Slashdot Mirror
Muslim Medical Students Boycott Darwin Lectures
First time submitter Readycharged writes "The Daily Mail reports on a piece from The Sunday Times revealing that University College London have seen an increasing number of Muslim students boycotting lectures on Evolution due to clashes with the Koran. Steve Jones, Emeritus Professor of Human Genetics, says, 'I've had one or two slightly frisky discussions with kids who belonged to fundamentalist Christian churches, now it's Islamic overwhelmingly.' He adds, 'What they object to — and I don't really understand it, I am not religious — they object to the idea that there is a random process out there which is not directed by God.' The article also reveals that Evolutionary Biologist and former Oxford Professor Richard Dawkins also experienced Muslims walking out of such lectures."
Chiefly among them the idea that randomness is not divine. How else would some being equal parts evil and good distribute his Will? In closely examining randomness we find what patterns we will, allowing us to imagine we grasp the whole until the patterns devolve until they're just a cloud.
It's humor to keep a divine being amused for all time - to tease us with imagined understanding.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I would rather not have a religious whack-job as a doctor.
Well, I suppose it's within their rights to up and leave a lecture because they don't like the topic. However, when they subsequently fail the exam due to their refusal to attend the lecture or personal disagreement with the topics taught, they shouldn't complain. I don't understand why you'd even take a class knowing full well that you don't accept fundamental parts of it.
actually there is little to nothing in Qur'an that's clearly state everything in Darwin theory is incorrect, its quite the opposite it supports some major parts of the theory. the only part IMO that's clash with the Qur'an is that Humans are evolution from something else
I don't get what the problem is. If you don't grasp the material, regardless of the reason, you fail the course. I sure as hell don't want to be treated by a doctor who doesn't understand evolution.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
are they comparing notes with bible belt Christian fundamentalists? not a good sign.
different types of extremists, religious or secular, have some of the same stuff going on.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Why do they think that the "random" process is not the face of God, or something? If things work a certain way, that's the way they work. If it's God's will, it's God's will. If you think the two are contradictory, you have no faith. The problem is with you, not the science or the religion.
If they do not accept evolution, they should not be issued with a medical degree.
It's that simple.
If they are so fucked in the head they don't accept evolution, I don't want them practicing medicine in this country.
People are free to think/say whatever, as long as the course still is taught in a non-religious method disseminating facts to students... If you believe the facts are wrong feel free to research alternatives and teach your own class in the future..
If the science is demonstrably true, and God exists, then there is no contradiction. The randomness is just how God operates. If the randomness really seems to contradict the existence of God, then the problem is in the disciple, not in the science or in God.
I don't know what else to say.
To suppress closed mindedness, exams on evolution etc. should be show stoppers. Don't pass them, no graduation. This is science. Can't handle facts? You're in the wrong business. Don't like the facts? Prove them wrong by the rules.
Bert
Then the school should make the course mandatory, and fail them as doctors if they do not show up.
I went to school to become a programmer, I would have failed if I didn't show up for Math, even though I almost never use it as a System Developer now a few years after.
I see no problem in failing doctors cause they do not show up to Darvin class, I would not want to be treated by a Doctor that does not understand the body, and I am sure our customers would not like a programmer that don't know any Math.
Why are we discussing a Daily Mail article?
The Daily Mail is closer to a tabloid than to a newspaper. Technically it's 'middle-market', so it has some real stories in there, but I'd never rely on it as a sole source for any opinion or discussion....which is what this summary asks us to do.
There are resources which show that the Christian faith does not need to attack evolution (at least, for some definition of each).
For example, http://biologos.org/ or http://truecreation.info./
I've searched, but found nothing similar for Islam. The articles I have found, are strikingly similar to apologetic articles written by intelligent design proponents (http://www.irfi.org/articles/articles_151_200/muslim_responses_to_evolution.htm).
They'll obviously fail if they refuse to play. i had a long running disagreement with one of my professors about a coding shortcut i used once, he thought it was messy, i thought it cut about an hours worth of work and had statistically nearly no chance to fail. i did it his way, because i Needed to pass the class.
do not attend lectures, do not pass go, do not collect medical degree.
I am OK with this.
Preface: I am not religious.
I guess you could call me an optimist or idealist, but I always thought that when you went to college or any university of repute where you CHOOSE to study something like the science of evolution, or you CHOOSE to go to a lecture about evolution, why would you bring your religious baggage with you? I thought the idea of attending a lecture or university was to expand your mind, not defend your beliefs.
