A thrilling debate about God took place several days ago at a Southern California Synagogue.
Dennis Prager offered Judaism. Dinesh D’Souza offered Christianity. Christopher Hitchens offered Atheism.
All three of these men offered sheer brilliance.
The opening statements and rebuttals were discussed with eloquent points and sharp counterpoints.
For those thinking that bringing the closing statements at the beginning of a column is further proof of a rumpus backwards column, those were transcripted days ago. Those that have the transgression of not having read them already shall scroll to the appropriate genius on their own time.
With that, some giant conclusions about God are below.
Hitchens: With regards to Kim Il Sung, it is said that on the date of his birth, birds sing in Korean. I do not know any birds that sing in Korean. As for Kim Jong Il, President Bush and other leaders refer to him as “Mr. Chairman,” not “Mr. president.” This is because for the last 13 years, the true supreme leader of North Korea is the deceased father. His son is merely carrying out his father’s instructions. This is not secular. This is mysticism, the result of believing in a supernatural intervention.
When God orders killing, you kill all, and spare nobody. Secularists do not even think about this stuff, or about things such as suicide bombing. The Founding Fathers were secular. How do you get from Deism to Theism? Theists care about who you sleep with and what you eat. Outside of religion, how does the big bang lead to virgin births? The fastest growing religion in America today is no religion. Secularism is winning.
Prager: The discussion tonight was the case for God, not the case for religion. We can debate religion another night, but this is about the case for God. If God created humans, then God would care how they fare. If we care and God does not, then we are greater than God. We are not, so God gives humans a conscience. The first two men created were Cane and Abel. One of them kills the other, and only then does God destroy all since he wants goodness.
Then comes Noah, and Noah gets laws. This is the second attempt that fails when laws are broken. God again destroys all. God’s third attempt at a good world comes in the form of the Hebrews. They were chosen not because they were the greatest, but specifically because they were the smallest. If even as the least among us, they can be a moral light, then all people can spread good. God wants goodness. From Adam to Noah to Abraham, we have the current Jews. There is more than one road to God, according to Jews. Christians have done God’s will. Yet while there is one empirical truth, there is not only one way to God. Jews must defend Christians for shared values.
D’Souza: Suffering is just as difficult for Atheism. The amount of evil is on a scale that is staggering. The lion may want to eat the antelope, but he does not want to kill them all. Serial killers are called bestialbut beasts do not act that way. Humans are worse. Secularists cite Neitzsche, but even Neitzsche said that “To remove God, and to hang onto the morality from God, is not possible.”
Darwinians ignore Rwanda. There is no bond. They are not family. Religion offers a final accounting, that current evil deeds do lead to future punishment, a type of caste system. Even Torquemada worried about a final judgment, but Mao or Stalin did not. Religion equals a ladder from man to God. It is God who comes down, not humans who go up. God is a bridge to human salvation.
The moderator then asked a few questions.
Moderaotr: WHy doesn’t God just reveal himself and end the argument? Will he?
Prager: If God performed a miracle, it would impact people for three days. Then scientists would explain cloud formations. God revealed himself to the Jews, and then we built a golden calf after he split the sea. People are ungrateful from birth. Babies do not shut up so parents can have peace. There is nothing new to be revealed or to be said. God gives an instruction manual. If we follow the manual, good things will happen.
Hitchens: There is nothing against child abuse or genocide in the 10 Commandments. There was no condemnation of slavery. Yet, coveting, yes, that is mentioned. That is man made.
Prager: The Egyptians celebrated death. The Pyramids are tombs. Jews celebrated life in a world centered around death. This tradition of Jews celebrating life when surrounded by a culture of death continues to this day.
Hitchens: I could not accept a loving God. You cannot design your own God, who owes no explanation. That is idolatry. Saying that one “has nothing to lose by believing” is dishonest. God looks kinder on someone who is not bribed by reward or punishment. If there was a God, I would like to think he would be kinder towards me for doing good deeds not because I want to make him happy or out of fear of making hi mad, but without caring about his opinion at all. We are responsible for caring for each other because it is decent, not because of Heaven or Hell.
