don't buy it. just from some light reading, i know that micro-evolution, like what you posted about the peppered moths and rhinos, does happen on a regular basis. but all that micro-evolution is is a series of adaptive improvements that breed true. a peppered moth is still a peppered moth, it just has black "hair" instead of brown, so to speak.

 

macro-evolution, on the other hand, well, that is something that humans haven't witnessed first hand, due to the simple fact that it would take a very long time. all we've been able to do is examine the fossil records and compared them with current species, and say "well, it could have happened like this..." but all that is is a postulation. it may be true, or it may not, which IMHO makes the standard definition of theory work in that case

 

i'm gonna bow out of this thread, we're steering it way off topic, i'll just end on this note:

 

religious folks can't prove that evolution is false, but science can't conclusively prove that there is no god. so both sides are relying on some form of faith. i just happen to support the side that believes that life has a purpose *shrugs*

 

good night everyone

[apowerr]

religious folks can't prove that evolution is false, but science can't conclusively prove that there is no god. so both sides are relying on some form of faith. i just happen to support the side that believes that life has a purpose *shrugs*

How does evolution disprove God? Just because you follow science doesn't make you a non-theist. Way to make everything black and white.

[Paranoid Marvin]

The argument goes something like this:

 

"I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."

 

"But," says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves that You exist, and so therefore, by Your own arguments, You don't. QED"

 

"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.

 

"Oh, that was easy," says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.

[dark4181]

How does evolution disprove God? Just because you follow science doesn't make you a non-theist. Way to make everything black and white.

 

sorry, had to come back in when i read this

 

bit stereotypical, but science and the church are often placed at opposite ends of the spectrum, and each side attacks the other. zealous theists think that there's no need for science, and their counterparts on the other side insist that "evolution is the new god"

 

since you defended evolution, i assumed that you were "one of those"

 

btw, i personally don't define "faith" as "lacking or not needing proof" i define faith as "the belief in a conclusion reached by evaluating life experiences, regardless of the beliefs of others"

 

i've personally experienced a lot in my life that leads me to believe that god must exist. but that's delving into philosophy

[capt_cope]

*cough* *cough*

 

Pulled from Merriam Webster's definition of faith:

"b (1): firm belief in something for which there is no proof "

 

 

Oh and a quick edit. While stereotypically faith and science are on the opposite ends of the spectrum, I think there is a middle ground.

It's the difference between evolution and Evolution. I'm a firm believer in the idea of evolution, but sincerely doubt I'm the great, great, great, great, great grandson of an amoeba somewhere in the primordial ooze. Just because I believe I was created, not evolved, doesn't mean I ignore science. I do think that some scientists are a bit... fickle... Global warming? What happened to Global cooling? And that whole carbon dating thing never has seemed to work too hot either.

[(MoC)]

People these days with free speech. Everybody has to get worked up over a comment sometime...

[Numberzz]

As much as I enjoy watching people argue about God and Politics, what does this have to do with the original topic?

[aduffbrew]

I appreciate those who took the time and listened to his comments in context. Honestly, I wouldn't have. It really wasn't as bad as they made it out to be... this time. He's said a few doozies in his day, though. I look at Bill O'Reilly as the polar opposite of Jon Stewart. It's all infotainment... news as entertainment. Take an issue, throw in some shock jock, shake it around a bit, and package it up for your target audience. It's about ratings.

 

Mr. O'Reilly might think he's a serious news show but his venemous bais says otherwise. Enjoy him for what he really is and cut him the slack afforded him under Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. That said, I do miss the more disaplined journalism of our pre-CNN days. Oh, well. The Daily Show twists the news with laughter and The OReilly Factor twists it with outrage... I guess it's all a matter of what you're in to. It's all good.

[capt_cope]

The original topic was kinda weak, we just made it better is all. Anyone with a modicum of intelligence could see that when taken in context O'Reilly wasn't being rude, and was actually giving Michelle Obama the benefit of the doubt. There isn't much to argue about that, so we found other things that have multiple right answers to debate on. I mean the original topic may as well have been "1+1=2... Discuss." What fun is that?

