2012 USA Election Thread: Obama projected winner

Who are you going to vote for in the 2012 Election?

  • Barack Obama

    Votes: 221 54.8%

  • Ron Paul

    Votes: 44 10.9%

  • Mitt Romney

    Votes: 37 9.2%

  • Jill Stein

    Votes: 85 21.1%

  • Vermin Supreme

    Votes: 11 2.7%

  • Gary Johnson

    Votes: 5 1.2%
  • Total voters
    403
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coolking49 said:
Did you know that Albert Einstein kept, in every formula he derived, a constant to keep the universe from expanding. Despite the fact that all of the evidence he derived indicated that the universe expanded, he insisted that it isn't true, for religious reasons. It was only towards the end of his life that it was conclusively proved that the universe is expanding, and his equations fixed. Religion didn't contribute to Einstein's discoveries, but it did hold him back from finding new facts, because he decided to believe the bible as a fact.

(Full disclosure, though I'd prefer if it didn't sidetrack the discussion: I'm all for religion impacting someone's morals, but taking a 1000 year old book as fact is pushing it my opinion)

Of course, everyone knows that Galileo was imprisoned because the bible says the sun rotates around the earth. Similarly, Bill Nye was booed off stage when he talked about evolution and mentioned it went against the bible.

Evolution is more or less proven. Everyone educated and rational acknowledges the facts that indicate its proof. I'm not worried about the guy being a christian as much as I am him putting a 1000 year old text over cold hard facts. That's whats disturbing.
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I support what you're trying to say here, but those statements about einstein are false. Einstein was most definitely not a christian. He was ethnically jewish, but was more of a pantheist / agnostic. His beliefs may have impacted his work as you said, as he did indeed introduce a cosmological constant to account for a non-expanding universe (it turns out such a constant is in fact needed, but not the same one), and also argued strongly against quantum mechanics, perhaps because he believed in a deterministic universe. These beliefs were not necessarily religious ones though; after all, both of these things appeared obvious to everyone for most of history. The expanding universe was actually first proposed by a catholic priest, which gives an indication as to the effect of religion on said beliefs.

Apologies for further sidetracking. Back on to the issue of the election, I've been taking a look at some of the third party candidates, and was generally really impressed by the Green party, and even the Libertarian party (I think they have the wrong idea economically, but I strongly support the idea that you can do what you want, provided you don't hurt anyone). Sadly, either would be a waste of a vote. Can anyone see a long term solution to this problem? Is there any potential to change the voting system at all?

Also, great link LN.
 
mattj said:
If believing the Bible, as that man does, excludes him from being objective, and reasonable, then how have so many Christians contributed to various branches of science throughout history?
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Being a christian does not stop someone from being a good scientist. Stubbornly holding on to a specific interpretation of scripture despite overwhelming empirical evidence to the contrary does.
 
Interesting

http://www.isidewith.com/results/159746171

I'm pretty much at odds with Obama at foreign and domestic policy.

159746171.jpg
 
people need to realize that there is no "overwhelming evidence to the contrary" of creation. it's all historical conjecture - it's not like someone's repeated a big bang in the laboratory. theories about the past are not the same as repeatable, physical, science.
 
Pwnemon said:
it's not like someone's repeated a big bang in the laboratory
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"What was the Universe made of before the matter we see around us formed? The LHC will recreate, on a microscale, conditions that existed during the first billionth of a second of the Big Bang."

http://www.lhc.ac.uk/About+the+LHC/LHC+Big+Questions/17735.aspx

The evidence for evolution and the effects of the big bang are insurmountable. The cause of the big bang is still theory, but outside of that, science has pretty much pinned down everything else for the "big questions".

A man that calls them "lies from the pit of hell" is not fit to be in congress. Perhaps I was was a bit to overreaching when I said that his ignorance is a reason to not vote republican, but this guy still should not be on the fucking house science committee.

I'm not going to argue this any further though because for both sides are pretty much slamming our heads against the wall, its a total waste of time.
 
Can we please have someone remove the scientifically illiterate posts from this discussion. I mean ideally we could have intelligent discussion, but intelligent anything could suffice.
 
Pwnemon said:
people need to realize that there is no "overwhelming evidence to the contrary" of creation. it's all historical conjecture - it's not like someone's repeated a big bang in the laboratory. theories about the past are not the same as repeatable, physical, science.
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You correct in saying that theories about the past are not the same as theories about the results of laboratory experiments but that does not mean that we cannot have powerful evidence for theories about the past.

Suppose you walked into a room and there was one man in there, he was holding a knife and standing over the body of another man who had been stabbed to death. The shape of the stab wounds match the knife and particulates from the wounds are of the same material as the knife. Email and telephone conversions between the two people are analyzed and it is found that they had disagreements and the first man had threatened the second man repeatedly.

You didn't witness a murder but there is still overwhelming evidence that the first man killed the second man. In the same way, even though we weren't able to witness the full happening of biological evolution we are still able to find overwhelming evidence for it. Please educate yourself http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/
 
More Cowbell said:
http://www.isidewith.com/results/159887709

My results as a left-wing Dutchman. Note that what is considered right-wing in the Netherlands is closer to the Democrats than to the Republicans. Anyways, I'm not even sure who Jill Stein and Gary Johnson are, but I expected a preference for Democrat, so well, there it is.
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You don't need to know who either of them is. Neither is winning the election.

