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The man said that if Creationism is raised in class by a student it should be dealt with there as a teaching opportunity

And if a student brings up what happens when you mix Mentos and Coca Cola in Modern European History it should be "dealt with as a teaching opportunity"?

Only if the mixing of Mentos and Coca Cola is part of an already enormous and still growing movement which is constantly butting heads with historians.

The fact of the matter is that the Creationism/ID juggernaut is here, and like it or not, it's influencing political, scientific, and religious discourse. Science teachers who ignore it are not doing their students any favours. Right now they have students in their classes who are being taught by their parents and their religious leaders to ignore what their teachers say, because those teachers are godless heathens who "believe" in this Darwinist cult which attacks the foundations of The One True Religion.

These teachers can pretend it's not happening, and their students will learn nothing, or they can address it, and use it as a vehicle to teach the scientific method.

Your Mentos example is silly, as is any talk of the FSM, or other creation myths, simply because Creationism/ID is, unfortunately, a special case. That's reality. Ignoring it won't fix it. Talking about it might.

I would like to point out that if the Unicorn is Invisible then by definition it cannot be Pink. So yes you can disprove the existence of Invisible Pink Unicorns.

I didn't say which side to eliminate first. I fully suspect that eliminating the fundies would be far more effective in defanging this. In the absense of the militant atheist the fundie will turn on the next group least like them and call them Godless. I suspect the vast majority of the militant atheists would go away if the fundies weren't around making asses of themselves. I think both sides are largly nonsensical arrogant assholes, but I suspect that you are right and the militant atheists would silence themselves in the absense of fundies.

I honestly don't care if people want to be atheists, that is their business, just like any other choice of religion or not. Its when they start getting on soap boxes about how better they are than everyone else that they are no different than your average fundie.

Romans 1: "18The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. 21For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles." To summarize: 1) God reveals Himself clearly through his creation. 2) Man rejects God, even as He was clearly revealed. 3) Man is left empty and alone, with no explanation for existence. 4) In an attempt to fill this emptiness and justify himself, man makes idols and invents godless myths. One such myth that scientists talk about in a very unscientific way is the idea of the early "primordial soup" from which life began from a single cell. Ask for proof, and all you will receive are stories about what 'could have' happened. That is no explanation for the origin of life at all. You have life and breath and being. You act and make decisions. You are a living soul created by a God who loves you. You have everything you need to come into a relationship with him. Don't fight it! Just come.

I guess what I mean is that it is far easier to find meaningful discussion online than with the average joe off the street. This is a growing byproduct of our us vs them mentality these days. The current political climate has made it pretty much impossible to think for yourself. You are either group A or group B and neither group tolerates the other.

Prejudice is indeed a human problem, however, some societies have had much fewer issues with welcoming the newcomers. The fact that so many have been able to come here and do well over the years has more to do with our economic views than our social views. The power of the dollar trumps social norms in a capitalist society like ours. A stunningly good example of this is our wonderful puritan origins being washed away almost compeltely by sex sells. This of course has left us in a very bizarre state where a nipple flash on TV is nearly treason but you can have people murdered by the hundreds on TV and hardly anyone takes issue.

The zealots...oh the zealots... They are harder to find in reality, but they are not any less common. When everyone walks around assuming that everyone else thinks like them there is less chance for sparks to show where the powder kegs really are. Go ask those "controversial" questions about evolution, origin of man, creation of the earth, and you will find a stunning amount of ignorance and often enough outright hostility towards anyone (regardless of their faith) who accepts the science. I recently decided to go back and finish up my degree and I am taking a few gen ed classes I missed. Two weeks into Geology almost a full 1/3 of the class goes into the "I had no idea how much scientists didn't know and that this was all just a theory and I don't believe it because of my religion" type crap. It has gotten to the point that every time I hear "just a theory" used as a backhanded attack on evolution even when that wasn't what was being discussed I about snap. The militant atheists annoy me to, but at least they are less likely to get in peoples faces that don't want to listen to them. Trust me, toss a few matches out and you will see just how prevalent it really is. Remember now, at the Creationist Museum Jesus rode a dinosaur and that Godless secular world is trying to lie to our children about the origin of man.

Well, look at how we handle immigrants and I think that is a pretty good example of how socially inept we are. It is hard to be both a nation of immigrants and a nation of xenophobes at the same time without severe problems. This is hardly new behavior, which is one of the reasons I get so pissed of about the modern incarnation of racism like it is only about the blacks, mexicans, arabs, etc. It wasn't all that long ago that it was the jews, the irish, the italians, the japanese, etc. We are unbelievably socially inept for being a first world country made up entirely of immigrants. (Well, except for the handful of natives that we fenced into little reservations to keep them away from the rest of us).

