Corwin

Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt.

Thanks for playing.... maybe you'd like to try Double Jeopardy where the scores can REALLY change?

Let's try another approach ManM.

Possibly you could explain to me why churches SHOULDN'T pay taxes along with the rest of us?

And at the same time explain how exempting churches from paying taxes, while requiring the rest of us to pay taxes, isn't giving a break to religious organizations?

Wyz_sub10

It may seem that way, but it isn't. A theory tries to explain an observation. Over time, with the addition of new and better information, that theory may change or be discarded altogether.

For instance, I come home and a glass I had left on the table is broken on the floor. That is my observation. My theory might be that my cat knocked it over. My wife comes home and tells me that the cat's been in the bedroom all day with the door closed. I have new information and now I must change my theory. In the future, more info may arise (the landlord came in to check the bedroom windows) and I may revisit it again.

Evolution is like the broken glass - it is the observation, not the theory. Natural selection, punctuated equilibrium, genetic drift, are all theories of the observation.

I digress a little.

The question I have for you is, why on earth do you think a monkey would give birth to a human?? I'm sure at this point in your life you know where babies come from. Monkeys give birth to other monkeys and humans give birth to other humans.

And if you ever do see a monkey giving birth to a human, by all means, there will be many tabloids with a cheque waiting for you if you can get pictures!

BTW, you may want to understand evolution before taking a position against it.

Toto

No one has to explain that beating a small angelic harmless beautiful child to death is wrong. But some people seem to have trouble with the concept that attacking a homosexual is wrong.

If the AFA had produced a powerful contemporary play exploring the evil of attacking homosexuals, perhaps that would be the required reading. But they didn't. Two thousand years of Christianity, and the AFA has no thoughts on why people raised in Christian cultures still commit hate crimes, or what can be done about it?

<a href="http://www.curtainup.com/laramieproject.html" target="_blank">Review of the play</a>

Autonemesis

So you agree AFA is being hypocritical (though you leave room for someone else to be more hypocritical). Good, some progress is coming of this discussion. Now, whatever happened to "render into Caesar what is Caesar's"? It's really no business of AFA what the adult offspring of Christians are being exposed to at university. The university isn't telling AFA or anyone else what they can preach about in their churches. MYOB should rule here, but AFA and other mouth-breathers seem incapable of sitting down and shutting up like adults when something just does not concern them.

Autonemesis

*****RETCH******

I could not possibly disagree more with this statement. What a stultifyingly dull world we'd live in if people only learned what they needed to know to do their mother-effing, soul-sucking, "oh-well-it-pays-the-rent" job. I categorically reject that approach and any other resembling it. Most of what is wrong with education today centers around its morbid focus on supplying the corporate world with obedient and subservient worker bees to use and then toss away like a Kleenex.

Ab_Normal

I concur completely! Imagine how different the US would be if *every* child were taught critical thinking skills, not just regurgitation of facts and the minimal skills required for a McJob or corporate slavery.

Buffman

(By the time I was ready to post just this much, all you fast typists had me eating your dust. Well a pox on you all. I'm going to post it anyway even though others have provided far better comments and insights than found in this diatribe.)

ManM

Unfortunately, in practice it ridicules everyone that makes a claim which opposes the current fad (whatever that may be at the time). David Finkelstein, a physics professor at my old college, stands on the edge of theoretical physics and borders on philosophy. He has taken a lot of flak for his ideas.

(May I inquire exactly which old school that was? Professor Finkelstein has taught at a number of colleges and universities.)

I'm not sure I understand what point you are attempting to make concerning Professor Finkelstein's work in theoretical physics. Are you inferring that he is incapable of error or misinterpretation of the currently available evidence to support his hypotheses? I can only gather that you never took any of his courses while he was at your college. I will even chance saying that you have very little background in science.

ex-preacher,
Good question. It is quite possible to draw up charts of the universe where the Earth is the center. If someone wants to teach their kids how to do this, I have no problem with it. It's all in the way you look at it.

