It's pretty simple, j - the UK is not a secular state. We have established religion and bishops given power in the government process. It's been that way for hundreds of years.

It does favour one religion over others. Only the Church of England has the right to place 26 Bishops in the upper house as 'Lords Spiritual'. The CoE is recognised as an official state church.

And the time article is as deceptive as your posts. You could say that this judge has given the philosophical belief in environmentalism equal status to a religion in discriminatory law, but not that the philosophical belief is a religion. There's a distinction that is clear enough.

It's like saying that because women have been given the same legal employment rights as men, they have now been defined as men. Patently ridiculous.

lol, j, the UK is not a secular state. Yes, we are largely not very religious as a people. Interesting, non? Same goes for many of the Scandinavian states who also have established state churches.

It isn't just the time article, you outline your position here:

The UK granted legal protection to "philosophical beliefs" because, being a secular state, they could not come out and specifically advocate for or against any religion. They had already adopted in effect the "Human Rights Act" and other EU anti-harassment restrictions on upsetting behavior.

As you now know, we are not actually a secular state, but that's largely by-the-by. Secondly, you try to make out that the only reason we give legal protection to 'philosophical beliefs' is due to the state's need to be seen to not be advocating for/against any religion (and so I assume that's why he just said environmentalism was just a phil belief rather than religion). It's nothing of the sort.

There are already cases using the same 2003 religion and belief regulations that have focused on the religion issue. For example, a registrar initially won a case allowing them to refuse to marry lesbian and gay couple due to her christianity (lost on appeal). Other cases include a muslim teacher refused the right to wear full veil in the classroom and a christian school pupil to wear a 'purity' ring in school against school regulations.

And the judge in this Grainger case was clearly able to make the distinction between religious belief and philosophical belief, as is clearly made in the 2003 law.

You can certainly say that the judge has treated this dude's environmentalism like a religion, but he at no point suggested it was a religion. To suggest otherwise is just pure sophistry.

Well, j, I've never been a fan of media representations of much that goes on in this world.

All you had to do was apply a bit of your own nous to see the article was playing games. The headline in both its forms were not true to the actual words of the judge in the case (a trivia aside: did you know he was the same judge that suggested Gore's film was political and partisan?).

Anyway, catch ya around. Up is down world always works best in small doses.

lol, Crichton?

No wonder you have issues knowing ass from elbow. And you add to that a biochemist, Kary Mullis - AIDS/HIV and climate change denier. He won a Nobel 15 years ago for his work in Biochem. Cool. Remember to go ask a dermatologist about any brain surgery you might need.

You see, the fact that Mullis has a Nobel provides no credibility to his claims of the validity of astrology, alien abductions, and talking raccoons, or to his HIV/AIDS and climate change denial. In fact, reading his own words betrays his lack of credibility on this issue (from his book):

The concept that human beings are capable of causing the planet to overheat or lose its ozone seems about as ridiculous as blaming the Magdalenian paintings for the last ice age.

Of course, Kary, because your intuitions are bulletproof. He has a Nobel you know! Sod all the sciency stuff, Kary knows best...

There is a notion that our emissions are causing the temperature of the planet to go up, even though the temperature is not going up.

lolwut? The temperature wasn't going up? This in a book published in 1998?



Of course, Kary's own internal thermometer knows best!

Even if the temperature were going up, we would be foolish to think we caused it. We could just as reasonably blame it on cows.

Of course, Kary...your gut tells you so and Kary knows best! Why bother with the sciency stuff? It's just as likely to be those pesky cows that caused 30% increases in atmospheric CO2. At night they sneak into Coal power stations and burn carbon that's been locked up out of the atmosphere for millions of years! They are even destroying ecosystems by the bucketload. The cunning buggers waited until the human industrial revolution to put their dastardly plan into action...

In the nineteenth century the temperature went down. In this century it's gone up only about half a degree. The trend over the last two centuries is down. Down is not warmer. So if you like to worry, worry that we might be moving into a new ice age. We could be.

lolwut? He's actually trying to say we've had cooling over the last 200 years? Say from 1798 to 1998? But he accepts we had warming of 0.5'C up to 1998ish. So he therefore would think that temps were even higher in the late 18th century (>.5'C) - would be the only way to get a downwards trend through to the late 20th.

Kary's intuition tells us so! Pity the data says something else...



Intuition fail. Funniest thing is his anti-scientific rants...

We accept the proclamations of scientists in their lab coats with the same faith once reserved for priests.

Yet he expects people to take his pseudoscientific intuitions on faith. No evidence needed for Kary! He's got a Nobel donchya know...

Best thing for these old crusties is to keep their traps shut, they just destroy their credibility each time they open them.

"They can't pooh-pooh me now, because of who I am" Kary Mullis

Nope, we just laugh at the old fools as they pooh-pooh themselves.

Take care. Ciao.

[edit on 9-11-2009 by melatonin]

Much as I'm sure you enjoy your ability to respond to substance with sarcasm, salted with the same tired graphics lifted without attribution as if they were icons, your replies serve only to confirm your "unshakeable faith" in AGW statism, rather than any ability to reply with substantive grasp of issue and consequences.

The first temp graph is created from woodfortrees.org which allows a user to produce up to date figures from the major data sets. The other two are from the IPCC report, IIRC.

As for the rest of that comment...lol

The OP is about your government's granting of a status equal to religion to "environmentalism" generally, and AGW specifically.

Well, it went beyond that. It was also about 'moral imperatives' and not being restricted to current information (science).

Of course your ever-present icons are precisly the equivalent of the symbols and statues of more traditional religions. The mantra of "projections" and reliance upon "modelling" reveal the same clinging comfort of chants and spells of other "faiths."

It's called data. That's what makes science what it is. Empirical observations. Your anti-science slip is showing again.

It appears that your courts have only proven what others, Cridhton and Mullis among them, have seen coming for quite some time.

And now we have the bait and switch... back to climate science as religion, yawn...

A brief search revealed that the high court's "revelation" has been a long time coming.

Among the many dozens who've seen the derailing of critical thought by elitist snobbery and self-serving statism are a few who have earned the right to comment and consideration (neither of which you will respect):

lol

Environmentalism given same weight as religion in British employment laws
www.economist.com...

True, that's what I was saying. That's not the same as it being a religion. Us elitist statist snobs can make these obvious distinctions.

Freeman Dyson – Environmentalism: The New Secular Religion
www.uncommondescent.com...

anti-science ideologue.

Environmentalism: The Religion for an Eco-theocratic Superstate?
www.conspiracyarchive.com...

anti-science ideologue.

Environmentalism: a new religion
www.guardian.co.uk...

Deceptive. But I'll let her off, as there is also a question mark after the headline the webpage.

Vaclav Klaus: “Environmentalism as Religion”
www.cato.org...

anti-science ideologue.

I expect your urge to jeer instead of read is irresistible, but maybe others will appreciate the opportunity to see what others think.

I just posted the thoughts of Kary Mullis. You didn't. You just presented him as some sort of authority figure ('oooh, he has a Nobel, chemistry in fact'). I gave people the opportunity to see what he thinks. Which is basically him handwaving and thinking from his gut. Yeah, and he's a libertarian, lol. Another anti-science ideologue.

Probably much like you, he prefers the gut to actual data. You know, those empirical observations that serve as the basis of science but you try to label as icons, as if science itself is a religion.

In sum, you're still an anti-science ideologue. Trying to paint an area of science which conflicts with your ideology as just a religion is purely anti-science. No different than what I often see from the creationist ideologues. Indeed, wasn't surprised to see Dembski's website used as a link.


[edit on 9-11-2009 by melatonin]