[socal swimmer]

*cough* *cough*

 

Pulled from Merriam Webster's definition of faith:

"b (1): firm belief in something for which there is no proof "

Oh and a quick edit. While stereotypically faith and science are on the opposite ends of the spectrum, I think there is a middle ground.

It's the difference between evolution and Evolution. I'm a firm believer in the idea of evolution, but sincerely doubt I'm the great, great, great, great, great grandson of an amoeba somewhere in the primordial ooze. Just because I believe I was created, not evolved, doesn't mean I ignore science. I do think that some scientists are a bit... fickle... Global warming? What happened to Global cooling? And that whole carbon dating thing never has seemed to work too hot either.

 

thank you for proving exactly how little you understand of evolution.

 

Maybe you haven't figured this out, but 3.7 billion years is a lot more than " great, great, great, great, great grandson".

 

Carbon dating is widely accepted, as is global warming. Global cooling was the result of insufficient and incorrect data. Our methods are much better now, and our data is reliable.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dating

 

That middle ground that you just mentioned is a curious mix between science and misunderstanding.

 

Some creationists have also adopted the term "macroevolution" to describe the form of evolution that they reject. They may accept that evolutionary change is possible within species ("microevolution"), but deny that one species can evolve into another ("macroevolution").[1] These arguments are rejected by mainstream science, which holds that there is ample evidence that macroevolution has occurred in the past.[3][4]

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macroevolution

 

 

While details of macroevolution are continuously studied by the scientific community, the overall theory behind macroevolution (i.e. common descent) has been overwhelmingly consistent with empirical data. Predictions of empirical data from the theory of common descent have been so consistent that biologists often refer to it as the "fact of evolution".[5][6] Nevertheless, macroevolution is sometimes disputed by religious groups. Generally speaking, these groups attempt to differentiate between microevolution and macroevolution, asserting various hypotheses which are considered to have no scientific basis by any mainstream scientific organization, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science[7].

When discussing the topic, creationists use "strategically elastic" definitions of micro- and macroevolution.[1] Macroevolution, by their definition, cannot be attained. Any observed evolutionary change is described by them as being "just microevolution".[1]

[capt_cope]

thank you for proving exactly how little you understand of evolution.

 

Maybe you haven't figured this out, but 3.7 billion years is a lot more than " great, great, great, great, great grandson".

I'm sorry, next time I'll take up half the page with the word "great" I figured most people were intelligent enough to figure that one out. There is all of no proof that humans evolved from anything other than humans. Explain to me how I'm mis-understanding that one. I'd love to hear it.

 

Carbon dating is widely accepted, as is global warming. Global cooling was the result of insufficient and incorrect data. Our methods are much better now, and our data is reliable.

Ok, show me these "much" better methods. I'd love to know how they are capable of gathering all this reliable data, about the weather in the 70's, considering it was all incorrect. The saying "can't see the forrest from the trees" comes to mind. And widely accepted means jack {censored} to me. I don't particually care about either, and have little "faith" in modern scientists and their amazing discoveries (like the world is warming, or cooling at a shocking rate, or that we just discovered a fossil that proves we evolved from small lizards. They are people, and people are wrong pretty often.) After all the world is flat.

 

That middle ground that you just mentioned is a curious mix between science and misunderstanding.

No it's a mix between not really giving a {censored} (things like global warming) and realizing that some things are true, like the idea of survival of the fittest.

 

I have some real big problems with the whole idea that humans evolved out of sludge. Like, for example, where did this magical ooze come from? Or, where did the world, or the universe come from? 0+0=0 Things do not appear out of nothing.

 

But you belive what you want to, I'll keep beliveing what I want to.

 

 

*Just a side note, wikipedia is NOT a valid source for anything other than pop-culture references.

[consolation]

*Just a side note, wikipedia is NOT a valid source for anything other than pop-culture references.

 

Creationism and id ARE pop-culture in the rest of the developed world that's not US of A, these are things that we laugh over our coffee and shake our heads at ruefully -those crazy yanks stuck in the 19th century, the same way we laugh at Saudi Arabia banning red roses to stop "improper" relations between sexes.

 

Honestly, reading through this thread makes me pitty how backward and mis-educated some ppl are... I love travelling in the US, so much of the public discourse sounds like 1808 not 2008. Scary how the policies of the "left" wing Democratic party would be at home with "the crazy right wing" party of most western democracies.