Again, maybe it's because I'm an optimist, but shouldn't these "scholars" behave a little more... I don't know... scholarly?
...it's "mysterious ways".
The CB App. What's your 20?
So, the article is from The Daily Mail, also known as The Daily Racist. Not that silly fairytale believing people aren't acting silly, but how big of an issue is this, really? Is there an agenda pushing this "news"?
Another aspect of this is that some of these people may well actually cause harm to society in this way: it is known that overprescribing antibiotics is causing evolution of antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria. A doctor who does not believe in or agree with principles of evolution might then ignore the guidelines and thus add to emergence of new strains. (Overprescribing is also a problem in some countries where the medical practice is rather casual and antibiotics are too-commonly given out for viral diseases like colds or flu.)
I honestly don't care. If they don't want to understand how things work and believe that they can build a working science on it, its their problem and let me say the following:
Evolution was found and is being put to test using the same principles which help us to develop semiconductors, nuclear weapons, the internet and basically everything in the modern life. Maybe they also would like to oppose quantum mechanics because it somehow makes the non/locality of god not so unique? How about relativity (look at convervapedia how the christian fundamentalists see it)? Maybe lets restrict the internet because there are too many pictures of god inside? Lets define pi to be 3 like in the bible? Lets try not understand how particles formed?
I imagine that not narrowing the angle of view sufficiently to not understanding evolution hinders a lot of things. I suggest these people should go to conservapedia and help the evolution article there a little. And just to make that clear: I am pacifist but in the case that the freedom is in danger because of religion, i can only say that i will fight that with all means available. I don't need a holy book to derive my right to do that and i don't believe any legitimation to use violence can be taken out of any religious text.
It is only thru the prisim of evolution we are able to understand the structures encoded in our DNA. Without this understanding your ignorance will prevent you from accomplishing anything useful in the field.
Be a fundie, walk out, get an F, flip burgers for the rest of your life. Its only your parents money.
go ahead to check out your cheap brand jeans. true religion jeans. www.ebyjeans.com
true religion jeans
I don't discriminate against any one religion. I have met people from all different religions that take it to this level. No one who has really strong religious beliefs is going to accept anything short of what they are taught. I hope one day this will change but I know it won't. This reminds me of when some christians in my town (Murfreesboro TN) burned a contractors equipment and the area for construction because they were going to build a mosque. This is stupid. The funny thing to me is that both religions should get along because they both teach blind devotion to one god. Take with a grain of salt.
First I should say that we ought to know a little bit more about this story before we can make a complete analysis, but as a Muslim, I will be the first to say that there is no problem with evolution. I'm not going to go into all the details of the argument about whether or not evolution explains the biological origins of man; there are mountains of evidence supporting evolution and no other plausible alternative explanations. What I would like to say is there is really no inherent conflict between believing in a Creator and accepting evolution. In Islam especially the case for conflict is weak because the Qur'an lacks a creation story as detailed as the one laid out in Genesis. Yes, the Qur'an has references to creation and even Adam and Eve (the first humans), but conspicuously absent from the Qur'an are any statements that defy the scientific view of evolution. Does the Qur'an say that Adam and Eve were put on the Earth right after the Earth was created? No. Does it say no other creatures existed or preceded humans? No. In fact, one verse of the Qur'an talks about God breathing His spirit into Adam, which some scholars have read to mean that Adam was alive prior to becoming human (in a spiritual sense), and that Adam may even have had parents instead of being materialized spontaneously. Either way there is really no timeline for creation, and Islamic theology suggests that God is *active* in creation, meaning that God didn't just create everything all at once and stopped, but that creation is a current and ongoing process (in line with evolution).
I do believe that there is no basis in Islamic tradition and culture for rejecting evolution--on the contrary, Islamic emphasis on science and knowledge would make Muslims more receptive to the idea. To me this habit of denying evolution is something that Muslim communities learned from Christian communities, and the article actually does a good job of pointing this out.
As for the lectures, what I want to know is if it's really the mere idea of evolution that is offending the students, or if the lectures contain unnecessary statements that are specifically hostile to God and religion. If the course material or the professor is unfairly preaching atheism or making wild assumptions like "God has nothing to do with evolution" then I'd say the students have some legitimate grounds to object. The article doesn't make this part of the story very clear, but at least in one way suggests that this may be what's happening.