D’Souza: Demanding material proof for the immaterial building is not practical. Gravity is inferred. Atheists remain unconvinced. They have a refusal to believe even if they were given evidence.
Moderator: What is the Atheist’s source of dignity?
Hitchens: The Golden Rule of doing unto others as you would want them to do unto you is Atheistic, despite religions claiming credit for it. Values are innate in all of us.
Moderator: How can Jews be saved without believing in Jesus?
D’Souza: All salvation is through Christ, but divine justice is unknowable. Christian theology can extend beyond Christians, but God may disagree.
Moderator: Who was Jesus?
Prager: Jesus was a religious Jew who would be baffled by decisions made in his name. One example would be religions that ban divorce. Judaism wants people to live a fulfilling life. A bad marriage is unfulfilling. Looking at Jesus is not the same thing as looking at Christians. What brings one to the God of Israel is good. Jesus came to non-Jews. He had no reason to come to Jews. Judaism teaches that God never took a human form. Moses Maimonides, the Rambam, said that “Christians have brought more people to Judaism than the Torah.” Christianity in its goodness is better than some bad isolated acts by Christians such as the Inquisition.
Moderator: Atheism may offer no consolation, but why should there be any suffering, such as what happened to Job?
D’Souza: The premise is not God’s compassion, but compassion and justice. It is not about only belief, but about law. Physical laws exist. Moral evil exists because we have free will. The alternative is that we are automatons. Hitler was responsible for the Holocaust, not God. Atheism offers no moral explanation for evil, and that we are all just molecules. Religion offers hope and consolation.
Moderator: Where does the the Atheist’s morality originate? Why do we obsess about justice and fairness when little of either exists?
Hitchens: As I previously said, the Golden Rule is my guide. No society has savagery as a good, where goodness is despised. That will not be found.
D’Souza: What is the Darwinian explanation for the Golden Rule? How does it relate to business and family? It is religion that teaches us to give up our seat on a bus to an old person. It is religion that teaches us to give blood, and to engage in military service.
Hitchens: Saying that natural selection exists is not an endorsement. Look at the dinosaurs, sheep, and rats. God did not care. The British Health Service never runs out of blood. Blood replenishes, so one person’s gain is not another person’s loss. Giving blood is not a self interest or a sacrifice. It is a rational calculation. The pleasure of doing good is based on the gift relationship. If I need blood, again, rational self interest kicks in. Higher primates adhere to the Golden Rule, yet we as humans are too lazy to study it. Giving God that credit denigrates man.
My ears are still ringing from the thunderous applause of the audience.
As for the Tygrrrr Express, no analysis could be as superb as the event itself in its descriptive form.
I remain a proud Hebrew with a deep respect for Christianity. Yet I can also appreciate the argument of a brilliant Atheist, regardless of my not being swayed.
All men may be created equal, but what they do with their gifts is unequal.
Mr. Prager, Mr. D’Souza, and Mr. Hitchens are absolutely brilliant, and their discussion was one for the ages.
eric
D’Souza really doesn’t see just how insulting he is, doe he? “Darwinians ignore Rwanda.”??? That sounds like the ranting of a moron, not a brilliant commentator. “Hitler was responsible for the Holocaust, not God.” But without the historic religious tentions between Christians and Jews is this man saying there still would have been a Holocaust???”What is the Darwinian explanation for the Golden Rule? How does it relate to business and family? It is religion that teaches us to give up our seat on a bus to an old person. It is religion that teaches us to give blood, and to engage in military service.” I don’t think D’Souza belonged on that stage.
JMJ
JMJ;
“.” But without the historic religious tentions between Christians and Jews is this man saying there still would have been a Holocaust???”
Mans free will to interpret God and the bible is what caused the tensions that led to the holocaust Jersey.
Just the same as radical Islam has distorted the teachings of the Koran for ideological purposes.