That being said, for any non-USians out there also wondering who in the world these people are and can't be arsed to Google these unimportant politicians, I can help. Stein is the Green Party candidate, and will probably siphon some (by U.S. standards, of course) extreme-liberal and extreme-environmental votes away from Obama . Gary Johnson is the Libertarian Party candidate and will attract the college "Ron Paul Revolution" crowd who want a "real choice". I guess he might also steal a few votes from Romney among the Goldwater Conservatives (read: "old-school" conservatives who believe the military is bloated and the US shouldn't be engaged in so much foreign intervention). Johnson will get more votes than Stein because the Libertarian Party actually has a real (if small) base.
 
LonelyNess said:
http://www.romneytaxplan.com/

just gonna leave this here
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Because our current plan is working OH SO MUCH BETTER. I'll trust the guy who's been there done, done that, balanced a bunch of budgets, AND has actually RUN a business over the guy who has never held an actual (for lack of better words at the moment, I know politicians make a living...) salary paying job in the private sector in his life.
 
I'm so glad J-man has come back to spread his 15 year old ignorance on this board once again. Great job letting him get unbanned, whoever is responsible for that.
 
My interpretation of what little I saw of the debate: Same as last; Obama was more charismatic and got off a nice jab at Romney though... Romney also had nice stabs at Obama (especially his jabs at women suffering under this current economic downturn). It would be nice if Romney expanded upon how he's going to pay for his plan and Obama explain how we've gone downhill during his administration and how he promised to cut the deficit in half when he doubled it.
 
Even Fox News is going to have a hard time claiming victory for Romney in tonight's debate. I foresee the back and forth going something like this:

"Ya know, Bill, Obama did pretty well tonight... but I hear that he doesn't like Strawberry Ice Cream... and you just can't trust a man who doesn't like strawberry ice cream, am I right?"
 
My interpretation of the debate: Those dogs REALLY wanted that piece of meat.

Seriously though I dont care who won. I watched these debates as a form of entertainment you cant take seriously. Unfortuately, most people who dont pay attention to current politics takes these dibates to seriously.

Also the one part I actually did take seriously, the gun control question was just flat out ignored. Makes me sad.
 
lati0s said:
You correct in saying that theories about the past are not the same as theories about the results of laboratory experiments but that does not mean that we cannot have powerful evidence for theories about the past.

Suppose you walked into a room and there was one man in there, he was holding a knife and standing over the body of another man who had been stabbed to death. The shape of the stab wounds match the knife and particulates from the wounds are of the same material as the knife. Email and telephone conversions between the two people are analyzed and it is found that they had disagreements and the first man had threatened the second man repeatedly.

You didn't witness a murder but there is still overwhelming evidence that the first man killed the second man. In the same way, even though we weren't able to witness the full happening of biological evolution we are still able to find overwhelming evidence for it. Please educate yourself http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/
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The problem with your line of reasoning in the analogy is that you weren't there, so how do you know? How do you know that the man, who you never witnessed commit the murder, WAS THE MAN? Perhaps the man who emailed those threats to the victim had a friend who hated the victim as much as he did. Perhaps that the man and his friend went to do the deed. Let's say the man didn't have the guts to do it, and felt remorse. Let's say the friend rips the knife out of the hands of the man, who is frozen in indecision, and kills the victim himself. The friend places the knife in the man's hands and flees the scene as the man is now frozen in shock and awe at what just happened. You now enter the room and see the man with the weapon.

Here's another possible scenario: Perhaps the man had threatened the victim over several emails, as you have said. The man feels remorse and takes the victim out to (Insert fancy restaurant here) and apologizes verbally to him, but forgot to delete all those emails from his draft. Now perhaps the man's identical twin who hated the victim and loathed that his brother never killed said victim did it himself, fled after you saw him, having previously destroyed all documented records of his existence (He is a very advanced hacker) before you figure out that the man had a twin and put the blame on the man?

Or, you could replace the twin in the above scenario and insert another man who had plastic surgery on his face to greatly resemble the man, but he destroyed all records of his surgery (former spy in the military), and then moved out of the country as planned to leave all of the blame on the man?

You will never know the full details if no one was there to witness it. You can piece things through a framework of mind that you have and interpret the evidence through your worldview. Considering this analogy as if it was in the realm of worldviews, your hypothesis is no more valid than mine because in the realm of worldviews the murderer is never caught and there aren't detectives to solve the case. All we are left is the evidence to interpret and no ability to know if we are right or wrong. IN CONCLUSION, this is why using wordlviews as a sole or very defining reason in a criteria for electing leaders is ridiculous.

Also, your link did not work previously but now works apparently. I counter your link with a link of my own: http://creationwiki.org/Talk_Origins

And with that, I shall cease discussing this somehow ontopic, yet seemingly off topic subject.....
 
J-man said:
The problem with your line of reasoning in the analogy is that you weren't there, so how do you know? How do you know that the man, who you never witnessed commit the murder, WAS THE MAN? Perhaps the man who emailed those threats to the victim had a friend who hated the victim as much as he did. Perhaps that the man and his friend went to do the deed. Let's say the man didn't have the guts to do it, and felt remorse. Let's say the friend rips the knife out of the hands of the man, who is frozen in indecision, and kills the victim himself. The friend places the knife in the man's hands and flees the scene as the man is now frozen in shock and awe at what just happened. You now enter the room and see the man with the weapon.

You will never know the full details if no one was there to witness it. You can piece things through a framework of mind that you have and interpret the evidence through your worldview. Considering this analogy as if it was in the realm of worldviews, your hypothesis is no more valid than mine because in the realm of worldviews the murderer is never caught and there aren't detectives to solve the case. All we are left is the evidence to interpret and no ability to know if we are right or wrong.

Also, your link is broken.
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Do you think that we currently have solid reasons to believe that the civil war happened? No one currently alive witnessed it.

Also, there is no need to critique the example, it was just an example. I could add more lines of evidence to make it more robust but that's not the point.

The link works for me.
 
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