January 26, 2013
By Tom Trinko
Generally speaking, liberals in America espouse the belief that science is great and that it endorses liberalism.
They also attempt to cast conservatives as ignorant savages whose beliefs are similar to Cro-Magnon pagans.
The reality is that when it comes to science it is liberals who live in a bizarro world.
Let's look at a few examples.
Science has conclusively demonstrated that at conception a new human being with uniquely human DNA is formed. At conception, the entire biological identity of a person is established -- their gender, their hair color, their skin tone, etc.
Yet liberals constantly refer to the unborn as "blobs of tissue" or "a part of the woman's body". The latter statement is also directly refuted by science.
Modern medical science has discovered that one of the key reasons for the umbilical cord is to ensure that the mother's immune system can't get to her unborn daughter. At the most fundamental biological level the mother's immune system, which decides what is self and what is not self, recognizes a woman's daughter as not self.
But liberals ignore the clear scientific data that human life begins at conception in order to continue to advocate the legalized killing of some humans who are declared, in direct contradiction to the clear scientific evidence, to be not human solely because of their age.
Then there's so called global warming, now renamed to climate change. Irrespective of who is right or wrong about global warming -- the alarmists or the sane people, no bias here -- the way liberals treat the debate shows their complete lack of understanding about how science works.
Science is science because of experiments. If you can't define a repeatable experiment that can either prove or falsify a theory all you have is a theory; and theories are just smart men thinking and we all know how off course smart men can go. As such it doesn't matter how many, or few, scientists believe something is true. All that matters is what does the experimental data show.
We've seen cases where the entire scientific community, except for one dissenter, was wrong. Back in 1912 Alfred Wegener presented his theory of continental drift to the scientific community. Everyone said he was wrong. Fast forward to the 1960s when new data showed he was right. Even though he was one scientist out of thousands from 1912 to the 1960s he was right and they were wrong.
Yet liberals are always declaring that global warming must be real because the "majority" of scientists support it. This is symptomatic of a typical liberal problem; contrary to their belief truth is not defined by a vote, or by who is in power.
Then there's the whole homosexuality thing. To date no study has shown that being gay is genetic; to do that it would be necessary to show that twins separated at birth both tended to turn out homosexual but the tiny fraction of homosexuals in the population makes it impossible to find a statistically viable sample of separated homosexual twins.
On the other hand, studies do show a good correlation between a missing or weak father figure early in a boys life and eventual homosexual behavior. The success of reparative therapy on many homosexuals also indicates that being gay is not like being black; ignoring the fact that one's race is not a moral issue since all races are morally equal -- it is how one behaves that defines one's quality as a person.
Yet in spite of this evidence liberals insist on declaring that God made homosexuals gay. Irrespective of one's moral beliefs (is active homosexuality right or is it wrong), ignoring science and saying that homosexuals are trapped by their biology does a disservice to both gays and public discourse.
Liberals seem to ignore the fact that morality of something is independent of its genetic component. If it were to be found that some gene is common in men who rape women, it would not make rape an okay thing. Hence even if homosexuality is genetic, it can still be morally wrong; after all, genetically speaking, most men have a tendency to be promiscuous but that doesn't mean cheating on your wife is okay.
On a related note remember when liberals were telling us that science predicted a heterosexual AIDS epidemic was just around the corner? Of course, over 30 years later there is no heterosexual AIDS epidemic in America.
Doctors originally called AIDS GRIDS, Gay Related Immune Deficiency Syndrome, because only gays contracted it. Liberal outcries forced the change to the more neutral name. Ignoring the medical data, liberals told Americans that we must spend a fortune to cure AIDS because everyone might soon die of it. Another example of a common liberal meme; pseudoscience reveals a problem so you must spend tons of taxpayer money to fix it.
