Tim Daneliuk wrote:
wrote:
SNEEP


Populist politics funds _some_ of the 'science establishment'
because it receives a return on that investment. That
return will be reduced if populist politics begins to
micromanage the 'science establishment'.


I see, so the message is, "Pay up and stay out
of our way." Can you see how this might just be
a *teeny* problem?

If you saw that in what I wrote, you put it there yourself.



The American Cancer Society and the American Lung Association
quite debating the tobacco companies because the tobacco
companies got more benefit from the existance of the debate
than they lost from the content of the debate itself.
That, and the tobacco companies also used the debates
as a platform from which to disseminate outright lies.

Interesting you should mention this. There is no question
that inhaling cigarette smoke for many years is correlated
to a statistically shorter lifespan. However, the
anti-smoking zealots (and that's what they are) fail
to mention a few inconvenient facts:

None of which are relevant to the reasons why the ACS and ALA
quite debating the tobacco companies.


... But this
doesn't stop the Professional Behavior Nannies from trying to
outlaw things other people find pleasurable and use a very
stilted version of "science" to justify itself.

You have fallen for the nicotine cartel propoganda. Smokers
find smoking 'pleasurable' the same way that migraine sufferers
find imitrex 'pleasurable'. Smoking temporarily relieves
suffering that is brought on by the addiction itself. Perhaps
the biggest lie about smoking is that people want to smoke.
Very few people do, most smoke exclusively to relieve the
symptoms of withdrawal sickness.

Now, it is a tough call as to which drugs to permit, which
to regulate, which to ban. I don't claim to have any particular
insight in the matter. But note that we (whether you approve
of it or not) have the FDA and BATF who concern themselves with,
amonng other things, the safety of those drugs. You can't
get away with selling alcoholic beverages with dangerous
levels of methanol, or ethylene glycol. But the nicotine
cartels continue to distribute their drug in a manner that
carries all sorts of unnecessary risks.



One expects the Christian Coalition to do the same.

You're kidding yourself. There's more of them than there
are of you. They pay a lot of taxes, and they donate
to a lot of political campaigns.

Last I heard between 2 and 3 million, they do not have
nearly as much money as the tobacco companies and today
most people do understand that nicotine is addictive,
something the tobacco companies denied so long as they
were allowed to debate the issue.


You jolly well better
have a better strategy than "they'll just go away" or you will
find your funding and independence severly compromised in the
not-so-distant future. That is yet another reason to meet them
on the discussion of ID to *engage* now and either make them
demonstrate the validity of their claims, or slink off to try
something else.

The 'Creation Sicentists' went away, (actually, many converted
to 'IDers').



SNIP

"Intelligent Design" is just a reformulation of Creationism
in which the Creator "guides' the evolution of species rather
than creating them directly by divine will. It is pretty ...

That's not exactly the case. Some versions of "author"
theories accept evolution as a mechanism, some do not.


But that doesn't change the fact that the esential element
of each is "God did it".

Another strawman. An "intelligent designer" did it.

There is no functional diffference (e.g. testable hypothesis)
between 'intellignet designer' and God. Only if you restrict
the defintion of God to thatused by some specific religious
sect can you argue that intelligent design could proceed without
a God.

They
do not (for purposes of this discussion) imbue that designer
with the specific moral attributes of a Judeo-Christian
God. Quit fighting the fight you understand and look at
the fight you're being offered.


The Christian Coalition absolutely does imbue the designer with
the specific moral attributes of a Christian God. They are the
principle proponents of ID today.

--

FF