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The virus that causes the common cold can effectively boot the Covid virus out

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Re: The virus that causes the common cold can effectively boot the Covid virus out

#281
post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Science does not and will not be able to explain the origin of life. The statement still holds. It's very arrogant of us to assume otherwise.

Neither will religion. It is very arrogant of any ideology to pretend it can explain things it can't.

Depends on which religion. It's a fallacy to group all religions under a single umbrella called "religion", no such thing exists.

Re: The virus that causes the common cold can effectively boot the Covid virus out

#282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are projecting your own understanding of how and what religion is, and then attacking it. That is a straw man

In what way do may statements and reality diverge? Be specific with quotes. For example > science does not have the tools to reproduce the beginning of the Universe. If it's not reproducible it's not Science. What followed in this thread wasn't a discussion of religion. The post you are directly replying to directly dealt with the charge that it is impossible to scientifically examine the beginning on life on earth b…

Where you implied that all religions are anti-science by nature, and that their followers are not interested in finding out the real truth.

Re: The virus that causes the common cold can effectively boot the Covid virus out

#283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

let me rephrase; science has limited itself to understanding the laws of Nature. It can never tell us how the world -and thus life- came to be. I admit your argument was a good one. But not the anti religious points. Essentially atheists has declared Nature as the true god. In the rules he has imposed, he has left us with no choice. Science has hardly managed to do away with god, it has merely managed to exchange him…

Only theists conceive of God as an essential element and thereby perceive a god shaped hole in atheists world view? What religion does your cat practice for example? Nature is like gravity it is a label we attach to things in order to communicate about some aspect of our mental models of the universe we share or imagine we share sufficiently to communicate theories about the underlying thing those models point to. It…

> Your god was invented thousands of years ago so someone could claim to speak for him and attain status within his or her tribe without hunting more animals a trick that amazingly still works NOW.

Another fallacy and incorrect assumption that's clouding the discussion. Don't group all religions together then toss them all out as equally invalid.

Re: The virus that causes the common cold can effectively boot the Covid virus out

#284
post #274
post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chess is an abstract set of rules not the thought process behind making a move or the physical action of moving a piece. As such nobody actually does chess. You can play chess, as in follow the rules, or be a scientist, as in contribute to the progress of science, but nobody is the physical embodiment of chess or science. Edit: To be as clear as possible, the President isn’t Democracy, but Democracy still exists in t…

> To be as clear as possible, the President isn’t Democracy I am afraid I am lost.

Democracy is emergent behavior, you need free and fair elections and the general public to vote. Elected officials are a tiny part of that, just as an individual cell of your body is no more you than a single person is a country.

Science is similarly emergent behavior. You need the exchange of ideas, not just say a science fair where people go through the motions of experiments, but those experiments don’t get used by others to design new experiments etc.

Re: The virus that causes the common cold can effectively boot the Covid virus out

#285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what way do may statements and reality diverge? Be specific with quotes. For example > science does not have the tools to reproduce the beginning of the Universe. If it's not reproducible it's not Science. What followed in this thread wasn't a discussion of religion. The post you are directly replying to directly dealt with the charge that it is impossible to scientifically examine the beginning on life on earth b…

Where you implied that all religions are anti-science by nature, and that their followers are not interested in finding out the real truth.

Again, be specific with quotes. No such statement was made. What was said:

People with preconceived anti science attitudes [..] went looking for the correct answer to satisfy their religion not a commitment to truth

This says "people", not "all religions". Moreover it says "people with [attribute]", which is a properly defined subset. If you take this statement to mean "all religions", it is you who is conflating "anti-science attitudes" with "all religious people", not the GP.

Re: The virus that causes the common cold can effectively boot the Covid virus out

#286
post #177
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean "Vaccines are a relatively new technology"? We've had vaccines since 1796 [0] when Edward Jenner developed a vaccine for smallpox, a terrible disease that we fully eradicated thanks to vaccination. A disease that you and me don't have to worry about because of vaccines. (Likewise for Cholera, Tetanus, Polio, Tuberculosis, Meningitis, etc) Also, trains, cars, planes, cameras, lightbulbs and every inve…

Maybe they mean "mRNA vaccines"? COVID vaccine is the first of this kind, so some side effects, especially long term ones, are still unknown. It's still unlikely that they would be very serious but we won't know for sure until 10 years from now.

In case people really have concerns about the newer mRNA vaccines, perhaps they can choose the AstraZeneca vaccine, which is a more traditional one.

Re: The virus that causes the common cold can effectively boot the Covid virus out

#287
post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's always those that are the least confident in their atheism that feel the need to constantly defend it.

Doesn’t that go for any ‘ism?

Sure, I was just being specific for this case.

Re: The virus that causes the common cold can effectively boot the Covid virus out

#288
post #262
post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Viruses have evolved to hijack DNA- I'd find it highly unlikely a truly alien biology would be susceptible to earth viruses. Maybe some truly primitive precursor virus may have been able to, but I'd think any of those would be long gone.

We have no idea if they'll be DNA based or not, but there's a nonzero chance they might. If Earth found DNA the easiest path, so might another world.

DNA is "translated" from code to proteins using codons. There's a very good chance that the codons used would be completely different from our own, disrupting viral replication.

Re: The virus that causes the common cold can effectively boot the Covid virus out

#289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm unclear what the specific claim that he's been making for years exactly is - that coronaviruses have a morbidity profile similar to COVID, from the GP? Or that we can't believe long term dynamics for disease models because the parameters go to extremes?

Paraphrasing: “The academics who claim that we narrowly avoided a SARS/etc holocaust, have a fatal conflict of interest, and are completely full of shit.”

I'm confused - this sounds like an entirely different claim than your original comment. Could you elaborate?
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