[MD] Sin Part 1

[Case]

[Platt]
I don't think we have much trouble identifying Islamic terrorists any 
more than we had identifying combatants in WW II, Korea and Vietnam. 
Did we charge them? No.  

[Case]
They were held in accordance with the Geneva Convention. The Bush
administration claims that these prisoners are not covered under the
Convention. Or government has stepped outside of all law on this one. I
still say nothing can justify this. I don't see how you can square this with
your concern for individual rights.

[Platt]
Agree. The individual is a minority of one and as such is most in need of
protection from the majority.

[Case]
Totally agree. The Miranda decision, Civil Rights decisions, Roe v Wade, and
a host of others have been championed by the court. I find it odd then that
the right favors returning individual as well as federal rights back to the
states. This non-sense about activist judges is cynical extemeism.

[Platt]
If I have interpreted the MOQ correctly, science and religion are on 
separate levels. But, I could be wrong.

[Case]
But you could be right. Why do you think this? What is different about them
to warrant separate quarters?

[Platt]
When those characters start sending suicide bombers into our cities,
in effect declaring war on the U.S., they will forfeit their rights.

[Case]
So they actually have to destroy something physical? Wasn't McVeigh a big
fan of Koresh? 

[Platt]
You are not aware of the global cooling predictions a few years ago?
Anyway, it looks as if we'll never agree on this issue,  so arguing 
about it would be a waste of time don't you think?. 

[Case]
Not really a waste. What was the global cooling deal?

[Platt]
Don't think so. The laws of probability are fairly well established as 
being intellectually sound. Perhaps you can explain why in this case 
there application is a "perversion." To assign creative power to chance 
seems anti-intellectual to me, like saying "it's a miracle." 

[Case]
It is not the law of probability that are unsound it is the Intelligent
Designers. They rest their claims on the idea of irreducible complexity.
They are saying that something's are so complex they could not possibly
occur by chance. This assumes we know what the chances are and what factors
would be required to produce the outcome. What we see in looking at the laws
of probability is that very complicated arrangements are possible from very
simple input. Various computer models and nature herself give the impression
that eyes are fairly likely outcomes in the world we live in.

I do not ascribe power of any kind to chance. Chance is a description of the
probability of what will come or what has been. What we see are things
rearranging themselves NOW. The probability of any particular arrangement is
a function of the nature of the things and their present arrangement.

Whether this is creative or destructive is a matter of Value.