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Time to repeal the states' industrial exemptions for engineering licensing.

Think of all the creationist research positions these kids will fill once they graduate from Bob Jones U. or Liberty U. with their degrees in Creation Studies.

That's a consequence of Liberty University for you.

Fundies have already formed at least one accredited law school. You don't think a med school is possible at some point?

Possibly, but the graduates would be unable to work at almost any hospital, would be unsuitable for non clinical jobs such as drug research, and couldn't get jobs abroad.

Basically in order for it to work you would need creationist hospitals too. I don't discount the possibility, but to be a proper hospital there are federal regulations to meet.

Also, nothing can shake faith like a preventable death. Not to mention bring out the lawyers.

[...] LET PEOPLE BELIEVE IN CREATIONISM. It's ok if someone doesn't want to know everything. Just because you do, and see the logic, does not mean other people do.

If you want to be a doctor, guess what? Medical school is not going to take credits from a biology class with creationism on the syllabus.

Fundies have already formed at least one accredited law school. You don't think a med school is possible at some point?

One wonders how this kind of thing happens. School boards have a range of non-curricular obligations, and aren't really tasked with curriculum at all. I recently had a chance to interview some of the people running for the local school board. I was part of a committee and asked two questions: 1) How does the candidate separate "general policy" from micromanagement? Most of the candidates made that distinction and I wanted to know how exactly they did it. A couple of them said they didn't want to micromanage but then described what they would do and it was micromanagement. So that was odd. Related to this question was number 2 "Do you feel that it is the board's role to promote any particular cultural values?" The candidates all said no, but one of them had included a transcript of some questions another community group had asked him. He said he thought there should be one Biology course with evolution and a different, separate course with Intelligent Design. In the interview, he didn't go that far, saying only that he didn't have a problem with ID in bio classes. Some other candidates said they didn't mind ID in a social studies class, or the Bible as literature, which was more than I expected. The guy who wants two Bio classes goes to Liberty University in their Distance Learning program. It's a project they give to their undergraduates: get elected to local office and start pushing the Liberty University agenda.

We were interviewing to determine the union endorsee. In his district he'll run unopposed if he wins the primary so it was an important decision. We can do things like this and our endorsement does count for something around here because Maryland isn't a "Right-to-Work" state like Florida.

Normally, I would point out that the murder rates and the number of idiots gunning down entire classrooms are much lower than in the US in any other developed country. But since even the most right wing, conservative, god fearing school in the country disagrees with you, I think I can spare the effort.

This is great. You just made my argument, but you don't even realise it.

<me>Hardly. If the specifics of their religion contradict reality, then reality wins.
Failure to realise that is stupid. Don't blame me for that fact.</me>

This is my point! You are equating faith to stupidity. Let me quote Einstein.

Below you define faith: "faith (which means belief without evidence)".
I agree with that definition.

I didn't equate faith with stupidity. I equated belief in *contradiction* of evidence with stupidity.

Believing that some being put it all in motion does not contradict reality.

Believing that that same being has nothing better to do than screw with people about what they eat, who or how they fuck and sets them up against each other by having them kill each other in his name, does.

God the petulant 6 year old, great.

I think you'll find that your Einstein quotes actually back up my position as well.

You should read beyond the first chapter before you claim to speak from a position of authority. You really should not argue against things you know nothing about.

First chapter of what? The Iliad? Koran?
The point I made doesn't rely on the specifics of any particular religion.

All you have to do is look around.

Say, for the sake of argument, that there is a God.
Say, further, that he loves us and wants us all to be nice, happy, not blowing up buildings full of people sort of folks.

Then the simple fact that he told a bunch of different people so many contradictory things about himself isn't really the best way to go about that.

Or, if you're of the mind that your team got it right and all the rest got fake revelations, well that's a pretty piss poor way to achieve those goals as well, don't you think?

So, that's a pretty simple message, delivered ineffectively as was my claim.
You want to add in even more specifics than just that simple of a message and yet there are plenty of people still worshipping "false" gods. And killing and getting killed for largely trivial differences.

