Thank you. Also known as appeal to belief. [nizkor.org] 98% of Americans believe in God. [gallup.com] Therefore, God must exist.

However, what is being said here is not that 97% of any group of people believe in any particular proposition. What is being said here is the 97% of studies in a field, based on empirical evidence and the application of the orthodox tools of science arrive at the same conclusion.

You cannot overcome this merely with an appeal to well-known logical fallacies, or any other rhetorical attack. You would need to look at the published work, show how the data that was missed, the data that ought not to have been incorporated, misapplied statistical methods etc, etc. In short, it is open to you to refute the orthodox position. But not by piss-farting around with rhetoric, or displaying your ignorance of the science of any particular previous climatic period like your common-or-garden variety denier (there I did as you asked)... all you have to do is show us the maths.

And might I add, I wish you every success in that endeavour. I live in hope that one day the IPCC will announce, "sorry folks we were all wrong, the Earth has some feedback mechanism we were not aware of and your great-grandchildren are safe." Anyway must run, I'm off to buy a lottery ticket ...

97% of scientific papers does not necessarily equal 97% of scientists

That is true. However what scientists personally believe is rather less relevant than what the science (ie. the ensemble of published papers) actually says. But that too is obvious.

Don't go giving creationists big ideas on how to explain away reality.

Had you bothered to followed that link, you would have noticed that creationists have been running that argument since at least 1857. "/facepalm" indeed Sara.

That's a bunch of crap, that water can't be any older than 6,000 years old!!!

No, no no ... it was created 6,000 years ago, but it is by no means beyond God's power to create billion year old water should He so will it. Sheesh!

So, about all those *nix zealots in here...

I simply refuse to believe that anyone could become so obsessed with *nix, or with computers, or technology in general, that it could adversely affect other aspects of their life, be they social, romantic, personal hygiene etc... Just could not happen!

One could say that only once Man tilled the land, plants became able to grow on their own?

Virgin jungle?

... no rain to irrigate, which leads to no ground water

You are correct, you don't know much about the Bible. Rain is water from the sky, the ground water wells up from below. Remember earth's atmosphere is a skin holding back the "the waters above," while beneath the ground are "the waters below," (that much is consistent across the creation stories and elsewhere, as also in Mesopotamian mythology). Note the verse that follows on.

It goes without saying that the earth is not spherical in early Biblical cosmography.

I don't find the story All dogs go To heaven insightful, do you?

Heaven? What does heaven have to do with the "books of Moses?!" There's no heaven, no eternal life, only humanity, alone of all creatures possessing God-like understanding, yet mortal and doomed to return into the earth of which the are made. Humanity suffering in childbirth and old age and surviving by the sweat of their brow. The very understanding of their own impermanence a source of suffering. Have you even read Genesis. I mean actually read what it says without viewing it either through a Christian or an anti-Christian lens?

Mate, you wouldn't know insightful if you were smacked over the face with a 80 kilo sack of the stuff!

You seem to have a reading comprehension impairment. Chapter 1 is an executive summary showing the general chronological order of creation. Chapter 2 goes into detail about the creation of Adam and Eve.

No, Gen 1:1-2:3 and Gen 2:4 on are different stories as is obvious to any reader who, as I put it above, has not since childhood been exposed to harmonising accounts. The general chronological order in the 2nd account (Gen 2:4 ...) completely contradicts the order of the 1st. In the first (as it appears in the text, but probably also the more recent) account life is created in this order: plants (Gen 1:11); fish & birds (Gen 1:20); land animals (Gen 1:24); humans both male and female (Gen 1:26-27). The 2nd account, but contrast, has this order, male human (Gen 2:7); plants (Gen 2:9); land animals & birds (Gen 2:19) and female human (Gen 2:22). Nor does the strict classification of creation by days in the 1st account, and the narrative necessity for the primacy of Adam and the final creation of Eve in the 2nd allow for any honest harmonisation of these two distinct accounts. I'm sorry you have been misled.

Now I could point out the differences style, the designed symmetrical account in the 1st account vs. the rambling folk-talesy tone of the second; or between the nature of God (Elohim), who creates by pure will, "Let there be light" and who dwells on high, with the LORD (YHVH ... for the fist few instances the harmonising YHVH-Elohim), a terrestrial being who "fashions" out of clay, who has to call Adam and Eve from their hiding spots and discovers their transgression by their covering (hardly behaviour God on high would engage in). But given the radical disagreement in the "chronological order of creation," all that would be superfluous.

See the heading at verse 4, Chapter 2?

