re: #699 iceweasel

Yes, I got shit here early on for saying “That is a lie” and linking to the info in question and explaining.
Waah, waah, why do you have to call it a lie?
Because it is.
I won’t call someone a liar unless I know they’re knowingly spouting lies,— but lies are lies and need to be called such.

Oh I think the deniers have of all stripes have to know that on some level they are spouting lies. Consider the argument that the propaganda for starting the Iraq war was something other than a nuclear threat… Those people were here in the same country we were and heard the same broadcasts and speeches from the Bush administration. Surely on some level they know they are stretching things really thin.

As to the science deniers, a guy like my least favorite one, you know who I mean, has to know that thermometers existed before 1850 for instance and that claiming that no reliable temp data at all existed before then had to be untrue.

NO they are lying and they know it. Further someone who is telling lies, is by definition a liar whether they know it or not. The difference is only one of malice, which I agree is a big difference, but not the point really when it comes to science or history. It affects whether I can forgive them or not, but not the essential falsehoods they tell.

As to the pope, no we never had anything like that unless you go back to Moses himself.

We are a debating tradition.

What people miss though is that sometimes the debates get settled. In teh case of something like cross dressing, it was hashed and rehashed up and down in more excruciating detail than I can easily relate millenia ago.