And the same basically goes for the many number of wars and atrocities commited in the name of God.
Do you really believe that God told Andrea Yates to drown her children ?
You cannot fight over something and blame the fight on that one thing.
But does Andrea drown those kids if there was no Christianity? Would she even have suffered such mentakl turmoil were she not locked into a fundamentalist Christian lifestyle? Would the Holocaust have happened if there was no Judeo-Christianity? Would the radical theocratic terrorists be flying planes into towers with Judaism, Christianity and Islam? Sure, they could have come up with some other relgion that could have had the same results, but you cannot say that religion has nothing to do with human cruelty. It’s very certain irrationality opens the door for all sorts of insanity. You can say that otehr factors were involved, but you cannot deny at least a role of religion.
JMJ
I guess we could blame your inability to understand this on atheism?
Your fighting another loosing battle here.
If there was no gum no one would ever fight over the last stick?
I did not say it has “nothing to do with cruelty”
Do not put words in my mouth. This what you do when your position is squashed.
I said no such thing.
The people who do these evil things do it as a relex to their own thoughts.
Its the people!
People who hate the military use it as an excuse to bomb recruiting centers.
Is it the recruiting centers fault ?
People opposed to abortion bomb the clinics.
Is it the clinics fault?
While were at it we should get rid of all currency and wealth.
Its the dollars fault we all fight so much.
Well, money is the root of all evil. LOL!
The point I’m making is that religion divides people into separate classes while instilling in them a taste for the irrational. That’s a highly combustive mix.
JMJ
People will always be irrational.
The subject of the irrationality will always be something.
Religion only feeds the irrationality because it is an issue that holds morals and ethics as its foundation.
True, your more likely to get hurt in a fight over religion than you are a stick of gum.
But the bottom line is that its the people who will always find something to fight about because they see an threat, injustice or opposition , be it race , land, money or resources. Religion leads people to percive all those in a different light thaqt justifies there actions.
Hitler had a vision that I think was bred of simple ignorance and insecurity.
I doubt religion/christianity gave him those complexes.
He only used thee religion to bolster it all as an ethical justification.
No different than an adult man forcing himself on 13 year olds in the name of God.
The character defects are there. And we can look to our faith as a way to combat these complexes and defects or use it to justify them.
Most of the time religion and faith has prevailed in doing good.
But that also comes from the personal motivation to want to be a better person.
I went from believing I wanted another beer to believing in a higher power not because religion came first. The need to be free of BS came first.
“While were at it we should get rid of all currency and wealth.
Its the dollars fault we all fight so much.” LOL! But “Bravo” Micky!
As you can tell by the dialogue between Micky and Jersey, this is an extremely thought provoking post, Eric. It is interesting to me that Atheists blame religion for the acts of people such as Andrea Yates. She is deranged, and it wasn’t Christianity that caused her to kill her children. I truly believe she would have been just as deranged without religion and would still have killed her children. People have a tendency to go nuts and it has nothing to do with whether they are religious or not or what religion they belong to. It just happens to be a fact that we will always have to contend with evil on this earth, and evil is always perpetrated by men – or women – and we still don’t know why some people are deranged and others are not. Thankfully there are still more good people in this world than evil ones.
In addition, people are always going to be arguing whether there is or isn’t a supreme being. As for me, I believe it takes more faith to not believe in God than it does to believe in God. Supposedly, according to Darwinism, the big bang caused all this. So… what was there before the big bang? How can something explode if there is absolutely nothing there? Everything in our solar system runs like a perfectly made swiss watch. Accidental? That’s like saying if you throw the parts of a watch in the air enough times sooner or later they will fall and form a perfectly made watch. To believe that takes incredible faith. I don’t have that kind of faith. It’s far easier for me to believe in God.
Just finished a comparative Religions class and followed the Hitchens’ debate series thouroughly. He walks all over them in my opinion.
Also, Richard Dawkins -his close friend- goes ever farther with his newest book, “The God Delusion.”
