My name is Chris Pratt. I have no problem disclosing who I am because I have nothing to hide. Same goes for my website TheReluctantActivist.org. I challenge the reader to show me one fact (hundreds of thousands are listed here) that is not well referenced and/or supported by an original video and/or a published article.
We are up against billions of dollars and thousands of faceless people paid to discredit and conduct character assassinations on people who are brave enough to question, to doubt or to demand further investigations or evidence. We are outnumbered and out spent at levels that are unimaginable. It truly is a David and Goliath quest for truth and openness vs deception and secrecy.
I have spent 15,000 hours researching the steady decline of human rights and the middle class. Meanwhile the coffers of Club Elite bulge with funds stolen from the public. Club members stay hidden and protected by politicians, government, military, media and police puppets who cashed in their integrity for money long ago.
I have completed 3 remixed films, 47 videos, 3 websites and a prototype magazine. There is no question in my mind that we have willingly relinquished our opinions and our souls to an elite group that is in serious need of therapy. Many should be in institutions, instead they are ruling this country and much of the world. All of this occurs while minorities and non violent drug offenders languish in prison.
Challenge my facts, my reason, my logic, my references. I may stumble, I may mumble and I may have word-find issues but I will debate the facts with anyone who dares to disclose their identity and who is willing to engage in a robust discussion of the facts. I underscore the word facts.
We are in the end game. This is not the time for activists to drink tea and talk about how bad things are. Humanity teeters on the very edge of extinction. Will it be climate change, economic collapse, war or something else? The least we can do is exercise our free speech rights to speak up in forums like this whenever or wherever the occasion arises. The paid minions and the Neanderthals always speak out. It is time for the silent majority to not be so silent.
Destruction
The only thing the greedy elite don’t understand is that when their activities destroy the world as we know it, they will be destroyed as well.
I think the sickness
is in their not understanding this fact of life. However what WE don’t understand is that though we abhor what they do, we keep on funding them! That is our sickness. And it gives them the entirely wrong feedback.
Subjectivity
Actually, destruction of the world, even as we know it, and the elites with it, is a myth.
The changes that shape events and forces of nature are more likely only influenced by human intent, but not in a fully catastrophic way. Moreover, elites, taken as a whole, are poorly defined, identified and characterized, so blame against the elites by the non-elites is more likely to be subjective.
Dylan said it
As the island slowly sank
The loser finally broke the bank in the gambling room
The dealer said, “It’s too late now
You can take your money, but I don’t know how
You’ll spend it in the tomb”
Bleh
I made it about three minutes. Typical nutjob conspiracy BS overwhelms anything important.
Well that adds a lot to the issue
It’s all clear to me now.
I appreciate ChrisPratt's effort...
And I understand why he would feel so strongly about the need to get out his message. He has put a lot into gathering information and preparing the website. What concerns me is that, right up front, his title accuses anyone who is not in immediate accord, of either being a paid shill or of being ignorant.
I have been reading online different opinions about this topic. These days most Americans do not give our government carte blanche trust, and with good reason. In the 1950s, most of us had no doubt that the U.S. Government does not lie. That trust was shaken when President Eisenhower was forced by undeniable facts to admit that he had lied about the U-2 spy plane.
Since then, there has been the Gulf of Tonkin hoax as a pretext for war, and numerous other serious breaches of trust, the facts of which are established beyond controversy. Nonetheless, it does not follow that every conspiracy theory is true. Whether it is the World Trade Center, Sandy Hook, or chemtrails, each must be examined on its own merits or demerits.
When I read, “the paid minions and the Neanderthals always speak out,” in my opinion that discourages people from airing their questions and doubts, and from engaging in discussion. My suggestion to ChrisPratt is to think about whether discouraging open discussion is a productive way to bring out the truth, or is it counter-productive? Is there a more effective way that you can engage people?
Without one voice we have babel.
Do you not hear the cry of the activist??
You worry that his choice of words “discourages people from airing their questions and doubts, and from engaging in discussion.” Are you so removed from reality?
What Chris, in part, is saying is that the silent majority readership of these pages, like in so many other pages elsewhere, in fact, do not speak out, and they are not “airing their questions and doubts.” But it has nothing to do with his aggressive choice of words.
And, until the masses rise up, there is not one voice.
Without one voice we have babel.
Yadda, yadda.
