Dharma

Paper covers rock, rock breaks scissors..I guess the Holographic theory than states that this world is nothing more than a complex illusion...so that means the heliocentric model would then be just one kind of movie, no?

Y.B

Natural selection is also an observed fact, as are mutations.

Autonemesis

The Scopes trial involved a challenge to a Tennessee law banning the teaching of any scientific theory that denied divine creation. The defendant was a sometimes substitute high school school biology teacher, John Scopes, who defied the law, and then lost in court after Darrow's and Bryan's famous debate. Scopes was fined $100 for teaching evolution in the classroom.

I fail to see the relevance to this discussion.

JGL53

The 'predominating theory" among academics in Tennessee in the 1920s regarding 'origins' was creationism, if not the academics in universtities, then certainly at high school level on down. It was also against the law to teach evolution, which was seen as a competing theory. Scopes challenged it and was brought up on charges.

Now he wasn't fired, I don't think, just vilified as Satan's spawn. Is it a firing that is required as your criterion? Well, there have been cases of conservatives being denied tenure - the equivilent of firing- or great attempts are made to deny them tenure - in humanities wherein they are usually a small minority.

Does the PC majority come right out and say "we denied so-in-so tenure because he was not an orthodox liberal."? Well, no, they don't document their prejudice in writing for your edification, Autonemesis.

Dharma

it's nice that scientists like observing things...like the observed fact that Bogart was a brunette... heck, one day they might even make an observation that might discover the cure to the common cold ...let me observe my finger now, such a great scientist I am

the "theory of evolution" is nothing new...I believe the Hindus, Jains and Buddhists all "observed" some force of nature that pushed organisms into "evolving" into what they considered a "higher being" that can observe itself..but I guess meditation is not a way of knowing according to great big scientists?

My argument is the fact that science can be misused and made into fads and cults similar to religion.

JGL53

Not quite catching your meaning there, Dharma - you're either talking over my head or talking out of your head - I leave it for those posters wiser than us to judge.

Anywho, let me ask you this - god went "poof" on six consecuative days a few thousand years ago, and all that we observe to constitute the extant universe was brought forth from nothingness - Is that the scientific theory you go with, rather than that goofy evolution stuff?

If so, why? I mean, lay out the proof for us, would you please? This is stuff I for one would like to know about.

Narapoia

The key word for me here is misused. When science is misused, like ID proponents calling creationism a 'scientific theory', it can become cultish or fadish. As soon as the scientific method is dropped it becomes something other than science.

ALL religions started as cults and I have yet to discover the magic number of adherents required for a cult to change into a religion.

So we have:

From your post
misused science = cult like or fadish (I made that last word up, it's late )
From me
Religions = Cults with x members (where x = some undefined large number)


Science has to be misused to become cult like, whereas religions are just cults in bigger stadia.

mirage

No, it's not. Ancient Hindu's, Jains and Buddhists did not come up with the theory of evolution. Sorry.

Dharma

but I am also arguing that religion too is being misused, it simply started as meditative knowledge and since most people are uneducated in meditation it gets abused...for example, suppose there's a guy who REALLY can heal the sick, make the lame walk, bring back the dead to life, now I can't imagine that every such case was in fact a false case...someone might call this AN OBSERVED FACT, heck one might call such people the rare meditative Einstein's...

so both religion and science can be abused by certain prominent members to make a whole lot of money or have some kind of cult following...

Again, do you disagree with my definition of a cult as any group of people who don't think and might follow fads, leaders...etc...

Dharma

well atleast you didn't say Hindus/buddhists/jains didn't come up with the illusary nature of universe, relativity and advanced concepts of space time and energy...then I would get mad...
:angry:

However, yes Hindus(not including the stupid ones who don't read their own texts), Buddhists and Jains did come up with a theory of evolution which has been usurped by air headed new agers as "reincarnation"...from lower forms of life to final emancipation, where Humans have the seed of all creation.

Buddha described it in far more sophisticated terms as a perceived energy stream shift, more akin to physics thus, leaving genetic understanding of evolution in the dust...