I believe there is a strong atheist movement brewing. Look at the You Tube comments for atheist based videos and you’ll see what I mean. The fallacies and weaknesses of Man Made religion grow larger with time!
OH! in response to Gayle, here’s the basic fallacy of your logic.
For one, there is immense proof of the Big Bang. It’s not just something conjured up in the minds of scientists, there is evidence… literally all over the universe! You should read into it really.
“What was there before the Big Bang?” Well, we may never know with that kind of Event Horizon, but let’s break it down to basic logic… “Cause and Effect”
What ’caused’ the ‘effect’ of the big bang? If you say God, then you must say what ’caused’ God. It is a basic fallacy of logic to define an effect with a cause that it itself was not caused. When you do that, you abandon logic and it makes no sense whatsever.
Now, I personally think that the existence of God makes for a great debate… EXCELLENT. But once you start trying to argue the ‘Nature’ of God, that opens up a whole new area! I won’t go there now, but I will say if you’re part of an exclusive Religion that ONLY thinks it is the correct way and NOTHING else, than that just seems close minded! Saying that everyone else but YOU is wrong.
If not, then I commend you :)
Brian C.
Brian.
People everywhere believe in so many things that have no physical strutcure what so ever.
To claim someone is walking all over anyone is ridiculous.
Especially when it cannot be proven one way or another that God does or does not exist.
Is the belief itself flawed ?
No more flawed than the devotion and worship we see towards the global warming movement. Or the many conspiracy theories we hear every day.
” If you say God, then you must say what ’caused’ God. ”
“Well, we may never know with that kind of Event Horizon,”
Is it only me who sees the contradiction here ?
“Religion only feeds the irrationality because it is an issue that holds morals and ethics as its foundation.”
No. “Religion only feeds the irrationality” because it is IRRATIONAL. It makes no sense. If you put your senses to religion you have no choice but to doubt, unless there’s something wrong with you. (“you” as a third person, of course)
JMJ
Ooo, I love good discussion/debate. I’ll stay as civil as possible.
Micky2
Both your comments are surprisingly related, which is what is so interesting here.
Yes, it is true, there is the concept of faith does arise in many situations, and I would agree that spirituality is a good thing that everyone possesses and should express. This is my main disagreement with Religions that are exclusive.
Exclusive Religions do indeed ‘walk all over people.’ They say that irregardless of your actions and/or beliefs, you will go to some kind of Hell if you do not agree with their core philosophy. No matter what, you are wrong. Also, Exclusive Religions, unlike the eastern religions which merely say “If you want to join you’re welcome to,” can be very pushy about getting non members to join. I would say that kind of constitutes ‘walk all over people’… just keep in mind, it’s only walking all over people who aren’t a part of their Religion.
No, perhaps it cannot really be proven whether or not God exists. If it could then there wouldn’t be an argument as to who was correct! So, since there is no ‘evidence,’ unless you justify the existence of everything as evidence- to which I say, all that proves is that we perceive everything to exist, not that it was created. So, lack of evidence aside, we use faith, which itself is defined as
A belief in an idea that is unsupported, or contradicted, by evidence.
What a perfect match! Coincidence? Not hardly. There is no Bonafide ‘theory’ in science that has no proof. It cannot be accepted because it cannot be tested. This is why intelligent design is largely regected by the scientific community. It can’t withstand the rigors of science because it’s just not compatible.
As for global warming being a conspiracy, lol, why is it that you’re going along with the vast minority of people and scientists who say that it’s not real? Do you honestly think that the release of millions of tons of greenhouse gasses is not effecting the temperature here? Just look at the latest proof, sattellites have shown that the amount of heat leaving the earth into space has decreased markedly over the past 30 years. The people who claim global warming doesn’t exist are motivated by greed via oil. The combustion engine has been obsolete for so long, we’ve had electric cars for almost 30 years but their patents have been supressed just as long by the OIL COMPANIES. Good electric cars = less oil profits. Global warming=innovation=less oil profits. These junk scientists who claim global warming isn’t real are motivated by oil companies to keep profits up. The longer it can be disputed, the longer profits keep rolling in! There’s so much proof of global warming, how can you ignore it ALL because of a global cooling cycle and a few pundits with vested interests claiming it a hoax!
