Re: Evidence for "Big Bang Theory"

Bruce D. Scott (bds@ipp-garching.mpg.de)
5 May 1995 11:16:24 GMT

Ob this thread: I would be quite interested, actually, to see some serious
anthropologists give comment. So far it has just been the jealous ranting
club of what Marvin Harris calls the "obscurantists" (although I do confess
I got into it initially to bask in the afterglow of Gil's enlighted
offerings).

Gil Hardwick (gil@landmark.iinet.net.au) wrote:

[...]

: Then as not completely unexpected the heavies arrived, the veritable
: Thought Police of World Scientism themselves, led by none other than
: Dr Bruce Scott of the Max Planck Institute, to admonish us once again
: for our heresies.

Gil, I challenge you to demonstrate that the above claim is based on
anything other than your own ranting.

Well, congratulations, you trolled me back. Tuoche!

[...]

: If that still doesn't work, they seek to have Internet sites closed
: down, to have people dragged into court on defamation charges, and I
: must add, as one case showed here in Australia, actually convicted of
: heresy. Convicted of Heresy, for heavens sake!

What a lot of paranoia! Who is "they", Gil? I do enjoy reading you, since
I just like to laugh at you. Puts a light edge on a hard day. Carl got
several screens out of you with two or three sentences; quite efficient if
you ask me!

Gil, you don't fool me at all -- you aren't very representative of
anthropologists as a group, although you like to set yourself up as such in
this thread.

BTW, the time you spend haranguing us in these rants shows you do indeed
care what "we" think about you. I put "we" in quotes since the people you
are setting up as a group quite often, as in this case, don't have anything
to do with each other, and most of the time don't agree with each other.

The conspiracy is all in your mind.

: So much for your cloistered, institutionalised "science". What makes
: your mob different from the mediaeval priesthood?

No power. We physicists are used by the economy until it no longer needs
us, and then at that point it throws us onto the street. We are not well
enough paid to join the financial class on our own. But ranters who write
fluffy books can do rather well.

So Gil, why don't you collect your sumptuous wisdom in a book and cast it
before the masses? Save them from all of us! And then you, too, can join
the financial class. And you, too, can smirk haughtily when people like
poor little me ask you for a job and enough pay to cover beans and rice. :-)

: In reply I feel quite free to sit here day after day and ridicule to
: my heart's content whatever further crud arrives here at my site.

Be my guest, you have every right to start a fan club. We need alt.fan.gil!

: You want to be recognised as scientists here on the Internet? Then
: reply to the critique in the proper manner.

Well, _I_ have. See my last response to Robert Rossen. I haven't seen you
do it, yet. Are you going to discuss a belief system as it stands, or
simply continue to entertain us with more conspiratorial nonsense? Pass
the chips, please!

Relax, Gil, and have a cool beer. I at least am not out to get you.

: What I have arriving here at my site, continuously over periods of
: years in fact, is just so much ranting and raving against religion in
: the name of something else called "science", when the very moment we
: as impartial anthropological observers show that the base assumptions
: of said science are just as untestable, SURPRISE, we find the Modern
: Inquisition arriving on our doorstep taking us to task for heresy.

It is outweighed, of course, by religious and happy-day ranting against a
logical world view in general, and science in particular. Sci.astro is
full of nonsense (from both "sides", actually) about "God". Groups like
alt.atheism are totally unreadable due to each semester's new crop of
crusading Xians.

: He who refuses to qualify data is doomed to rant.

The opposite is true.

--
Gruss,
Dr Bruce Scott The deadliest bullshit is
Max-Planck-Institut fuer Plasmaphysik odorless and transparent
bds@ipp-garching.mpg.de -- W Gibson