Get Involved
SK– B I am sorry that you interpreted my article this way and THANKS for writing. The point I am trying to make is that the paid opposition and the uninformed are always quick to speak while much of the public wallows in apathy and silence.
The windows is closing and the sun is setting. It is time for people to wake up and speak out against an evil insanity that reaches to the highest levels. In my view this is about our right to speak freely before we melt, become sick on an environment full of toxins or get led into another manufactured military conflict.
THANKS again for being part of the debate.
It is sad to see that you
It is sad to see that you have utterly wasted so much time and effort on useless nonsense instead of making a productive contribution to society.
P.S.
Dear relevent secret governmental agency, I’d be happy to mock this fellow for a check. You know where to send it and for what amount.
???
Do you think that the Internet is nonsense? I have 217,000 viewers (not “hits”) to my raw but very real video remixes on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTudw_syRVXyvjAjoWOB2Ng.
My channel gets between 1600-1700 new views each month. How many followers do you have?
“I’d be happy to mock this fellow for a check. You know where to send it and for what amount.”
I do not know what you mean by this statement. Are you ready to disclose your identity and debate (not mock) the issues or do you want to get paid?
Do you see debates as a productive contribution to society?
Please advise.
Where on earth did you get
Where on earth did you get that I said the internet was nonsense?
No, your website, videos, articles and the product of all this time and effort you’ve wasted is nonsense.
Most of your videos, and all of your recent ones, have less than 100 views.
The only ones with significant views are 4 and 5 years old. Their average number of views divided by the number of months since their posting is closer to a few hundred per month.
Also, views does not mean support. For example, I just looked at some videos, and thus contributed a “view”. I think you are a crackpot. What makes you confident that a large portion, or even the majority of views on your videos are not mocking you or dismissing you outright?
Thirdly, that you have a youtube channel with views says nothing about whether you are right, or your credibility.
That I do not, says nothing about whether I lack credibility.
Though, it just so happens that I do have a youtube channel, one video alone has over 100,000 views (which is really not much). Does waving that around somehow lend merit to my arguments or statements? No, it doesn’t.
None of that matters a bit as to whether I have the slightest clue about anything. Therefore I can only interpret your rather paltry youtube numbers as a desperate ego attempting to fill the void left by the lack of any *actual* credentials.
Even if every single view on your videos was a supporter, then that simply makes you somewhat minimally known by the crazy people on the internet. It is not a credential by any measure.
“I do not know what you mean by this statement. Are you ready to disclose your identity and debate (not mock) the issues or do you want to get paid?”
Well, I would like to get paid but unfortunately no check from the gubmint has yet arrived, so I guess I’ll be working pro bono.
Your unsupported assertions are not worthy of the term debate, they are worthy of being mocked.
The moment you present a serious claim with actual evidence, I will treat it appropriately.
Yes debates are a productive contribution to society. Conspiracy theorist nonsense, demonstrating nothing but ignorance, scientific and logical illiteracy and gigantic cognitive dissonance, are NOT productive NOR a contribution to society.
Your work, displayed on your website and youtube channel is detrimental to human wellbeing and progress. It is very sad you have wasted so much of your life on such garbage. Hopefully you figure out what it is that has poisoned your thinking so thoroughly and you can turn it around while you’ve still got a few years left to make a contribution.
Instead of debate just listen to you?
Just because you say these are conspiracy theories, you deem it unnecessary to debate and let the crowd decide. How is Chris’s work detrimental to human wellbeing? Do you think people should save their time and just listen to you, (the Oracle)? You’d rather mock. Brilliant. That sounds very mature (*snark*)
Debate taking place now
There a public debate taking place now on these pages, and more likely to have a wider audience than a forum here in town. In addition, a debate would rehash much of these comments as seen here. It might be usually as a form of showmanship but it is not going to draw out the “silent majority to not be so silent.”
Moreover, there is not just listening to one or the other precisely because this is a debate here.
No, people should not waste
No, people should not waste time debating assertions that have no evidence or rational argument behind them unless they happen to be participating in a fiction writing workshop.
It is only necessary to point out the lack of a properly constructed argument and/or evidence and to therefore dismiss the assertions.
This is not so much a debate as mocking a street preacher or self-proclaimed doomsday prophet. I doubt I’ll have the slightest impact on either you or Chris. You are both quite far gone as far as I can tell.
This is more geared towards the reader who might otherwise have been tempted to buy into your nonsense. Rational, reasoned thinking and scientific literacy are excellent inoculations against bullshit.
