You claim that xkcd’s statement was “offensive,” yet you did nothing to report the post, simply whining publicly that you had been picked on while conveninetly omitting the reasons you have been corrected.
As I have already noted, your links did not say what you claim they said. (And now you have changed your claims about what is happening, finally admitting that it is individual scientists who are in conflict with religion–a point I have made previously in response to your claims that it was “Science” opposing religion).
As to your “honesty,” I already addressed that in the linked post I provided earlier.
I agree. That is why I have never attacked your beliefs* nor let anyone else attack your person in these threads. I have simply asked that you refrain from posting as “fact” things that have already been disproven.
I have never criticized your beliefs about the afterlife. I have never criticized your views of spirituality. I have not even denied the possibility of NDEs. I have, in the past week (for example), said nothing about your beliefs regarding the spirituality of animals, the ONE-NESS of the universe, or any other beliefs you have stated. When you post errors of fact, I have corrected you, as is common on the SDMB, and when you have consistently caused hijacks by repeating misstatements about “science” (rather than noting the actions of individual scientists, as you have finally done in this thread) I have admonished you to stop that behavior.
Now we are down to semantics. There is no such thing as science, religion, or government without scientists, believers, and politicians. Science just wouldn’t exist if you deleted all the scientists, so most can make that jump from science to understanding one is talking about scientists. Unless one wants to argue that buildings, filing drawers, and words printed on paper is science. Science is a human institution fraught with all the frailities of being human. It is the scientist doing his scientist thing that makes science, science. Now there are fundamental scientists representing science and preaching the doctrine of science. This was unheard of when I was young, scientists went about doing science now attacking religion. I showed links that proved this evangelical scientists exists. I was not wrong.
3 Christian evangelists killed a group of people in a secluded area. Is Christian evangelism murder? Or take another example: All surgeons were gathered in a convention and for one reason or another each one decided to kill one person each. Is surgery murder?
Ahh, but you were not wont to say that “some scientists” were attacking religion. Your claim was frequently stated as “Science” is attacking belief. Now that you have finally begun to modify your statements to accord with reality, you want to pretend that you have always said the same thing.
Where in your following statements do you distinguish between the personal beliefs of Sagan, Dawkins, Hitchens, or others and the actual hypotheses, theories, or peer reviewed studies of scientists?
“Science” never has tried to assert that “there is no god,” only individual scientists when speaking philosophically and not as scientists.
You claim that “science” would deny evidence without providing any reason to believe your weird claim.
Your claim regarding “psyche, mind, spirit, soul” has not been published by “science” but extrapolated from scientific studies by either a tiny number of scientists or by non-scientists who are maniupulating the evidence to support their own beliefs.
“Science” does not define religion as ignorance, only individual scientists speaking as philosophers.
Your odd “science distorts logic” claim requires a single monolithic “science” to be true, even if the sentence had any meaning.
Your claim that “science” tells people that they are “created by their own brains,” aside from being silly, again presumes some monolithic “science” that is issuing claims–a point that I guarantee you cannot support with evidence of even a large minority of scientists making such a claim.
In each case, you have made a declaration about “science” that does nothing to indicate that you are only talking about some unidentified number of scientists. You have even gone so far as to pretend that “science” would deny evidence, despite the fact that you cannot know that such a thing might happen.
Your declarations about science and scientists would be equivalent to my going out and harvesting a number of quotations by Madame Blavatsky, L. Ron Hubbard, John Edward, and a few others, then simply posting that “spiritualists are charlatans.” By your repeated insistence that science is opposed to the spiritual or that “science” would deny evidence, you are simply imposing your false view on the world. Whether it was initially just bad logic on your part or deliberate dishonesty, the fact that you have repeated it after numerous corrections moves it into the realm of the dishonest.
I’m not sure whether it’s worth responding, given that this user has (surprise, surprise) gotten himself banned. But of course you can choose to believe in something. That’s referred to as free will. A sufficient amount of determined mental effort will allow a person to believe in anything whatsoever. Anyone who believes otherwise simply hasn’t made themselves aware of the capabilities of the human mind.
however, I was not suggesting that xkcd force himself to believe by such methods. I was suggesting that he educate himself. He (surprise, surprise) turned out to be strongly opposed to this suggestion.