 

oh, my laugh of the week -> http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/02...ution-wins.html

The really hilarious bit is at the bottom of the page where the creationist nut-jobs swarm the page with their "counter" posts, honestly just how bad was their schooling, they seem to buy into "facts" I'd expect my 8 year old to see through...

[PSPHax0r9]

1. killbot I'm still waiting to see where I said those words you put in my mouth, thanks.

 

2. "Christianity is based completely on astrology" is one of the most ignorant statements I've ever read. Someone's watched Zeitgeist a little too much. In case you didn't know, the whole of that movie was based on bad, inaccurate, or just plain WRONG information.

 

3. Evolution doesn't disprove God...

 

4. Evolution is currently the best theory we have right now. It is backed up by tons of evidence. I see no reason to doubt it.

 

5. The consensus is still not completely in agreement on global warming. Yes, the earth is getting warmer, obviously. However, the effect of humans on this temperature is still not completely certain, and in fact, historically, the Earth has gone through several periods of climate change, so this could be a natural occurrence. Again, though, why not be more environmentally friendly? Who's it going to hurt? It can only help.

 

6. Once again, Bill was defending Michelle Obama, in direct opposition with the very wrong title of this thread.

[socal swimmer]

Creationism and id ARE pop-culture in the rest of the developed world that's not US of A, these are things that we laugh over our coffee and shake our heads at ruefully. Those crazy yanks stuck in the 19th century... before we laugh at Saudi Arabia banning red roses to stop "improper" relations between sexes.

 

Honestly, reading through this thread makes be pitty how backward and mis-educated some ppl are... I love travelling in the US, so much of the public discourse sounds like 1808 not 2008. Scary how the policies of the "left" wing Democratic party would be at home with "the crazy right wing" party of most western democracies.

 

haha pwned.

 

but seriously, dismissing mainstream science because they have been wrong before is not smart.

[capt_cope]

Right...his wikipedia "references" were to carbon dating and macro evolution. You might try reading sometime, it's a handy thing. And bash America all you want, we're still cooler than you. (And no I don't know where you live, just making a blanket statement.)

 

And swimmer, I'm dismissing it for the time being for a few reasons. Firstly, there is no proof. It's just an idea that no one can prove or disprove. I classify believing in that as faith, and I'd rather not place too much faith in the hands of humans. After all, I can't even put my faith in a God. Secondly they've already been wrong, by their own admission, about their last revelation concerning the world's climate change. What's different this time? How can they get a large enough sample of data if they've already admitted that their previous data was incorrect? Or is there a time machine I don't know about, allowing them to go back in time and collect climate information to prove their trend? Since they claim the earth is what? 67 billion years old or some such number, don't you think it's a bit trivial to consider it a dire change in climate based on... 10-20 years worth of "accurate" data?

[socal swimmer]

Right...his wikipedia "references" were to carbon dating and macro evolution. You might try reading sometime, it's a handy thing. And bash America all you want, we're still cooler than you. (And no I don't know where you live, just making a blanket statement.)

 

And swimmer, I'm dismissing it for the time being for a few reasons. Firstly, there is no proof. It's just an idea that no one can prove or disprove. I classify believing in that as faith, and I'd rather not place too much faith in the hands of humans. After all, I can't even put my faith in a God. Secondly they've already been wrong, by their own admission, about their last revelation concerning the world's climate change. What's different this time? How can they get a large enough sample of data if they've already admitted that their previous data was incorrect? Or is there a time machine I don't know about, allowing them to go back in time and collect climate information to prove their trend? Since they claim the earth is what? 67 billion years old or some such number, don't you think it's a bit trivial to consider it a dire change in climate based on... 10-20 years worth of "accurate" data?

 

you have just shown me that you do not really understand the science nor the data behind global warming.

 

Ice core samples (time machine?) have provided data for 400,00 years of temperature and CO2 levels, which is 4 natural cycles of warming. Tree rings and other sources augment this data.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming

 

And regarding the age of the earth, you are kidding right? The earth is 4 billion years old.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth

 

 

Paranoid marvin is right (from my experiences), at least about much of the United States. Then again, I live here and i don't have these crazy views.