It’s also a chance for me to exercise my mind in a way with some verbal (or typed, rather) sparring, though I wish my opponents here presented a bit more of a challenge than the incoherent, fundamentally flawed nonsense than has been presented so far.
That makes sense when everything is black and white
but that is a rare occurrence. Most things in life have complex issues surrounding them. Debate is how we listen to all sides, experts and non-experts. We have communications now and we want to make the most of it. We never know where knowledge will come from. Sometimes it even comes from children. Oh and there are always those who revel in spreading misinformation and that is why debate is important. It will come out in the end. I don’t know why anyone would want to spread misinformation deliberately, maybe to get attention or maybe they’re just irascible types.
I accept your challenge.Lets
I accept your challenge.
Lets pick the VERY FIRST THING on your “suspicious deaths” page, which by the way, is despicable and harmful to the friends and family of those individuals for absolutely no benefit or reason.
You point out the death of “Alberto Behar” in a plane crash.
You link to a news article reporting the accident and his death.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2905123/Pilot-killed-small-plane-crash-NASA-scientist.html
After a brief description essentially parroting the article you say:
“While plane crashes do happen and scientists do die, Behar’s name has now been added to a very long list of scientists and astronomers who have met their untimely ends prematurely, leading us to ask, did Behar know something that ‘they’ don’t want the rest of society to find out?”
You have provided absolutely no evidence for pursuing that line of questioning. All you have done is cite a news article reporting a death. You have not provided any citations for your additional claim that his death may have been a homicide, perpetuated by persons unknown.
A brief glance shows this is pretty much the theme of your website. Therefore I repeat my statement that you have utterly and completed wasted your time and effort on utter nonsense.
Edit: Actually it appears your website is primarily just links embedded in thumbnails to general google searches or articles that may or may not have anything to do with what your core message appears to be. So, given your website is mostly a pile of links, Its a rather easy claim to say that everything on your website is cited.
However, every time you add your own words, you make unsupported assertions. You’d have been better off just sticking to links…
1. Thanks for your comments.
1. Thanks for your comments. First off your calling me a “crackpot” underscores the very point that I am trying to make. Namely that government trolls or the ignorant often revert to name calling and character assassination as factual debates are far more difficult.
2. I therefore respect that you Mr eshmitt obviously differ with my positions. That is your right.
3. You stated that where in the world did I get — that you — doubted the Internet? I said that because most of my thousands of references come from citations I have linked from searches across the Internet. If you doubt these references it would seem logical to assume that you doubt the Internet because that was the vehicle I used to assemble all the links. I would encourage those who may question the authenticity of my claims to simply to go to the site and decide for yourself.
4. In a prior post you listed all the bad things govenment did that have now been recognized as fact. I added other disclosures that you did not mention. For example:
DDT, the Gulf Of Tonkin, Kent State, Operation Paperclip, MK Ultra, the Monsanto Protection Act, Monsanto – PCB’s, Napalm, Agent Orange, Dupont and C8, Tobacco, Cell Phones, the invasions of Iraq, Libya, Syria and Afghanistan, CIA and Al Quada, ISIS and other terrorists links.
I further stated that many of these disclosures began first as cover-ups and conspiracy theories.
5. As an aside I would love to see your video. How can I access it?
6. Finally I am so pleased that you have elected to particpate in a debate. However the only issue you bring up is a dead NASA scientist. A person that I listed along with others as suspicious deaths and not definitive facts. I simply listed several articles that raised several questions. I never saidd anything.
If you are prepared to debate the real issues that are shaping governmental policies, military deployment and media. Issues like 9/11, the war on terror and mainstream media or the .001% who control the world, or the militarization of our police force or our annual 4o billion dollar expenditures for Homeland Security to protect us from relatively tiny threat levels and what many believe to be manufactured terrorist events.
I would welcome a public forum where these issues are discussed. Come make mince meat of me. Are you up for it?
1. If you can't take it,
1. If you can’t take it, don’t dish it out. The very title of this thread implies that anyone who doesn’t agree with you is either paid to do so, or ignorant. In any case, you do a quite sufficient job of destroying your own credibility. For someone to attempt character assassination on you would be redundant.