The fact that you have to come online to have a deeper conversation is also evidence of how backwards we are. That speaking to the average person on anythign more complex than the weather is likely to lead to problems. The tendancy for religious fundamentalism in our society has made it even more fun, because now its not just "hey, you are different", its "hey, you are different, and your eternal soul will be damned for all time you Godless heathen sinner".

I agree with the not talking to people while running, but lets be honest here. I imagine most of the people here on slashdot wouldn't ever talk to anyone while running anyways. Not because of any social issue, but I imagine most of the crowd here isn't athletic enough to be running at a good pace and hold a conversation without struggling to breathe. :)

They're aquatic marauding, godless killing machines!

This attitude is why your American health care sucks, why your American school system sucks, why your American news media sucks, etc. etc. You have no sense of community, of sharing the burdens of life.

[redneck American voice] "sense of community"? "sharing the burdens of life"? You sound like one 'o them thar' Godless Commernists! We don't want your kind around here! Gawd told us to invade I-Rak and Gawd's a-tellin' me ta shoot ya with my second amendment shawtgun. [/redneck American voice]

"Rednecks" are a hell of a lot more likely to look out for each other than urbanites and the suburbanites who flee them. Seriously, go to Houston, Detroit, or LA and see how much of a "sense of community" there is. Don't forget your second-amendent shotgun; you'll need it more there than you will in Kennesaw, Georgia.

If you go to a Waffle House in the middle of the night, and casually start talking about this with one of the guys you think of as "rednecks", they probably won't support AT&T. There's a reason that political ads use the "family" angle.

Ah, the paradox that is the US.

Personally, I have never met an American I didn't like. I don't know where these trolls like the "fuck you" poster above come from, but the mentality behind his comment seems to pervade American big business.

To keep this on topic, a $20k invoice for the transmission of a few megs of data is ridiculous. The per-megabyte charge for text messages is equally ridiculous. If the data and cellular networks were run as a utility* instead of for maximum extraction of cash, these services would be very inexpensive. We rail against the RIAA for clinging to a scarcity business model when bits are plentiful and cheap; why not rail likewise at the business model used for charging for the fiber and airwaves they are routed over?

* Not a utility like Enron, please.

This attitude is why your American health care sucks, why your American school system sucks, why your American news media sucks, etc. etc. You have no sense of community, of sharing the burdens of life.

[redneck American voice] "sense of community"? "sharing the burdens of life"? You sound like one 'o them thar' Godless Commernists! We don't want your kind around here! Gawd told us to invade I-Rak and Gawd's a-tellin' me ta shoot ya with my second amendment shawtgun. [/redneck American voice]

"Rednecks" are a hell of a lot more likely to look out for each other than urbanites and the suburbanites who flee them. Seriously, go to Houston, Detroit, or LA and see how much of a "sense of community" there is. Don't forget your second-amendent shotgun; you'll need it more there than you will in Kennesaw, Georgia.

If you go to a Waffle House in the middle of the night, and casually start talking about this with one of the guys you think of as "rednecks", they probably won't support AT&T. There's a reason that political ads use the "family" angle.

This attitude is why your American health care sucks, why your American school system sucks, why your American news media sucks, etc. etc. You have no sense of community, of sharing the burdens of life.

[redneck American voice] "sense of community"? "sharing the burdens of life"? You sound like one 'o them thar' Godless Commernists! We don't want your kind around here! Gawd told us to invade I-Rak and Gawd's a-tellin' me ta shoot ya with my second amendment shawtgun. [/redneck American voice]

A lot of the students you want to teach evolution to will automatically reject it since they believe that Creationism is how they got on the earth. If you want to get through to those kids who have been told their whole lives that it's about evolution vs creationism and those godless scientists want to throw the truth out of their classroom, the best way to do it is by introducing creationism right alongside evolution and showing why creationism is not science, and evolution is the only viable theory we have because of the evidence. Otherwise, creationist kids will just go home and continue believing in creationism because their view of the world has been censored out of their schools.

My fellow being.
... To not do so would be for us to become as cold and Godless as the Soviets.
... I believe deeply that we are all part of the same great thing

I have nothing more to add.

My fellow being. The bible is, if anything, a very important piece of history. All religious books from the days of lore are a deeply rooted part of our history and they most certainly should be respected for that fact alone.
Should they been taught in schools? For what they are as a part of history yes. Their doctrine should not be taught, that is what Church is for.