Heck, the only way God doesn't come off looking incompetent is if you conclude he's just a dick. He's pretty good at that.


and how's that? By putting a Christmas tree on the town square?

I've never had a problem with Christmas trees. That tradition goes way back before your religion. It could well predate your god even, but I don't know that there's any evidence on that one way or the other.

And if the "extremist Christians" are taking over America and destroying the Constitution, then they are doing a really crappy job because I see the number of Mosques increasing and number of churches declining. I think your fears are unfounded, or at least pointed in the wrong direction.

I'm talking about folks like these:

ID Loons trying to cram their religion into science classes to dumb down our future.

Universities dedicated to gettig religious extremists i positios of power.

And other groups driven by their hatred for American values

Plus the scumbag fag haters, the clinic bombers and other terrorists.

This country was founded, formed and populated by those trying to escape such persecution.

That describes some of those who first came here, although most of those are described as extremists who were thrown out of their home countries for their intolerance and savage ways to those who didn't buy ito the particular brand of crap they were peddling.

Our forefathers wanted to create a country where its citizens could worship free from prosecution.

This is so entirely typical of the deeply dishonest historical revisionism commonly practiced by Christian extremists.

They wanted a country where people were free from the persec

I agree. Since I couldn't reach either of the ets.org links, I can't see any of their sample questions, if those were even posted. Without that, how do we know that the people giving the tests can even decide the validity of a web page?

I hate to bring it up cuz it will start the same old argument again, but since a lot of people can't decide whether or not wikipedia is a valid source, how can we trust most of them to know what's acceptable?

A\long with that, there are a lot of schools that teach certain guidelines as absolute. I was taught that that any web page with a "~" towards the end was bad, regardless of whether or not the webpage was .com or .edu. The problem is that a ~ means you can't necessarily trust a source from an edu because it is a personal page, not the edu's page (yes, that's a really loose explanation of how that works). The problem is that just because a page can't necessarily be trusted, doesn't mean that it can't be trusted absolutely. Now consider some of the so-called colleges out there that are teaching that the world is only 6000 years old (or the Museum created to support such an idea). Knowing that Liberty University would teach such a thing tells me that they are not a trusted site. To me, a professor's personal page at Stanford would have much more credibility, but that doesn't fit well into specific criteria.

Point is, I don't trust this study until I know what their criteria is or what their questions were. As for the questions, it's just like statistical surveys that ask "Do you drink A) never B) one or two drinks a night C) more than 2 drinks in a night" and conclude that 50% of people are binge drinking alcoholics because they answered C, even though that doesn't take into account how often they drink more than 2 drinks in a night, or a variety of other problems.

No one yet knows who wrote this or why

It was a joint project of the computer science department at Liberty University ( http://www.liberty.edu/ ).

The APA might agree with you and get in trouble just the same. There are some things that we are just too culturally conditioned about to get over easily.

First, let me state that I'm sure Hormel doesn't mind being associated with UCE if it's pornographic UCE, especially gay kiddie porn, as they have already publicly done so with the San Francisco-based Hormel Library.
I suggest that we continue to call all unwanted email SPAM (make sure we get the case right, so as to match the way they describe their trademark), and good mail can be called Treet. Treet is just as good as SPAM, and none of the proceeds go towards the promotion of child molestation.
Let them stop products from using the name, while casual conversation, which is not bound by copyright law, specifically associates them with bad things, in comparison to their competitors. I don't care if James Hormel wants to get sexual gratifaction with another man. By the time somebody's grown up, if that's what they like, it's sad, but not as sad as denying them the right to love who they love. It's his predilection for young boys, and particularly his work to legitimize that pathological condition, that removes him from the ranks of humanity.

Ok, I think that's enough. Look, you need to be a little less naive. The evidence you're presenting is purely anecdotal. You assume the world everywhere is just like you've seen it where you grew up. It isn't. There are nutjobs all over the place, and yes, they can think and say some pretty idiotic things, not at all any more far-fetched than the idea of BSD being satanic because of its mascot. Fundies are notorious for coming up with insane theories about things. You just need to realize that, and realize that it is not the fault of your faith, it's just those particular people.