2. Yup, and I havn’t even been paid to do it yet.
3. Your references are not necessarily the issue, it is the unsupported assertions and crackpot theories you attach to them that is the issue. Also, sometimes people post stuff on the internet that is wrong, just a heads up. (For an example of this see http://www.thereluctantactivist.org)
4. One example was sufficient for me to make my point. A point which you seem to have failed to grasp. That I ignored the others does not mean that I acceded to their validity (and most were too vague to guess at where you were going with them)
5. My video(s) do not pertain to anything relevant to this discussion. I again brought it up only to make a point.
6. You are transparently dishonest.
Your challenge was to find any one fact that was not supported. I simply chose the very first thing on a given page.
Just because something has a reference or a citation does not make it a fact. I.E. Chemtrails.
Secondly, you did say something. By posting links to articles of deaths, and then adding your own commentary of unsupported assertions and “questions” without any rational basis for doing so, you are very definitely saying something.
If I approach you publicly and ask “So, have you stopped beating your wife?” that is not an innocent question. It is a transparent and dishonest tactic and you can screw yourself for not owning it.
Do not attempt to play dumb by hiding behind “I’m just asking questions, I didn’t say anything”. That is extraordinarily dishonest.
There is no point in discussion or debate with dishonest people. I have a long list of far better uses of my time and energy.
to imply that all those who
do not agree with me are government trolls or are ignorant is incorrect. I am tying to get the sleeping masses to wake up, to question, to challenge, to apply reason, logic and evidence to what they believe and not sound bites from the Media Conglomerates. These Presstitutes have a financial stake in covering-up, minimizing or diverting public attention from the real issues to tabloid distractions.
Your challenge to my references on dead scientists made me pause because I never made any comments. 125 dead scientisits remains an amazing coincidence to me, one that I have no problem saying is suspicious. However I never made any comments.
I have since referenced these source video clips on my site. Most were made by investigative journalists, not me, but I stand behind them all.
I would ask the public to go here and decide for yourself – http://thereluctantactivist.org/suspisious-deaths.html.
Once again nothing I say is not supported but verify this for yourself. I am not proposing that I am right only that the public needs to start constructing their own belief system, one based on facts, evidence, reason and logic. Start thinking critically and make up your own mind — when you do, in my opinion, the deceptions will become obvious.
By the way on the Chemtrail front I found this guy.
Marvin Herndon (born 1944) is an American interdisciplinary scientist, who earned his BA degree in physics in 1970 from the University of California, San Diego and his Ph.D. degree in nuclear chemistry in 1974 from Texas A&M University. For three years, J. Marvin Herndon was a post-doctoral assistant to Hans Suess and Harold C. Urey in geochemistry and cosmochemistry at the University of California, San Diego. He is the President of Transdyne Corporation in San Diego, California. He has been profiled in Current Biography, and dubbed a “maverick geophysicist” by The Washington Post.[1][2] He is most noted for deducing the composition of the inner core of Earth as being nickel silicide, not partially crystallized nickel-iron metal.[3] More recently, he has suggested “georeactor” planetocentric nuclear fission reactors as energy sources for the gas giantouter planets.[4] as the energy source and production mechanism for the geomagnetic field [5] and stellar ignition by nuclear fission.[6][2]
In reference to Chemtrails he states :
“The consequences on public health are profound, including exposure to a variety of toxic heavy metals, radioactive elements, and neurologically-implicated chemically mobile aluminum released by body moisture in situ after inhalation or through transdermal induction.”
But I am sure his creditials must be suspect.
So your entire website is
So your entire website is merely a collection links or cut and pastes of what *other* people have said, arranged in data dumps of TLDR? Seems a bit threadbare for 15,000 hours…
Also, clearly you are completely incapable of vetting your sources. Linking to nonsense doesn’t make it anything other than nonsense. Nonsense in an article somewhere on the internet is still nonsense.
Just about anyone can call themselves an investigative journalist, just FYI.
So, Marvin Herndon, I love it when crackpots push forward “Scientists” as authorities… ran into this with a 911 truther a little ways back…
So, you are going to put forward a fellow who is opposed to the theory of plate tectonics? Someone who utterly rejects most evidence we have about the way our planet formed and its composition? A fellow who not only rejects all of this but puts forward his own theory with almost no evidence behind it to substantiate his claims.
A fellow who after essentially being shuffled out of the scientific community for being a crackpot, turned to self-publishing poor quality books via a vanity publisher to try to get his ideas out there because they couldn’t survive peer review?
This is someone you are going to cite as a credible expert?
Do you ever look into things beyond taking them at face value?