As many said before me: just fail them and let natural selection take its course.
I find the article just a useless piece of BS. First of all it is people who read/ follow the cited author Harun Yahya who are "allegedly" boycotting the class. Media fanaticism at its best: "a large number of muslim students", how many total, how many were muslims, how many chose not to declare their religion. And all this on slashdot! Please, for the love of all that makes sense, stop being idiots!
Then I'm sure they will be all for it. Can't let something like quantum mechanics get in the way of a good jihad.
"If God is directing it, how could we tell the difference? We call it random because science is secular."
Wouldn't boycotting an academic lecture be equivalent to willful ignorance? Understanding your opposition's arguments, even if you know going in that you completely disagree with their conclusion, is a useful thing to have.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
More knowledge for the rest of us.
genetics research. She worked with a geneticist (PhD) who was a fundamentalist, bible-toting Christian who didn't believe in evolution. She said he was absolutely brilliant when it came to genetics. No one who worked with him could ever figure out how he squared his genetics knowledge with his religious beliefs. Evolution is at the very core of genetics, or is it the other way around? Anyway, he was a very strange person.
...they object to the idea that there is a random process out there which is not directed by God.
Who says it's undirected? To us mortals, a lot of things seem random (radioactive decay, genetic mutations, etc.), but who says these things are undirected? A process which seems random to us could make perfect sense to a deity, and could even be directly controlled by said deity. I don't see the need for mutual exclusion here.
I, too, will pitch my hat in the ring to provide a Muslim perspective.
I am from Pakistan, which is about as conservative and Muslim as you can get (okay, so KSA is even more so...but you get the gist)
However, when I was taught biology in school, guess what, I was taught Darwin!
It was simple, the text simply said, "Charles Darwin, a renowned Scientist hypothesized in his theory that..." and then followed by "However, we as Muslims, believe that [insert relevant verses here]"
Simple as that!
If these students were to come to a medical college in Pakistan (and we quite a few of International level) then, surprise surprise, there would be a chapter on Darwin.
Look, we are Muslims, and I know the general trend of Slashdot is towards atheism/agnosticism, but I strictly believe in a right to believe your religion in peace. So I will not say that the very idea of Creationism is wrong, If I (and they) want to believe that, it is my(/our) right.
However, if an eminent scholar presents forward a *theory*, there is no harm in at least reading what he is writing.
I am an ACCA student. Got a query on Accountancy/Finance? Maybe I can help!
Only if you make up the religion yourself. Otherwise the priest class do the governing, and are sometimes part of the government, or are manipulated by the ruling class.
Evolution is the incarnation of the will of god/ Allah / Jane / whomever / the Universe. What's so hard about that ?
If I understand it correctly, one of the Quran's directives is to seek all knowledge. I hypocrisy is a human failing, not a religious one... but then again, religion is a human failing.
Christian and Jewic students boycott evolutionary facts too. There is nothing new in this.
Any trivial observation that counters their Moslem, Christian, or Jewic religion will be ignored . They are hypocrites, end of story. What should they do? Abandon their religion? Hmmm, yes, why not? They can keep a cultural identity without lying to themselves I guess.
I stopped reading right there. Readycharged, you FAIL.
And samzenpus.... I don't even have to say anything anymore. I mention the name, and people go "I know...".
I don't get what the problem is. If you don't grasp the material, regardless of the reason, you fail the course.
Agreed.
I sure as hell don't want to be treated by a doctor who doesn't understand evolution.
To quote you, I don't get what the problem is. What does belief/disbelief in evolution have to do with medical treatment? A medical doctor needs to know how the body works right now, not how it got to that point. I'm a bit fuzzy on how a belief in evolution helps a doctor diagnose and fix a problem in the patient in front of them.
Now if you want to say certain avenues of medical research should probably be closed then I'd agree.
Religion is getting nuttier.
Today, evolution is an engineering technology. Watching vruses and bacteria evolve from generation to generation is routine medical research. Genetic engineering and some kinds of drug discovery are forced evolutionary systems. Most of the mechanics of the process are understood. It isn't mysterious any more.
At this point, denying that evolution is real is on a par with claiming the earth is flat. Yet religious denial of evolution has increased.
More religions are anti-education than 50 years ago. Some branches of Islam are explicitly anti-education. Now that's infected Judaism, too. Which is strange, after centuries of a strong drive in the Jewish community to achieve a good education.
