*snipped high school creative writing portion*
Many many experts have already commented. Their videos are simply outnumbered by the cracktivists out there on youtube. Here is
one such example.
Since this has nothing to do with evidence and science anyway, the evidence isn't going to convince anyone.
This has all been explained several times.
Fox News and every bloody news network probably has had accredited experts on. Why is no one looking for the experts? I'll tell you why, cause they are all insane!!!
Darn Joey, I thought we could be friends. Maybe it was never meant to be, though, as it appears we are attracted to the same threads! Or one (or both) of us are huge nerds and simply look at every thread.
I may be wrong here, but since when was a scanned document considered evidence? I thought that notion went out the window ever since the invention of Photoshop. Purported evidence for the existence of nonmundane UFOs is posted in the form of government documents all the time and the point is always made that they cannot be accepted as forms of evidence (at least not by themselves) because they can easily be doctored. Surely this is a similar case, perhaps even more so considering the motive for deception is far greater than in the UFO case.
I am not, however, advocating a hardline position that the scanned document could never be considered as evidence. I think the question of whether people accept it or not has a lot to do with the context provided by their political/social world view that they plug it into - context which provides things like motivations. In the case of political issues were effects are very far removed from their causes and controlled experiments are almost impossible, circumstantial evidence must also be considered (as well as having arguments for either side include an internally consistent world view).
Circumstantial evidence such as this: Why not just release a physical copy of the birth certificate to be on public display for a period of time? For those who perceive there to be actual rather than theatrical partisanship in politics, surely this would be a massive boost for Obama and his supporters and also a massive embarrassment to doubters.
This is the way things would be dealt with in a society where concepts such as political competition and transparency are active. Instead, we see again and again see a situation where government claims are usually dubious and of an unscientific, unsupportable nature.
As for your appeal to experts, I think that except in a few cases, conclusions should generally be reached based upon their logical consistently and adherence to external facts, rather than favored because of their advocacy by experts. Invoking the opinion of an expert, when no such technical matter exists that necessitates an expert, seems to me to be dangerously close to an argument from authority. Admittedly, I called for "experts" in my first post in this thread but only as a cheap attempt to ingratiate myself with the authority-trusting skeptic community. Indeed, I thought about quipping in that very post about the errency of unnecessarily invoking the almighty expert. In other words, think for yourself. Experts are greatly overrated, and not needed in this particular case - most of us on this forum are technically smart/intuitive enough to follow an argument with image editing software at its basis.
If you actually have any questions yourself I recommend inquiring in the Obama BC thread. They've pretty much covered the full gamut.