 

 

 

if you feel my assertions regarding carbon dating are incorrect, please prove me wrong. It would be good to cover both the theoretical side and the empirical side of carbon dating.

 

(not that you possibly could, of course)

 

 

and Wikipedia is not an end all, irreproachable source, but it is a decently reliable source for background information on a topic. If you think something in the articles i cited is wrong and contributes significantly to the truth of their claims, then please provide some proof.

 

 

and this belongs in the global warming thread anyways.

[consolation]

Right...his wikipedia "references" were to carbon dating and macro evolution. You might try reading sometime, it's a handy thing.

 

Oh, for fck's sake, there's no macro or micro evolution; they are just terms coined by ignorant cultists to slide creationism through the back passage, ooh.. err... There's just evolution, it's just that the time scale differs.

 

And bash America all you want, we're still cooler than you. (And no I don't know where you live, just making a blanket statement.)

 

If cool = deluded, than sure; why not? Actually, imho there's an awful lot of good about US, it just that it's central government is so weak it let's ignorant plebs capture too many levers of power. There's no decent well educated civil service to do things like set a national school curriculum, instead you get a lot of political appointments that have to pander to the lowest common denominator and elected deranged busy bodies that have to do the same.

 

What's different this time? How can they get a large enough sample of data if they've already admitted that their previous data was incorrect? Or is there a time machine I don't know about, allowing them to go back in time and collect climate information to prove their trend?

 

Oh, I don't know; technology and knowledge advance (in some places, anyway ). Yes, we do have time machines: we can take core samples of the polar ice and sea sediments, we can compare isotope counts in tree rings, we have a lot of very good evidence. Sure, none of it is conclusive by itself but together it makes an overwhelming case; at some point a sane person has to go "if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck... "

 

Put it another way. You are walking down a railway tunnel and see a light coming towards you. You are 99% certain that it's a train; should you get off the rails? Or, go: "well there's a 1% chance I don't have to bother, and my crazy cousin is pretty convinced it's a person with a torch; what the hell -I'll just sit here on my fat lazy arse and wait to see what happens."

 

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080...ate-change.html

[JonTheSavage]

Lynch them both. Problem solved.

Divide and conquer. The idiot public always falls for it.

[killbot1000]

Lynch them both. Problem solved.

Divide and conquer. The idiot public always falls for it.

 

You have a misconception on the human species. The general public isn't stupid. But it has a lot of stupid people within its ranks.

 

Human beings are just like any other animal, there is lots of variation. Everything edges toward the middle though, there are incredibly smart people in the general public, and there are incredibly dumb people. But overall when you add it all up at the end of the day, most human beings edge toward the mediocre, or the middle. Studies that have been done on intelligence indicate this.

 

The problem that people have is not that they are idiots, its that they take things at face value, they trust things too easily, and they let their emotions get the best of them. These are things that can be corrected with a proper education in critical thinking.

 

Also, your statement on lynching them both would indicate to me that maybe YOU aren't as intelligent as you think you are.

[superstition]

religion aside, i still view homosexuality (and marriage by extension) as wrong. while there is homosexuality in the animal kingdom, two males are completely incapable of conceiving offspring together, regardless of species. thus, with no possibility to create life, then the sole purpose MUST be pleasure. so to round off this argument, and to hedge against you "evolutionists" i offer this though:if evolution is real, and life evolves what it needs to survive, and throws away what it doesn't need, then homosexuality is not natural because you have two sexual genders. if one sex only needed someone of the same sex to survive and reproduce, then by the rules of evolution and natural selection, there would be only one sexual gender. since gendered species need an opposite sex to procreate, then logically speaking, nature did not intend us to be homosexual. those that do it do it for some degree of pleasureeven if you factor religion back in, there's still the "free will" option. if all you care about is living for now, then by all means, do what you want *shrugs* as a Christian, i'll pray for you, whether you want me to or not

Why are you posting about this in this topic? There is already a topic on homosexuality and it has NOTHING to do with this topic.I am glad to debate this in the proper place, but I'm not going to bother re-inventing the wheel because everything that needed to be said was already said in the homosexuality topic.