While I find radical religious fundamentalism just as distasteful as any other atheist, I would also hesitate to launch into Muslim bashing just because one professor has noticed "an increasing number" of Muslim students boycotting his lectures. For all we know, it may be a small number of students boycotting that do not represent a larger trend, and there may be more to the story than reported here (what if, for example, the professor made offensive remarks about Islam and its followers during a lecture, a la Richard Dawkins).
In regards to whether or not these students should be allowed to graduate and become doctors, I'm a little torn. On the one hand, I don't see how someone's stance on evolution is going to have any demonstrable impact on their ability to perform surgery, for example. On the other hand, if a doctor doesn't believe in evolution, they might also not believe that over-prescribing antibiotics can bread new strains of drug resistant bacteria, which could lead to genuine threat to public health.
I guess I'd say that if evolutionary biology is a requirement for the major, then they should be required to pass the course in order to graduate. They don't need to attend the lectures, and they don't need to believe that it's true - but in the same way that we force future doctors to suffer through organic chemistry (often against their will), these students should be required to pass the final exam in order to demonstrate that they are at least capable of understanding the material.
There's plenty of crazy fundy christian doctors out there too. Ron Paul is a doctor. He's also a nutcase that doesn't believe in evolution. I don't really see what your view on evolution has to do with your ability to practice medicine. Of course, neither does your ability in organic chemistry or calculus, but that doesn't stop them from being litmus tests for entry to med school.
Seeking all knowledge, is human failing.
-- Sokrates
Just to be clear. Many Christian churches do not have a problem with evolution either.
Its just a minority Christian group that believes in literal interpretations that gets into all these disagreements with science. They just get a disproportionate amount of media attention and create a false impression of the larger group. I'm sure you are familiar with this concept.
http://s2.b3ta.com/host/creative/85367/1322136043/DailyMailCorrectionsbig.jpg
-- Nick "Hallo this is Beel Gates, und I pronounce weendows as
World vs the Christians, Jews, and Moslems. Big news? Not really.
Misguided rabbi http://www.steinsaltz.me.uk/litpage.html
Misguided Christians http://www.christianpost.com/news/richard-dawkins-explains-his-refusal-to-debate-christian-apologist-craig-58877/
The real thing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_God_Delusion
Unless sound scientific evidence is discovered that suggests that "there is a God who has an active role in the guidance of evolution", then there is absolutely no reason to discuss such a concept in a science class.
P.S. you deserve to get modded as a troll for using the phrase "Slashdot groupthink".
While an understanding of evolution is fundamental to many branches of biology and certain branches of medicine, it has very little to do with the day to day practice of most doctors. So their opposition to it has little bearing on their ability to practice medicine or to be a competent doctor. Now if they were walking out on discussions of medical ethics, I would be concerned.
'God has a plan' stuff you hear, how seemingly random events are all part of His design? Did you ever think that can apply here too?
Also, you gotta love Islam. Like they say, 'Islam is a religion of peace. And if you say any different we'll fucking kill you.' :)
Upfront disclosure: I'm a christian myself and probably take it more serious than most people I come across in everyday life, who claim to be christian.
Firstly: Randomness and chance is in my opinion a rather well-understood law of nature, not unlike F=ma, gravity, or the polar nature of water that makes it wet. Casinos make quite an obscene living exactly because they employ the law in their favour.
Secondly: Most mildly advanced programmers might have done some dabbling in Genetic Algorithms at some point (which for the completely uninitiated is modelled on the biological process of selection). Just because a specific result comes from the process that wasn't "intelligently designed" from the start, doesn't make the programmer behind the system any less existent. (Yes, I know of the fallacy of proof by analogy, just saying that a Creator simply does not necessitate Intelligent Design.) The engineer in me just marvels at the genius of starting a simple system that is self-replicating, self-improving, constantly-adapting, and for a very low-effort initial input results in a very complex result. Wish I could "intelligently design" software like that. Wish we had sufficient hardware to not worry about time and space constraints for such a system.
Thirdly: no, I don't think my views are in conflict with Scripture, including Genesis 1 and 2. Reading the Bible ONLY literally, or ONLY allegorically, is a sure way of getting it wrong - rather read it to see what the message/idea was that the author wanted to get across, and forget about your own preconceived ideas that you want to find support for. Studying creation (science) and studying the Creator (religion) should bring you to the same point - if they are in conflict, maybe it is because one (or both) have their own little agendas.