And extremely interesting verse. Though there is room for disagreement here, the best reading IMO is that this verse, though presented as a way to connect both accounts, the first half of the verse "[t]his is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created" ends the first account, and the second "when the Lord God made the earth and the heavens" (a mirror of the beginning of the first, "When God began creating the heavens and earth ..." or however you want to translate this difficult piece of Hebrew). Among the facts that recommend this reading is the order heaven-earth vs the earth-heaven which reflect the extra-terrestrial and terrestrial nature of the different numen described above. Also that the highly symmetrical 1st account will end as it began. However, it may simply be that the entire verse is the introduction to the 2nd account.

I have only the slightest hope that this may help rectify your "reading comprehension impairment."

True, but that's the most glaring [discrepancy].

It's only a discrepancy if one fails to recognise that we are dealing with two separate myths. The fact that they are 2 separate stories will be obvious to any naive (in the sense that they have not since childhood been exposed to harmonising accounts) and objective reader. Even the deities are obviously different, and not merely by name.

The second account is clearly the easier target from a scientific PoV. The most glaring internal (to that myth) problem comes in the 2nd 'verse' of this account, Gen 2:5, where we are told that plant life did not exist for two reasons. 1. YHVH-Elohim (a[n editorial?] joining of names that is soon abandoned) had not yet caused it to rain AND there was no man to tend the ground. So what we need to do to "disprove" this account is to show plant life growing independently of human cultivation. Not a big ask. More interesting is the question of what kind of culture could have given rise to a myth that makes such a presumption, which might seem absurd to forest based peoples for instance (HINT: Mesopotamian irrigation cultures).

But to treat the 2nd account as Science, as a literal account of physical origins, is of course knuckle-headed. Worse still, it is simply to miss the beauty of the text, and its actual insight (which should be apparent to believers and non-believers alike, though both for different reason like to miss it) into the human condition. And (and this is why I find this difficult text so interesting), it's complex role as a witness to the origin of ancient near eastern civilisation.

As you put it ... "nutjob."

I am not a lawyer, so I don't understand what it means. Either all such Terms and Conditions on the Internet are null and void (since nobody signs them,) or there is something in them that makes them worth the lawyer's time.

Firstly signing is neither here nor there. Only a tiny fraction of contracts are written or signed. Everyday we navigate a sea of contractual agreements. You enter into a contract whenever you ride in a taxi, buy a chocolate (candy bar) from a shop etc etc.

What is necessary is a) that the terms and conditions can taken to be understood (e.g You agree to pay a fare in exchange for the taxi driver agreeing to carry you to your destination), or where they cannot simply be taken to be understood, that the person agreeing to terms and conditions be made aware of what they are (what is required to satisfy this varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction); b) that both parties actually agree to them; AND c) the quid pro quo, or more formally that consideration flows in both directions (and to be extremely technical, consideration involves suffering a legal detriment). (eg. the taxi driver is bound to carry you where you want to go rather than driving where his fancy takes him <---> you are bound to make yourself poorer.)

One wonders with many online "agreements" what the consideration actually is. My feeling that among all the Terms and Conditions on the internet, there is a subgroup that is null and void.

But this isn't really a contract issue per se. More pertinent here are statutory copyright protections; the extent to which any fair use exception allows you to use the protected material; and where your use exceeds what fair use permits, whether it is economically justifiable to enter into what appears on the face (is that $150 per article?!!) an excessively expensive licensing agreement (which would of course be a contract). My feeling is that this is a try on.

Wiping your arse with an infringing copy is an extremely low level of freedom to aspire to.

Well look at that. I end the last sentence of my post with a preposition and I get modded down as a Troll. My bad.

At least it reaffirms my faith in the quality of the moderation here. Keep it factual, keep it fair, keep it grammatical.

I am more terrified of a world where not running anti-copying software in my browser is a crime.

I wouldn't put it past them.

This post is just plain wrong. You are in no way free to do "whatever [you] like" with copyright protected works. The fact that this post has been modded 5 Insightful is a testament to the wishful thinking that takes over when IP try ons like this come up. If you want to be free do something to change the law. Wiping your arse with an infringing copy is an extremely low level of freedom to aspire to.

Even easier: turn Javascript off. Or will allowing websites to run arbitrary programs on your computer become a legal requirement too?

The issue is not whether you are required to run arbitrary programs on your computer or not. The issue is whether you are permitted to copy the article, and if so how much (many fair use provisions around the world limit the amount that can be cited and will not protect against reproducing a "substantial portion").

Obviously the Javascript on the site is not meant to stop you copying the content. One accomplishes that by having the legislature in one's pocket. The Javascript is meant a) to remind you that the article is subject to copyright (while bluffing you into forgetting any your fair use rights use may have) and b) as a offer to purchase a license to reproduce the content. Whether you require that license for lawful reproduction will of course depend on the relevant fair use provision(s) applying.

Is that going to be illegal now?

Well that depends on the IP framework in play in the relevant jurisdictions. However most likely it already is.