When the very tiny fraction of scientists on your side are of the lowest quality and poorest character, you might want to think about that.
Oh look, he did get a paper
Oh look, he did get a paper published in a small, obscure and poorly known journal.
And then they retracted it because it was garbage.
http://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/12/9/10941/htm
Well Mr eschmitt I want to
Well Mr eschmitt I want to thank you for validating everything I have said about people like you. High on character assassination and low to zero on factual arguments.
At any rate I am not wasting anymore time on this. I am hopeful that readers can choose between one who wants only to inform and is inviting readers to look and to decide for themselves what to think and believe, versus someone who wants to prevent you from looking in the first place.
This is not about Chris versus eschmitt this is about your right to think, to choose and to make decisions for yourself.
May the force me with you. 🙂
You wouldn't know a fact if
More dishonesty from you.
You wouldn’t know a fact from an assertion if it bit you on your ass.
No evidence has yet been presented for any of your conspiracy theorist nonsense. As the one making the claims, you have the burden of proof.
You make insinuations on your website that for example, scientists being murdered in a conspiracy about…. something…?
When I call you on having no reason to suspect foul play, you dishonestly hide behind “I’m only asking questions” or “I didn’t say it I just reposted it” which I pointed out as a “So have you stopped beating your wife?” tactic which is transparent and despicable.
Then you put forward someone with some academic credentials as an expert or an authority. You did not present any of his evidence or arguments, only his name and credentials and some of his crackpot claims.
I then shot him to pieces on that same basis. He is clearly not credible. Given you presented no arguments or evidence, his credibility was the only thing on the table. So you don’t get to whine about character assassination.
If you want to present some of his evidence to support his claims about chemtrails or the formation and behavior of the earth, then I would be obligated to respond. (I’ll save you the time, I’m just gonna respond with plate tectonics)
I’ll take your whiny backpedaling and withdrawal as conceding the point.
So I say again, I have accepted your challenge and I have pointed out that you have no factual basis for claiming or implying that the very first scientist on your “dead scientist” page was murdered or died of anything other than an accident.
Therefore you should provide evidence (not assertions) that support the claim that this scientist may have been murdered, or concede the point and admit your website contains factually incorrect information and I would even go a step further and say its entirely a farce.
Evidence?
“No evidence has yet been presented for any of your conspiracy theorist nonsense”
Of course, the Government’s evidence is ironclad for 3 notorious assassinations, to wit…
1. Lee Harvey Oswald killed JFK
2. Sirhan Bishara Sirhan killed RFK
3. James Earl Ray killed MLK
(And, BTW, why do assassins always have 3 names?)
Regarding Conspiracy theories, I got one for ya – It’s a doozy!
19 disaffected Muslim men armed with box cutters and led by a sick Saudi on dialysis in a cave in Afghanistan hijacked 4 commercial planes, flew them around for an hour or so then crashed them into 2 skyscrapers in New York and the US Pentagon, outwitting the most sophisticated intelligence network in the world. Ain’t that a knee slapper?
Why am I not surprised that
Why am I not surprised that you are a 911 truther as well…
Ironclad huh. I think your mental tools for evaluating evidence are fundamentally broken.
But, lets go with JFK since thats the first on your list.
What “ironclad” evidence do you have for that one?
Irony
What is it about Irony that you don’t understand?
Another government deception
The moon landings.
I have been told for years that the Apollo moon landings were fake. For years, I denied this. I was convinced that what we saw really happened. Recently, however, a video came across my monitor: http://www.gaia.com/video/kubricks-odyssey-i which contains compelling evidence of how Stanley Kubrick directed (faked) the Apollo moon landings. (and why). See part (Chapter) one of the film.
Note: This film neither confirms nor denies the reality of the actual landings. That’s another argument for another place and another time. What it does confirm is that what we all saw on TV was completely faked.
Actually, there’s a perverse logic behind this. It would have been difficult if not impossible for NASA to create believable film records of the landings without having a film crew up there in advance. NASA wanted something believable, so they hired a master of make-believe to create it.
There are other explanations. Former NASA consultant Richard Hoagland claims that there are structures already on the moon that the government doesn’t want us to know about. I’m not going to touch that one.