Too many Muslims have gotten caught up in Christain dogma instead of reading and thinking about the book they believe in. There's nothing inherently contradictory about evolution and Islam. The Quran doesn't specifically say days in Arabic regarding creation, it uses a word that really means periods of time.
Allegory is used to explain many subjects because describing something like quantum physics to 6th century bedouins wasn't really feasible. Hell, it's something most 21st century Americans can't understand.
Apart from the observation above that this story is from the Daily Mail (which, among other things, campaigned against vaccinations for many years - hardly a pro-science position), there are lots of reasons to walk out of a lecture. In the case of Richard Dawkins, the man is intentionally offensive about all forms of religious belief, to a point that many atheists in Britain do not want to be associated with his rhetoric. Presenting evolution is one thing. Littering that presentation with, eg describing religious faith as if it is a psychiatric disorder. (Before everyone agrees with him on this point, could we remember that this was the pretext for the forced "treatment" of thousands of people in the former USSR, and that something similar happened to homosexuals in many countries. In other words, it's an argument that lays the foundations for some shocking human rights abuses.)
Walking out during a Richard Dawkins rant may, in some cases, be a statement *for* reasonable intellectual dialogue rather than tub-thumping atheist fundamentalism.
Virtually serving coffee
Pupil in an university who leave courses because of religious reasons should be expelled - they are of no use in any scientific peraspective available as they do not even try to be objective - no matter what religion
Long life to the FSM! (the only true religion)
Ramen
I don't care if you don't "believe" in evolution. It is the basis by which many of our concepts of biology come from. Even if it isn't FACTUAL by your standards, it's the best description of how the medicine and biology we practice work.
I was once talking to a physicist friend of mine and she was explaining to me that the math is NOT the reality, it's simply the best representation that we have currently, and using it helps us to manipulate the world around us.
If you really CHOOSE to not believe it, you should at least take a pragmatic approach and understand the usefulness of understanding the concepts.
At least 4 people already said that, and it's "contrary to Slashdot groupthink"?
I love you dumbshits. Any time someone on slashdot makes an argument you dislike, it must be everyone out to get you. Hint: if you use the word "groupthink" without quotes, you're probably being a dumbass.
Just seems like a beat up to me. Most doctors (and by doctor here I mean a MD not phd) won't need to know anything about darwinian evolution except that a new strain of what ever virus has come out.
They won't need to know about evolution to know that the itchy lump on someone's neck should be examined in a lab.
Now if they walking out on an anatomy class because they were showing naked pictures, I could understand there being more of an issue, but if they learn the stuff and pass,then great, they know the stuff that was taught in the class and hence would have the same qualifications as anyone else that passed (ignoring "levels" of pass like high distinction etc
"The Daily Mail reports on a piece from The Sunday Times revealing that University College London have seen an increasing number of Muslim students boycotting lectures on Evolution due to clashes with the Koran."
These news failed to report about the number of Jews and Christians...
Richard Dawkins (http://www.positiveatheism.org/writ/dawkins0.htm): "Children really ought not be spoken of as a Catholic child or a Muslim child. They ought to be allowed to grow until they're old enough to decide for themselves what their beliefs about the cosmos are. But ... the fact [is] that we do treat [children] that way, and ... parents seem to be regarded as having a unique right to impose their religious beliefs on their child; whereas, nobody thinks they're going to impose their beliefs about -- I don't know -- why the dinosaurs went extinct, or something of that sort."
Here is a rabbi (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-shmuley-boteach/rabbi-shmuley-responds-to_b_100275.html) trying to comprehend: "Unlike you, I see no deep fissure between science and religion. The Biblical story of creation relates that a supreme intelligence gave rise to the world in a manner that would easily accord with evolution, beginning with inanimate matter and slowly ascending through the vegetable, animal, and human spheres. What perhaps separates us is that you believe all this happened through random mutation and natural selection, and I instead focus on the mathematical improbability of such complex life ever arising spontaneously and without guidance."
So, why not put this M-word together with the J-word or the C-word and put it into perspectives?
Moreover, how many H-word and B-word or Any-Other-word anti-evolutionists aren't here...