Whew, you struct something I’m passionate about.
Finnally The event horizon limitation I mentioned, just because we can’t know what caused the big bang, doesn’t mean we can’t come right up to it and proove it with all the available evidence.
I have evidence, you have faith. Which one holds up in court? Which one holds up to scientific rigor? When the church controls government and science, we tend to get stuck thinking that earth is flat and at the center of the universe.
I look forward to your response!
Brian C.
JMJ;
“No. “Religion only feeds the irrationality” because it is IRRATIONAL. It makes no sense. If you put your senses to religion you have no choice but to doubt, unless there’s something wrong with you. (”you” as a third person, of course)”
You miss the point jersey.
One person believes that his set of morals are better than someone elses.
In my opinion its just as irrational to make the claim that we are just bugs in a petri dish.
I belong to no religion Brian.
I choose not to be a member of mass indoctrination.
My statement refering to “walking all over people”\was in connection to your opinion on Hitchens opinions that were somehow contaverting his opponents.
Brian;
“A belief in an idea that is unsupported, or contradicted, by evidence.”
And any evidence of a big bang theory is also inconclusive seeing as how it only relates to a certain time frame.
Brian;
Finnally The event horizon limitation I mentioned, just because we can’t know what caused the big bang, doesn’t mean we can’t come right up to it and proove it with all the available evidence.
You have evidence that only supports a theory.
Your evidence is subjective and has applied to many theories depending on the scientisits motivation.
Much like global warming.
As far as global warming goes, you are seriously misguided.
The vast minority of people that say it is not real ?
Brian
I’ve had many debates on this , and it has all had boiled down to a non conclusive issue.
I am not against any form of maintaining and keeping our environment safe.
What I am against is the implications and threats for our society that environmentalism holds.
Did you know that over the last century, global temperatures have risen about one degree, and that, furthermore, temperatures haven’t risen in about a decade? Did you know that two out of three scientists recently poled in each state of this country don’t believe that global warming is anything close to catastrophic? Did you know that over 17,000 scientists, ranging from climatologists to oceanographers to geophysicists, have signed the Oregon Petition, which declares that “there is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate”?
Did you know that worldwide, that figure of scientists more than doubles?
Here’s a quote from our brilliant MIT climatologist Richard Lindzen (whom I trust far more than Al Gore )
“There have been repeated claims that the 2007 year’s hurricane activity was another sign of human-induced climate change. Everything from the heat wave in Paris to heavy snows in Buffalo has been blamed on people burning gasoline to fuel their cars, and coal and natural gas to heat, cool and electrify their homes. Yet how can a barely discernible, one-degree increase in the recorded global mean temperature since the late 19th century possibly gain public acceptance as the source of recent weather catastrophes? And how can it translate into unlikely claims about future catastrophes?”
Many if not most scientists don’t think this kind of alarmism is at all justified. But if you find me so difficult to believe, ignore me, please, and listen to the words of the enviros themselves:
From one of the High Priests of Environmentalism, Stephen Schneider, a “scientist” (and it will be clear in a moment why I put that word in quotation marks) at Stanford University, and also one of the main men at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder. This is what he told Discover Magazine:
“On the one hand, as scientists, we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but.… On the other hand, we are not just scientists, but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place. To do that we need to get some broad-based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we ourselves might have….Each of us has to decide” (as opposed to letting the actual facts dictate) “what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.” (Discover, p. 47.)
“The ending of the human epoch on Earth” (written by philosopher Paul Taylor in Respect for Nature: A Theory of Environmental Ethics) “would most likely be greeted with a hearty ‘Good riddance!’”