Liberals also told us that science says that condoms would protect us from AIDS, and pretty much all other STDs. Anyone who took a sex-ed class in pre-AIDS America would be shocked by that, since they were taught that condoms were a joke because they failed so often. Science has shown that condoms will reduce the chance of catching AIDS for each time someone has sex with an infected partner -- assuming they don't fail. But if as a result of falsely believing that condoms are failsafe an individual has sex with an infected partner multiple times he will get AIDS; condoms can only delay the inevitable. Liberals ignore this bit of scientific data because they want consequence-free sex. Sadly, many people have either died or now need lifelong medical treatment because they've contracted AIDS after listening to this bit of liberal pseudoscience.
There are also examples from the "soft sciences" such as sociology. Generally speaking, unlike physics, chemistry, and the other hard sciences, the soft sciences are those in which controlled experiments are either hard or impossible to construct. For example, sociologists can compare drug users to non-drug users and see what factors -- such as parental drug use -- seem correlated with using drugs. But they can't take a drug user back to his childhood and raise him up again with different circumstances in order to see if their theory is right. As such, truth is always less clear in the soft sciences; but that doesn't mean that it is absent.
On the issue of gun control, studies have shown that there is good reason to believe that armed crimes are reduced when the potential victims are armed. This appears rational when one considers that occupied houses are rarely broken into in America, where a reasonable fraction of homeowners have guns, but occupied houses are often burgled in England where the criminals know that the homeowners will be unarmed. Yet liberals continue to insist, in direct contradiction to sociological studies, that guns, not people, are the problem.
Decades of scientific studies have shown that women and men are different. Yet liberals insist on ignoring those results and declaring that women can be just as good as fireman or infantry soldiers as men. Now there are some women who would be better firemen than a lot of out-of-shape guys. The problem arises when liberals insist on defining different job fitness criteria for woman than for men even though those same liberals say women can do the exact same job as men.
Keep this in mind when you hear some liberal invoking science with more fervor than a revivalist minister invoking Jesus. Unlike the minister, who has probably at least studied the Bible, liberals will invoke science they don't understand and declare fiction to be fact so long as it seems to support their political position.
You can find more of tom's rants at his blog.
By Tom Trinko
Generally speaking, liberals in America espouse the belief that science is great and that it endorses liberalism.
They also attempt to cast conservatives as ignorant savages whose beliefs are similar to Cro-Magnon pagans.
The reality is that when it comes to science it is liberals who live in a bizarro world.
Let's look at a few examples.
Science has conclusively demonstrated that at conception a new human being with uniquely human DNA is formed. At conception, the entire biological identity of a person is established -- their gender, their hair color, their skin tone, etc.
Yet liberals constantly refer to the unborn as "blobs of tissue" or "a part of the woman's body". The latter statement is also directly refuted by science.
Modern medical science has discovered that one of the key reasons for the umbilical cord is to ensure that the mother's immune system can't get to her unborn daughter. At the most fundamental biological level the mother's immune system, which decides what is self and what is not self, recognizes a woman's daughter as not self.
But liberals ignore the clear scientific data that human life begins at conception in order to continue to advocate the legalized killing of some humans who are declared, in direct contradiction to the clear scientific evidence, to be not human solely because of their age.
Then there's so called global warming, now renamed to climate change. Irrespective of who is right or wrong about global warming -- the alarmists or the sane people, no bias here -- the way liberals treat the debate shows their complete lack of understanding about how science works.
Science is science because of experiments. If you can't define a repeatable experiment that can either prove or falsify a theory all you have is a theory; and theories are just smart men thinking and we all know how off course smart men can go. As such it doesn't matter how many, or few, scientists believe something is true. All that matters is what does the experimental data show.
We've seen cases where the entire scientific community, except for one dissenter, was wrong. Back in 1912 Alfred Wegener presented his theory of continental drift to the scientific community. Everyone said he was wrong. Fast forward to the 1960s when new data showed he was right. Even though he was one scientist out of thousands from 1912 to the 1960s he was right and they were wrong.
Yet liberals are always declaring that global warming must be real because the "majority" of scientists support it. This is symptomatic of a typical liberal problem; contrary to their belief truth is not defined by a vote, or by who is in power.