Well if it was just one death it wouldn't be suspicious
or even two or twenty, but in context of 125 or so within a group of invertebrates like scientists, it sure is. It’s not like scientists are a daring lot like for example – window washers. And then there are also a great number of bankers going down like flies and holistic doctors. And those associated to 9/11 whistleblowers who have died “suspiciously”, including the wife of a victim of the WTC who died in a plane crash soon after meeting Obama to plead for an investigation into 9/11. Why would any genuine patriot refuse an investigation into an attack on our soil? That doesn’t seem to bother you. You’d prefer it if people who questioned government would just shutup and go away and just accept their inferior status would you?
Cite statistics of premature
Cite statistics of deaths due to accidents in the general population.
Then cite statistics of deaths to accidents in a variety of lines of work that would not fall under your conspiracy theorist nonsense.
Then cite the statistics of the deaths of scientists and holistic doctors and bankers. and relatives of 9/11 victims.
Then Compare them.
See, thats this whole evidence for your assertions thing that you really don’t comprehend. 125 deaths is a meaningless number without an “Out of X number of scientists”. If the “Death due to accidents per 100,000 people” figure for “scientists” is less or roughly equal to the general population, then your statement is yet another example of you making shit up as you go along and pulling things out of your ass.
I got into a car accident shortly after driving by your house.
I made fun of you on an internet forum.
Therefore you caused my car accident.
See how theres a bit of missing information there to justify that accusation? Making wild ass assertions just makes you look like an ass.
The list of deaths
is to suggest that something could be going awry. When do coincidences become patterns? We still don’t know who killed JFK. The life of Nicola Tesla was not taught in schools. The annihilation of millions of indigenous tribes people was not taught as part of the Thanksgiving story. Most people do not know that the Federal Reserve is a private institution. Even people who work in banks don’t know how money is created (maybe you don’t know either) This shows how we are being duped on a daily basis and from an early age. One has to look deep and hard. And the truth is nowhere near what we think it is by listening to the profit-driven media or even the institutions of learning.
3 phase power
“The life of Nicola Tesla was not taught in schools”
It’s worse than that. I studied EE in one of the best engineering schools in the country.
Tesla invented 3-phase power, without which our grid wouldn’t operate.
Tesla’s name was never mentioned.
He had a feud with J.P. Morgan and Morgan had him blackballed.
Tesla always denied this, but his meteoric career came to an abrupt and irrevocable end.
Quote by John Perkins (who was "there")
I talk in “The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man”, my book that just came out, about my own experiences with the democratically elected president of Ecuador, Jaime Roldos, and the Head of State of Panama, Omar Torrijos. They had integrity. They would not accept the deals I was trying to convince them to take and they were both assassinated.
"Sebastian Mallaby, economics
“Sebastian Mallaby, economics columnist of the Washington Post, reacted sharply to Perkins’ book:[3] describing him as “a conspiracy theorist, a vainglorious peddler of nonsense…..”
Perkins lived it
Mallaby is just fantasizing.
Then you conspiracy theorists
Then you conspiracy theorists should love em as a fellow traveler!
“…every moron with a keyboard.”
This has been an interesting two-coffee morning following the articles “Chemtrail Meeting” and “Paid Opposition or Just Plain Ignorant”
The battle of virtual wits primarily of DWard and ChrisPratt between eschitt is fascinating. The hard-driven “distain” eschitt has for both of them (and people he sees as like them) is quite an earful. However, when it comes to scientific comments eschmitt is by far a potent discussionist. I’m not talking about his razor sharp sneering scorn. That kind of barrage is endemic on iBrattleboro. However, there’s no question he has a keen scientific mind. He effectively quotes two basic axioms: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” ~Carl Sagan, and, “Assertions without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.” ~Hanlon’s Razor.
I also have long subscribed to the notion, as escmitt phrases it in his reply, “The ‘burden of proof’ is on the person making the claim or assertion, which in this case is you. What you are attempting to do, since your position is untenable, is to shift the burden of proof to me, which is a logical fallacy.”
But the most interesting comment of all I’ll note without prejudice by eschmitt is when he says to ChrisPratt: “Hopefully you’ll figure out what it is that has poisoned your thinking so thoroughly and you can turn it around while you’ve still got a few years left to make a contribution.” I’m not referring to “poisoned your thinking so thoroughly” part, but eschmitt’s mild encouragement that ChrisPratt adjust his thinking and therefore his statement(s)to improve his contribution to understanding, choice and change.
Nothing wrong with that.
"Extraordinary claims"
It occurred to me that I wasn’t really certain that Carl Sagan originated the extraordinary claims quote. Here you have it:
An extraordinary claim requires extraordinary proof.
