| As someone who hasn't "familiarised [your]self well enough with both sides of the argument", are you able to tell when quotes are cherry picked and quote mined in order to give a wrong impression about another's viewpoints? For example, I've watched the "creation vs. evolution" so-called "debate" for about 20 years. I quoted "debate" because there is no debate, only continued raising by creationists of the same long-settled issues. (I speak here of Young Earth Creationists.) But for someone without the specific training in biology (which, to be honest, is high-school level science often avoided in the US schooling I went to, in order to avoid offense to some religious belief holders), it's hard to tell that the creationist arguments and objections have no support in physical evidence, and that the creationists are often quote mining evolutionists. See http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/quotes/mine/project.html . To go back to your first comment, "There is money on both sides of the argument though." There is also money on both sides of the creationist vs. evolutionist argument. And much more money on the evolutionist side. The US National Institutes of Health, to modify your quote, "sprays evolution money at anything that moves and at staggering rates — billions of dollars". Similarly, there are innumerable evolutionist companies which benefit handsomely from evolution. But that spray, and those economic benefits, cannot be interpreted as support for Young Earth Creationism. Since those arguments do not work for Young Earth Creationism, they are weak arguments at best, so cannot be a solid basis or proxy for understanding the issues related to global warming and climate change. |