Then there's the whole homosexuality thing. To date no study has shown that being gay is genetic; to do that it would be necessary to show that twins separated at birth both tended to turn out homosexual but the tiny fraction of homosexuals in the population makes it impossible to find a statistically viable sample of separated homosexual twins.
On the other hand, studies do show a good correlation between a missing or weak father figure early in a boys life and eventual homosexual behavior. The success of reparative therapy on many homosexuals also indicates that being gay is not like being black; ignoring the fact that one's race is not a moral issue since all races are morally equal -- it is how one behaves that defines one's quality as a person.
Yet in spite of this evidence liberals insist on declaring that God made homosexuals gay. Irrespective of one's moral beliefs (is active homosexuality right or is it wrong), ignoring science and saying that homosexuals are trapped by their biology does a disservice to both gays and public discourse.
Liberals seem to ignore the fact that morality of something is independent of its genetic component. If it were to be found that some gene is common in men who rape women, it would not make rape an okay thing. Hence even if homosexuality is genetic, it can still be morally wrong; after all, genetically speaking, most men have a tendency to be promiscuous but that doesn't mean cheating on your wife is okay.
On a related note remember when liberals were telling us that science predicted a heterosexual AIDS epidemic was just around the corner? Of course, over 30 years later there is no heterosexual AIDS epidemic in America.
Doctors originally called AIDS GRIDS, Gay Related Immune Deficiency Syndrome, because only gays contracted it. Liberal outcries forced the change to the more neutral name. Ignoring the medical data, liberals told Americans that we must spend a fortune to cure AIDS because everyone might soon die of it. Another example of a common liberal meme; pseudoscience reveals a problem so you must spend tons of taxpayer money to fix it.
Liberals also told us that science says that condoms would protect us from AIDS, and pretty much all other STDs. Anyone who took a sex-ed class in pre-AIDS America would be shocked by that, since they were taught that condoms were a joke because they failed so often. Science has shown that condoms will reduce the chance of catching AIDS for each time someone has sex with an infected partner -- assuming they don't fail. But if as a result of falsely believing that condoms are failsafe an individual has sex with an infected partner multiple times he will get AIDS; condoms can only delay the inevitable. Liberals ignore this bit of scientific data because they want consequence-free sex. Sadly, many people have either died or now need lifelong medical treatment because they've contracted AIDS after listening to this bit of liberal pseudoscience.
There are also examples from the "soft sciences" such as sociology. Generally speaking, unlike physics, chemistry, and the other hard sciences, the soft sciences are those in which controlled experiments are either hard or impossible to construct. For example, sociologists can compare drug users to non-drug users and see what factors -- such as parental drug use -- seem correlated with using drugs. But they can't take a drug user back to his childhood and raise him up again with different circumstances in order to see if their theory is right. As such, truth is always less clear in the soft sciences; but that doesn't mean that it is absent.
On the issue of gun control, studies have shown that there is good reason to believe that armed crimes are reduced when the potential victims are armed. This appears rational when one considers that occupied houses are rarely broken into in America, where a reasonable fraction of homeowners have guns, but occupied houses are often burgled in England where the criminals know that the homeowners will be unarmed. Yet liberals continue to insist, in direct contradiction to sociological studies, that guns, not people, are the problem.
Decades of scientific studies have shown that women and men are different. Yet liberals insist on ignoring those results and declaring that women can be just as good as fireman or infantry soldiers as men. Now there are some women who would be better firemen than a lot of out-of-shape guys. The problem arises when liberals insist on defining different job fitness criteria for woman than for men even though those same liberals say women can do the exact same job as men.
Keep this in mind when you hear some liberal invoking science with more fervor than a revivalist minister invoking Jesus. Unlike the minister, who has probably at least studied the Bible, liberals will invoke science they don't understand and declare fiction to be fact so long as it seems to support their political position.
You can find more of tom's rants at his blog.
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