— Marcello Truzzi, On the Extraordinary: An Attempt at Clarification, Zetetic Scholar, Vol. 1, No. 1, p. 11, 1978
Carl Sagan popularized this as “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”.[16] However, (Pierre-Simon) Laplace writes: “The weight of evidence for an extraordinary claim must be proportioned to its strangeness.” Also, David Hume wrote in 1748: “A wise man … proportions his belief to the evidence”, and “No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavors to establish.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcello_Truzzi
Double Blind Trolls
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” -Keats
There’s something undeniable in this. Yet it speaks of temporality. For many thousands of years, the Venus figurine was a symbol of beauty, and fecundity. For the earliest artists she represented, we suppose, the power of life. Nowadays that form is seen reflexively as the shape of a fat woman. Obese. Health risk…Does this mean the ancients were wrong? Or did their conception of beauty contain other parameters and considerations? Ideas that also nourished and honored and contained values we may have lost in the name of progress.
What constitutes feminine beauty now can be mapped with facial recognition software. Input a plethora of data points taken from collated images of top models, and the replicant beauty is rendered. Would that in all cases strike everyone as beautiful? I think not. Beauty has intangibility, idiosyncrasy. As does art, and as does nature too. Science may be able to calculate the distance to remote galaxies, but it can’t tell us the meaning of life, or cure the common cold.
For me what constitutes admirable wisdom is compassion. I don’t see Einstein as a man who taunted and mocked, rather as one who diligently pursued his truths, and embraced the mysteries of an unfathomable universe.
This quote by Emerson also describes well the dangers of absolute empiricism:
“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — ‘Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.’ — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”
“The shadows are as important as the light” Jane Eyre
Actually, Einstein did not “diligently pursued ‘his’ truths.”
Einstein understood that the universe, in fact, was not unfathomable, at least in the sense of it being impossible to measure or partially understood. Rather than embracing the mysteries of the universe he sought to demystify them by defining them for others to understand them.
The ‘mysteries’ he left for those who to try to answer where answers have not yet been found, and who place them in the context of belief.
I like the “beauty” of Emerson’s words, much the way I feel about yours, but he was a believer and dreamer. I don’t agree with his statement. “To be great is to be misunderstood.” “To be misunderstood” is meant for his fellow believers and dreamers, not for people of the scientific habit of mind.
Letter Box
http://www.reformer.com/letterstotheeditor/ci_29713991/letter-reluctant-activist
Cui bono?
(or sometimes qui bono) – literally “to whose profit?”, commonly, “who benefits”?
The phrase is often used to suggest that the person or persons guilty of committing a crime may be found among those who have something to gain, chiefly with an eye toward financial gain. (Wikipedia)
However, the term can be equally applicable when the referenced event is not necessarily a crime.
I used to believe that our government would not lie to us.
I am now approaching the point that I feel the government is always lying to us. I’m not there yet, but I find it useful when examining a government activity, to ask cui bono?
When studying history, if you eliminate the natural disasters, what’s left but conspiracies?
(BTW, a “conspiracy” doesn’t need to be secret, nor does it have to be evil in intent. All that is necessary is that two or more entities “breathe together”.)
I wish I could itemize all the conspiracies or other things our government has lied to us about, but there’s not enough room in this website.
Who???
Who TF is this eschmitt schmuck anyway?
Someone
much smarter than you.
False dichotomy
I find it difficult to want to engage in a debate that is predicated on the statement that members of this discussion are either being “paid” or “ignorant.”
That explains why I haven't
That explains why I haven’t seen you comment here before except for one or two times. LOL And it’s a wise move on your part.
Can you provide why someone would
want to discredit those who question government? I mean discredit every point and concede nothing?
You've made no rational,
You’ve made no rational, sensical arguments, therefore theres been nothing to concede. You’ve simply been wrong about just about everything you’ve stated.
Learn to construct a proper argument based on evidence and reason, and perhaps you’ll get someone to concede a point to you.
I have not discredited you, you’ve discredited yourself.
Dward, Your question does not
DWard,
Your question does not address the initial concern that I raised regarding the premise of this thread – that there are no options provided but to be “paid opposition or just plain ignorant.” I can think of many reasons why someone would disagree with chemtrails. In your reply to my comment, you have spun that to mean “those who question government.” In terms of discrediting all points and conceding nothing, if one is not persuaded by an argument that another is making, then there is nothing to concede.