Let me get this straight: you were taught evolution in school, but it was with the caveat that it was "his theory" - as in the layman's definition of theory (i.e. a wild guess)? And what appeared in the [insert relevant verses here] section? From the way you setup the sentence, you're really making it sound like Darwinism is presented in school, but it's Darwin's "wild guess" and Muslims are instructed to believe something different. In the past, I've heard this same thing about evolution being taught in Islamic countries - i.e. evolution is "just a theory" but if you want to be a good muslim and believe what God says, then you'll believe something different. Could you clarify?
That depends on the belief. If (theoretically) your religion says germ theory of disease is bunk, all disease is caused by demons (Saint Augustine*) or is an illusion (Christian Scientist Church), then, we're not going to let you believe whatever you want. The facts are not negotiable.
* Saint Augustine taught that all diseases were caused by demons: "All diseases of Christians are to be ascribed to these demons; chiefly do they torment fresh-baptized Christians, yea, even the guiltless, newborn infants."
Don't remember his name but he commanded a small carrier in the Atlantic during WW2. He said that if a soldier prays before going into battle he is going into battle with the wrong mind set. A soldier should take charge, not leave it up the fate/beard in the sky.
He has a point. In Islam, the idea of "It is the will of god" is very strong, stronger then in most faiths. It is a fatalist attitude. Whatever happens has been pre-determined and it is useless to go against it.
It is kinda funny to see then Muslims use it when they go into war. Since Muslims always loose unless they fight each other (which is another kind of loosing), obviously the loosing is the will of god. Notice how the phrase "if Allah wants it" is rarely used AFTER the lost battle.
But are Christians and Jews really that different? Yes. A lot of the advancement in the west has been due to religion taking a back seat. Take Einstein, religious but doesn't let it control him. The west still has various religions but the advances were strongest when church and state or at least science and culture were separated.
Not that this has nothing to do with the faiths themselves. Fatalism is determined by environment. In Europe, the environment allows people to take charge. There are flooded areas but they are small and so you can build small raised areas to build your house on. And now your house doesn't flood away every year, you can start building dyke's. You can influence the environment in small ways, allowing you to build up to big ways. There is a reason the greatest land reclaimers are the dutch where doing it with primitive tools was relatively easy AND rewarding.
Fatalism is a survival strategy when your entire dependence is on a river that may or may not flood and which you can do nothing about. When a dry spell doesn't mean a lesser harvest but mass starvation. when all your work is wiped out in front of your eyes, it helps to think that it is all part of some divine plan. Raising your hands in anger at the gods... doesn't work for to long before you die of a heart attack. Just accept it, bury the death and move on.
And when YOU do that, when you have given up, it becomes VERY hard to accept someone else can move on. That is why in ghetto's there is enormous peer pressure NOT to succeed but to fail. Because if someone else CAN make it, then you are a bigger failure.
And that is another aspect of Islam. The world moved on and in general they can't move on. Look at Turkey, flexing its wings because it thinks that massive growth when you came from nothing has meaning it KNOWS it is completely at the mercy of the west. Every time a Turk answers his cell phone, uses his computer, powers a light, it is western tech. And despite billions invested from oil rich nations, this hasn't really changed.
Why? Because Islam never had a renascence. They never had an enlightenment. Individuals have moved on and learned to seperate faith from daily live but as a group, in general, it hasn't. And it is causing massive culture conflict.
Note the huge problems Israel is having because by its nature it has to be friendly to ultra-orthodox Jews.
In most of the west, the religious freaks have isolated themselves and good riddance. There is no Amish TV channel trying to win heart and minds. More or less, the US can ignore them. Good luck doing that with Islamic extremist. Note how the revolutions so far have not yet lead to a progressive government. Moderate muslims is about as good as it gets and moderate is a very inaccurate term. It completely depends on how extreme the non-moderates are.
Mind you, nothing of this is new. We had Darwin on trial. It is just annoying to have to fight the same battle over and over again. And last time we didn't insist on importing Hillbilly's by the truck load.
Culture clash sounds so harmless but it is the root at many of the worst moment in human history.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
apparently Muslims believe that god plays dice...
There are plus and minus sided to this.
On the plus side, there will be a Darwinian pressure involving superstitious orthodox patients selecting orthodox superstitious medical practitioners. Since the quality of medicine (particularly medicine that involves utilizing a full grasp of MEDICAL SCIENCE) will lead to a significant increase in the percentage of people with poor medical outcomes.