Just because they mention God, does not mean we can not educate our children about what they are, why they are and what role they play in our culture.

To not do so would be for us to become as cold and Godless as the Soviets.

They are a part of who and what we are, where we came from and what the ancients believed would happen. Everything you said above shows an ignorance of someone who has not really read the Bible and tried to understand how it came to be and what it meant to them people who penned the letters and transcribed the scrolls that the Church later bound as a book.

I believe deeply that we are all part of the same great thing, one soul looking back on itself in a million different ways. You know the silly old saying, 'Be One with the Universe".


'The least you do unto your fellow man is the least you do unto me' J.C.

The founding fathers of America recognised the danger of interspersing religion with state. If you do the research, you'll also find that most of them were deists - which was pretty much as close as you could get to athiest, back then. Anything more radical than a deist was considered godless and wretched at best.

The introduction of religious elements (such as "in god we trust" on money, swearing on the bible, etc) came at a much later date. All founding fathers (the creators of the Declaration of Independence) had long since expired.

Can WALK to church in Godless China.

Embryonic stem cell research is being blocked. It makes sense for religious groups to be opposed to this on a fundamental level. When you have industries becoming dependent on materials from abortions for research, you create a financial incentive to support abortion. Now, most "pro-choice" people that I've met say that they fully support measures which create an environment that makes abortion less frequent. I can't imagine, then, a good reason to support allowing scientists to become dependent on tissues from aborted babies as that would have the exact opposite effect of what most pro-choicers I've met claim to want.

Furthermore, there is an ethics point of view here that you are willfully ignoring. You're obviously arguing from the perspective of a secularist, but what you're really saying is that any opinion that is based on religion is prima facie unacceptable in a democratic debate. Religious views may be absurd to you, and the morality based on "just a book," but so is secular morality. It's just based on one man's opinion, or feeble attempts to reconstruct religious morality without God; at least atheistic secularists like Michele Onfray have the balls to adopt a totally godless morality (though it tends to scare the shit out of many secularists who cling to religious morality like a security blanket). Bottom line is, secular arguments in science on matters of scientific **ethics** are no more valid than religious ones, as they are just one attempt to establish "what ought we do" which is a philosophical question that parallels the scientific one "what can we do?"

It's usually only the idiots who believe that science answers questions like "what ought we to do." Science is just a method for observing natural phenomenon. It cannot satisfactorally answer many fundamental philosophical questions that form the basis of law, morality and human interaction. Maybe you find religion to be flawed here too, and I can see why, even though I may disagree. However, it's just pure bullshit to pretend that science is capable of answering questions such as these, which have no ability to be tested and understood through the scientific method.

Unfortunately the real argument lies with everybody that stands on this line. Everybody to the right of me is heartless. Everyone to the left is Godless. I kind of like to leave this one alone for this reason.

What I'm "admitting" is that your (erroneous) expectations don't match my actual views. Dreaming your dreams of a Santa Claus in the sky, the impermanence of the physical world scares you.

The impermanence of the world ? You're kidding right ? What is more permanent than the world ?

Are you a postmodernist ? "Whatever I think is the truth".

I realize that for people like you things like, oh, say the laws of nature are "temporary inconvenient". You will find them, obviously, beyond merely inflexible, and more than willing to kill you if you truly misjudge them.

It does not scare me. That nothing lasts takes none of the fun out of making something good. If anything, it makes it more poignant, more beautiful. If you don't believe me, go experience some of the art of people like Andy Goldsworthy, who make some works intentionally impermanent.

I find his works to be ... disappointing. In fact, compared to just about any church of the 17th century, and even compared to quite a few modern churches, comparing the work and dedication that went into creating those works of art, and, at least for some, the time that they lasted, makes these works insignificant. There are churches whose paintings are still sharing their beauty with us, after (literally) more than a millenium.

This is a fine argument from theory, with no actual data. You, some random guy, on the Internet, "guarantee" your argument. So?

Let's not forget that you don't "guarantee" any of your arguments either. But in fact I DID give some illustration of my theories :
-> kids have little or no qualms with killing animals, merely to see what happens
-> the general mode of operation for any kid is "go as far, irritate as many people as possible until I come face to face with a violent reaction, then back down a little bit, immediately followed by again trying to bite of more than I can chew"

Are you seriously disputing this ?