Biologist David M. Graber of the U.S. National Park Services calls human beings a “cancer”; in the same article, he goes on to say: “I know social scientists who remind me that people are part of nature, but it isn’t true …Until such time as Homo sapiens should decide to return to nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along.” (“Mother Nature as a Hothouse Flower,” Los Angles Times Book Review.)
The head of the 1992 Earth Summit asks in all seriousness: “Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?”
“In Los Angles, curbside recycling means that the city had to have eight hundred rather than four hundred trucks to pick up trash. And that city already has an air pollution problem.” (Facts Not Fear, p. 49.)
The ban on CFC chemicals, such as Freon, which is used for refrigeration, has, according to the New York Times, created a huge black market, not unlike the so-called war on drugs. “Law enforcement officials say the refrigerant has become the most lucrative contraband after illicit drugs.” (Judy Edelson Halpert, “Freon Smugglers Find Big Market,” New York Times.)
“In 1980 the late Julian Simon, economist and political philosopher, had, like many of us, grown frustrated with the Malthusian claims which in essence state that, because of population growth, the world is “soon” going to run out of food, oil, and other raw materials. Forget that the Malthusian predictions have never panned out and that Thomas Malthus himself was spectacularly wrong in his more immediate predictions—still the Malthusians keep proclaiming. So in 1980 Julian Simon made a $10,000 bet, open to any takers. He allowed his opponents to choose any raw materials, including grain and fossil fuels, and he wagered that, as long as the material wasn’t government controlled, the item or items chosen would have dropped in price at least one year later. He allowed his opponents also to choose the time of reckoning. [Environmental high priest] Paul Ehrlich, of Stanford University, had written in 1970: ‘I if were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.’ Fittingly, it was this same Mr. Ehrlich, along with two Stanford colleagues, Harte and Holdren, who accepted Julian Simon’s challenge, stating they would ‘accept Simon’s astonishing offer before other greedy people jump in.’ Ehrilich added: ‘The lure of easy money can be irresistible.’ They chose copper, chrome, nickel, tin, and tungsten, and a ten-year period.
“At settling time, in September of 1990, not only the sum of the prices, but also the price of each individual metal had fallen. Julian Simon offered to make the same bet again, at increased stakes, but the Ehrlich group never took him up on his second offer.” (Julian Simon, The Ultimate Resource 2, p. 35-36.)
In 1980, the Global 2000 report predicted that “at least 500,000 to 600,000 species” would become extinct in the next twenty years. We now know that this was not only totally inaccurate, but had absolutely no factual basis to begin with. It was pure guess work, with a very specific agenda. “In the history of the planet earth, species have always come into and gone out of existence. The existing data on the observed rates of species extinction are fatuously incongruous with conservationist claims, as, in 1992, even the sympathetic World Conservation Monitoring Centre conceded.” Quoting their words: “In fact, these and other data indicate that the number of recorded extinctions for both plants and animals is very small….” (Heygood and Stuart 1992 p. 93.)
Here’s a little more (please note the dates):
“I take this opportunity to express my opinion in the strongest terms, that the amazing exhibition of oil which has characterized the last twenty, and will probably characterize the next ten or twenty years, is nevertheless, not only geologically but historically, a temporary and vanishing phenomenon—one which young men will live to see come to its natural end” (1886, J.P. Lesley, state geologist of Pennsylvania).
“There is little or no chance for more oil in California” (1886, U.S. Geological Survey).
“There is little or no chance for more oil in Kansas and Texas” (1891, U.S. Geological Survey).
“Total future production limit of 5.7 billion barrels of oil, perhaps a ten-year supply” (1914, U.S. Bureau of Mines).
“Reserves to last only thirteen years” (1939, Department of the Interior).
“Reserves to last thirteen years” (1951, Department of the Interior, Oil and Gas Division).
“We could use up all of the proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of the next decade” (Former President Jimmy Carter speaking in 1978 to the entire world).
“At the present rate of use, it is estimated that coal reserves will last 200 more years. Petroleum may run out in 20 to 30 years, and natural gas may last only another 70 years” (1980, Merrill high school textbook Science Connections).