The issue isn't whether or not you have any problem with it. The issue is fact versus fiction/accuracy versus error/right versus wrong. If you have any other way of looking at it, please enlighten me. --- If a private school wishes to teach its students that the earth is flat and ruled by the gods on Mt. Olympus, they have every right to do so. You have every right to send your children to that school if that's what you believe and want them to believe. However, when I sent my children to public school, I demanded that they be taught the most accurate knowledge available to the world at the time of instruction. I had no problem understanding that knowledge based on hypotheses could and would change as new, testable, evidence became available. That is one of the most wonderful things about the Scientific Method of Inquiry. It not only welcomes new evidence which may challenge/change all that was believed accurate before, it actually goes out and actively seeks that testable evidence. Inerrant biblical theists are frightened by science which has already proven that many biblical claims are utter nonsense. But that isn't because science set out to prove that theistic beliefs are nonsense. The modern biological sciences aren't concerned with human faith beliefs. What are the testable facts and to how many decimal places? (Thank you, Robert Heinlein.)

But in order to really attempt to understand the way someone thinks, you have to presuppose the same things they do.

I guess that would make sociometry and neuroscience just wastes of time. You seem to be claiming that we must all have total empathy in order to completely understand each other. (You might find that on a "Star Trek" story, but I wouldn't count on finding it in the real world.)

Can you even conceive of evidence from outside the bounds of the natural world?

I do that all the time. Most people do. That's one reason why faith beliefs have met with so much success. However, to this very moment, humans have been unable to supply any testable evidence of any conscious, self-aware , world beyond that of the natural one.

And yes, there is an equivalent religious method for challenging belief. The practice is called theology, and it happens all the time.

(Although I am having great difficulty making any specific connection between your ramblings and Church-State separation, it is even more difficult for me to allow some posted thoughts to go unchallenged. ) I would recommend that you look up the definition of "theology" before continuing along this path of discussion...and then take the discussion to a more appropriate forum.

The scientific method doesn't prove anything. It can only disprove.

Please, please, please take this identical statement and post it over in both the Evolution/Creation and Science & Skepticism forums. I would sincerely love to read the responses...if anyone even bothers with one.

Creationists use science too; they just have a different starting hypothesis.

They may "use" science; but they certainly don't use the scientific method of inquiry. That is the distinction you are failing to understand/comprehend. That is why I suspect that you studied very little science in school...especially the biological sciences.---Yes, Creaionists do start from a different hypotheses. Faulty ones. They believe that everything is already known and science is the method to prove that what is already known is correct. GOD DID IT. Evidently you are unable or unwilling to accept just how scientifically absurd that approach really is. That is why Creaionism is not science and should not be allowed to invade the public school science classrooms under any pretense that it is competent science.

Science encourages orthodoxy (to current theories) and subservience/obedience (to teachers) as well.

Balderdash! That is pure Christian fundamentalist propaganda. That is totally antithetical to scientific methodology and indicates just how brainwashed some nice folks really are. Unfortunately it is a glaring indication of just how little you personally know about science and how easily you are sold a bill of goods by the Faith Insurance salespersons. Most disappointing given some of your other more insightful remarks.

The old phrase "don't rock the boat" applies to science just as well as anything else. I really don't know what to say about self-loathing. I know some religions look at self-loathing as an end in itself, but that always struck me a silly.

Now that is more like it. Where ever you find someone who allows their ego to cloud their critical reasoning ability, you will find that type of person. Scientific inquiry is one of the places where a huge ego can be both a boon and a bane. Fortunately, the Scientific Method of Inquiry is self-correcting for a huge ego. It is rather disappointing that you are unaware of this.

(PS: I ,too, agree with Godless Dave and Kind Bud concerning one of the most important goals of advanced education...refining the ability of how, not what, to think.)

Corwin

Well.... since you brought up Heinlein.... we could take the approach he advocated on that score....

Most people think that's pretty icky tho... at least outside of isolated island populations...

wade-w

ManM:

You may want to see <a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=58&t=001326" target="_blank">this thread</a> on the subject of whether evolution is testable.

[ September 05, 2002: Message edited by: wadew ]</p>

Buffman

Corwin

ZING! That was the sound of your remarks flying over my grey-haired crew cut.

CRUNCH! CRUNCH! That was the sound of my two brain cells beating together attempting to decide if you were referencing the Kirk, Spock and McCoy location when they encountered the Empath.

In other words, I fear that you will not only have to lead me to your intellectual oasis, you will have to push my head down and hold it under water until I drink. You lost me. <img src="confused.gif" border="0">