The original topic was kinda weak, we just made it better is all. Anyone with a modicum of intelligence could see that when taken in context O'Reilly wasn't being rude, and was actually giving Michelle Obama the benefit of the doubt. There isn't much to argue about that, so we found other things that have multiple right answers to debate on. I mean the original topic may as well have been "1+1=2... Discuss." What fun is that?

Instead of hijacking this topic and posting sophomoric personal attacks based on weak reasoning, post in the correct topic or don't post.

[killbot1000]

Oh, for fck's sake, there's no macro or micro evolution; they are just terms coined by ignorant cultists to slide creationism through the back passage, ooh.. err... There's just evolution, it's just that the time scale differs.

If cool = deluded, than sure; why not? Actually, imho there's an awful lot of good about US, it just that it's central government is so weak it let's ignorant plebs capture too many levers of power. There's no decent well educated civil service to do things like set a national school curriculum, instead you get a lot of political appointments that have to pander to the lowest common denominator and elected deranged busy bodies that have to do the same.

Oh, I don't know; technology and knowledge advance (in some places, anyway ). Yes, we do have time machines: we can take core samples of the polar ice and sea sediments, we can compare isotope counts in tree rings, we have a lot of very good evidence. Sure, none of it is conclusive by itself but together it makes an overwhelming case; at some point a sane person has to go "if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck... "

 

Put it another way. You are walking down a railway tunnel and see a light coming towards you. You are 99% certain that it's a train; should you get off the rails? Or, go: "well there's a 1% chance I don't have to bother, and my crazy cousin is pretty convinced it's a person with a torch; what the hell -I'll just sit here on my fat lazy arse and wait to see what happens."

 

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080...ate-change.html

 

Seriously...I agree!

[capt_cope]

Right back on topic! Ok so O'Reilly mentioned the word lynch and the name of a black lady in the same breath....... Apes like bananas, but I've heard Barack Obama hates them.

 

 

Holy {censored} I used both ape and obama in the same sentence! Why do I still have a job?

 

 

Ok see now? The topic was stupid, but we've strung it out for three pages.

 

And as to the science... I have no idea, I believe I pointed that out earlier. As a general principle though, I don't consider wikipedia to be terribly reliable, since any {censored} can edit it. Meaning someone with as little knowledge of the facts as I could edit it. Which really doesn't make me say "Yeah I trust that most of that info is reliable." Add to that the fact that I don't really care, I just have a very hard time believing anything endorsed by Al Gore, and you've got a recipe for an un-ending debate. I keep pointing out they haven't proved anything, they keep correcting my dates on the birth of the world.

 

And no micro/macro evolution... right... Show me the frozen remains of a human/lizard and we'll talk.

 

And another thing, the general populace IS pretty damn stupid. And a stronger central government does one thing: removes individual's freedoms. You want a police state, move to one, lets not ruin the last free country.

[consolation]

And no micro/macro evolution... right... Show me the frozen remains of a human/lizard and we'll talk.

 

OK, but that's just retarded... I'm sorry but there's no other way to phrase it. Unless, you are being ironic, please tell me you are not that ill informed.

 

Right, maybe you are a little kid. OK, honey, that's not how evolution works. There never where man-lizards (just lounge lizards) or dog-snakes, they never existed either. Not even a fern-horse. In late carboniferous the first truly terrestrial species diverged from the amphibians. They diverged into synapsids from which humans eventually evolve and sauropods from which lizards, dinosaurs, crodillians etc evolve (see you can't even have a lizard-alligator). Eventually ~ 260M years ago they branched off the therapsids, which by the mid Triassic start to look reasonably mammalian (cynodonts). Anyway, competition with the ancestors of archosaurs forces them into small, shrew like insectivores. Likely tree climbers and likely nocturnal - a big pressure to become warm blooded. Warm blooded tree climbers -I'm sure you can see where this is going... If you want the rest of the story my eight year old has a text book. In case your primary school left gaps in your education.

 

And another thing, the general populace IS pretty damn stupid. And a stronger central government does one thing: removes individual's freedoms. You want a police state, move to one, lets not ruin the last free country.

 

A strong central govt. protects it's citizens from being exploited and ensures an equitable distribution of resources. This "last free country" bs is just stuff used to convince you to get willingly shafted by ppl with vested interests in the status quo.