History shows that you are wrong. Buddhism started out as a godless venture, accepting the eternal flux we live in, and the Zen Buddhists carry that atheism through today. Have they turned evil? Go meet some and let me know what you think, but I'd say they're doing fine.

Buddhism is peaceful and good ? Why don't you ask the people who used to live in Southern Taiwan ... oh wait ... you can't. Not anymore.

Besides you don't like Buddhism. The real problem you have with Christian doctrine is that it's dogmatic, you don't really have issues with their contents. However Buddhism is much more dogmatic than Christianity. If you were to truly seek out Buddhists and attempt to become one of them, you would be disgusted with Buddhism too. It looks good from a distance, but if you thing personal input is being limited in Christianity, then you're not going to like Buddhism at all. (do you even know which avatars are alive today, and how you're to behave according to them ? Why don't you look it up)

I realize that buddhists have somehow managed (like the muslims) to "hide" the fact that their history does not just contain a few "unfortunate incidents" but is literally drenched in blood, and more blood. Of course they did not manage to hide this from serious historians, but CNN never sent out anything on their wars, especially not on how they started. These religions are not like Christianity which started as the victim of violent repression for nearly 400 years (can you imagine what the first Christians went through, and just how much trust in God such acts will require ?). Where some Christians at some point comitted atrocities, but for buddhists there were periods in history when the entire religion was comitted to the extermination of certain peoples (even happened in the 20th century). Islam has never been anything except comitted to the extermination of all others.

Science also suggests you are wrong. At least some and probably much of the human moral sense is provably an innate bi

You go on to admit that atheism is in fact in disagreement with you

No. No, I don't.

What I'm "admitting" is that your (erroneous) expectations don't match my actual views. Dreaming your dreams of a Santa Claus in the sky, the impermanence of the physical world scares you.

It does not scare me. That nothing lasts takes none of the fun out of making something good. If anything, it makes it more poignant, more beautiful. If you don't believe me, go experience some of the art of people like Andy Goldsworthy, who make some works intentionally impermanent.

Again we will see less moral incentive determining their actions. The cracks will be wider.

This is a fine argument from theory, with no actual data. You, some random guy, on the Internet, "guarantee" your argument. So?

History shows that you are wrong. Buddhism started out as a godless venture, accepting the eternal flux we live in, and the Zen Buddhists carry that atheism through today. Have they turned evil? Go meet some and let me know what you think, but I'd say they're doing fine.

Science also suggests you are wrong. At least some and probably much of the human moral sense is provably an innate biological function. For readable introductions, see "Good Natured" by Franz de Waal or "Demonic Males" by Richard Wrangham. And in the decade since those books came out, there's been a heap of good experimental and fMRI observational work, reinforcing the biological basis of community-oriented behavior. And let's not forget "The Forest People," showing that non-Christan societies can develop strong community-oriented behavior.

Your theory that the only source of morality is Christian memes is provably false. And the data about crime and atheism proves the opposite of your notion as well. Atheists are circa 10% of America's population, are circa 0.2% of the prison population. Japan, the least Christian country in the G8, has the lowest violent crime rate. America, the most Christian country, has the highest.

You're really just repeating and embroidering the kind of ignorant statements that Christians make about atheists all the time.

Those examples are not connected in any way. Making that connection is fallacious.

Holocaust deniers and ID proponents are most often politically, spiritually, and scientifically opposed to the 9/11 truthers I've met.

Most of them seem like godless atheists who want to talk about the burning point of jet fuel and thermate, evidence of which has been found in the dust and wreckage.

There is clearly a cover-up going on, no matter WHAT you might suppose actually happened.

Personally, I protest weekly in my town

Way to jade the listeners. Protesting is synonymous with complaining. It doesn't actually DO anything. Petitions (not the online kind) for propositions, ballots, recalls, elections, nominations, donations, gaining any kind of personal political influence and the like are effective. Being the obnoxious minority is not. There are protests going on every day in the United States, and how many of them have mattered in our 230 year history? 1? When you see Pakistanis burning American flags in the streets and screaming and shooting guns into the air because you are a godless heathen, does that cause you to sympathize with them, or make you want to tell them to shut the hell up?

Politicians see protesters as people who have too much time on their hands to be making any real money, and therefore are the non-influencial and unimportant. There are stronger, quieter avenues that they do fear and respect and are just as accessible to the public as a soap box.

That said, keep fighting the good fight, I only suggest you devote your energies to more productive channels of respect and influence than being loud or otherwise bothersome. Maybe start by running for city counsel, or supporting someone sympathetic to your cause to run.