“At the current rate of consumption, some scientists estimate that the world’s known supplies of oil … will be used up within your lifetime” (1993, The United States and its People).
“The supply of fossil fuels is being used up at an alarming rate. Governments must help save our fossil fuel supply by passing laws limiting their use” (1993, Glenco textbook Biology, An Everyday Experience).
(Give particular heed to that last sentence.)
Quotes like these could fill a thousand pages easily. Here, for the hell of it, are a couple more:
The Sierra Club website has this resolution: “State and federal laws should be changed to encourage small families and discourage large families.”
(Government bureaucrats, in other words, should tell us how many children we are allowed to have. As they do in Communist China, for instance. Let it also be noted, however, that this is coming from a group whose founder, Mr. John Muir, wrote in 1894 that the Indians of Yosemite Valley were “mostly ugly, and some of them altogether hideous.” They “seemed to have no right place in the landscape,” and they disturbed his “solemn calm.”)
“The technique is to introduce legislation to achieve some vague, positive-sounding generality, such as ‘worker safety’ or ‘environmental protection’—things no politician will want to go on record voting against. When the legislation is passed and a new regulatory agency is created to enforce it, that’s when the actual decisions are made about what specific restrictions will be imposed and which lands will be removed from human use. Governmental power is passed down to an army of minor bureaucrats who are not accountable to the people and only vaguely accountable to Congress and the president.
“Consider that federal regulatory agencies make thousands of rulings each year, adding about 80,000 pages annually to the Federal Register. Do you think Congress can exercise ‘oversight’ by debating all 80,000 pages of these regulations? Do you think the president, his advisors and his cabinet officers can consider and personally approve all of these decrees? Of course not. By its nature, the federal decree-issuing apparatus cannot be controlled, and it has only one tendency: to impose more regulations and, by filling the federal register with such restrictions, to make private activities like logging grind to a halt.
“These campaigns are proof of the greens’ real motives. They want to stop development and keep the Third World in a state of poverty—while they work to bring the same ideal of poverty to industrialized nations. Most environmentalists embrace this goal, but few dare to admit it openly—so they peddle a variety of ruses to hide their meaning, ranging from ‘sustainable development’ to ‘shrinkth,’ a term suggested by the editor of Earth Island Journal as a less negative-sounding ‘antonym for growth’.”
“Nobody is interested in solutions if they don’t think there’s a problem. Given that starting point, I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous it is …” Mr. Albert Gore, ladies and gentleman, Grist magazine.
This tiny set of quotations, culled quickly and more or less at random, doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface. If you’d like more, please let me know. I have notebooks full of them.
Also , as you can see I am very up to date and aware of how alarmism is used to promote agenda driven by ideoligy from one side or tthe other.
If you would like to join the rest of the lemmings running off the cliff with their hair in fire , by all means be my guest.
But I will not be brought into the hysteria by the guilt the enviromental movement wishs to impose upon me.
And I will not be a part of the down turn it will inflict upon our freedoms, market and technologoies
Wait a minute, Micky, you get the event horizon and don’t accepy modern physics??? What the ##### man?
JMJ
It all depends on what you percieve to be on that horizon.
Do the eventsin process lead you to believe in a divine discovery beyond that horizon or a bug in a petri dish?
Are there bigger bangs going on elsewhere ?
As we all can fathom time and space are immeasurable. So consequently your imagination combined with a few plausable theories can lead you to endless scenarios.
Whos to say what could actually of taken place at the perimeter of a black hole 10 trillion light years ago? Or what is taking place inside of it now.
Relativity almost holds almost no place in even trying to concieve the possibilities.
But I do know the difference between chicken and meat.
I don’t see the plausibility of God, Micky. Somehow I get the feeling that there are more rational explanations yet to be discovered.
JMJ
I don’t see the plausibility of global warming, Jersey. Somehow I get the feeling that there are more rational explanations yet to be discovered.
Brian !
I thought you were looking forward to my response ?
I’m also looking forward to yours.