On the minus side, there will be a Darwinian pressure to breed bigger, stronger, healthier Muslims. Perhaps they'll also breed the stupid out... and orthodox churches just be abandoned and intellectually and morally bankrupt.
You twit. We found out what happens if Trees of Knowledge get their fruit nibbled!
Thee shalt remain imbecilic, for Science is thine great enemy. It is made of Satan's Fruity Ideas!
Yeah, well young earth creationists love science, too, it's just that they declare the parts they don't like (i.e. evolution) as fake science not "true science" -- in their view: evolution is necessarily false since it contradicts the holy teachings, it's a bunch of made-up information by people who don't want to believe in God, and it has as much validity as Freudian psychology or the four-humor theory of ancient medicine.
True. But keep in mind that gravity is so far, also just a theory.
A theory isn't just "well, I think God did it". That does not constitute a theory. That's just a guess, and I rather doubt it would even qualify as a hypothesis.
And this is the problem. People are so used to the idea of "theory" just being random guess work, that they don't realize what it means when they say "the theory of evolution".
They might compare it to "the laws of gravity", but not only are those also "just" theories, they "fall apart" a lot easier than people imagine, but that's okay - that's why we have "intelligent falling".
"Ok. 'Bye, don't let the door hit you on the way out"
You're welcome to get your medical or other degree from ibn Osama bin Kamel Inst of Technology, etc if our university is no longer your first choice.
Because being a religous prick stop them from breaking commandments... only sinners need forgiveness.
You are a dreamer. That is fine just don't vote. That should be left to people in the real world.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
As I see it, the reason is fear of "being led into temptation" (spiritual this time, not carnal), and fear of getting it wrong (so that they are due for a severe, and quite possibly eternal, ticking-off by their vengeful deity in afterlife).
This is a theme that has pervaded religion as provided by the Catholic Church throughout the (Middle) Ages.
Why-ever do you think that Catholics are (and have been for as long as the Catholic Church exists) discouraged from reading the Bible on their own instead of the officially approved Catechisms?
Because the flock cannot be relied upon not to err when reading of and thinking about theological matters, and for very good reason: theological reasoning can be err ... complex and subtle ... to phrase it politely. And erring is dangerous for the soul. That's why The Flock needs a shepherd (the Latin word for that is: Pastor) as provided by the Catholic Church, in order to guide them along the True Path through the thickets of thought.
We're seeing the very same thing with Fundamentalist Christians in the good old US of A, now enthusiastically mirrored by a resurgent Muslim Fundamentalism.
The most surprising thing to me is that people are actually surprised. Religion, after all, is (as I see it) first and foremost a desire for an inviolate frame of reference (spiritual and intellectual) that provides an answer to all vexing questions ("the Lord is my shepherd") and solace ("pillar of strength"), and solace ("thy grace ... etc").
Can you not understand how awfully threatening it is when someone in a white coat starts uprooting the emotional and intellectual certainties this provides? Especially if he makes a convincing case that large parts of "the Gospel" simply have no relation to actual reality? If "God's Word" is shown to be wrong in any respect, be it ever so minute, then what of all the rest of it? The whole edifice of trust comes crumbling down. Believers will certainly not thank you for that.
In times past a popular way of dealing with such heretics was to burn them at the stake. Nowadays the preferred method seems to be to use IED's.
.....the Professor making the claim of appreciable numbers of Muslim students being absent from lectures on Darwinism originally gave his interview to The Sunday Times. The link to the original Times article requires a paid subscription to access it...
It was simple, the text simply said, "Charles Darwin, a renowned Scientist hypothesized in his theory that..." and then followed by "However, we as Muslims, believe that [insert relevant verses here]"
Out of curiosity, what do you believe as Muslims, and what are the relevant verses? You preceded it with "however", which kinda implies that it's not in accord with Darwin's theory, but GP claims that evolution is perfectly in line with Islamic dogmas (which matches my limited knowledge of Islam) - do you disagree with him?
Look, we are Muslims, and I know the general trend of Slashdot is towards atheism/agnosticism, but I strictly believe in a right to believe your religion in peace. So I will not say that the very idea of Creationism is wrong, If I (and they) want to believe that, it is my(/our) right.
There is some confusion here. Creationism is not a religion. Religions are Christianity, Islam, Buddhism etc. Creationism is a distinct and much narrower belief. The problem with it is that it is often presented as a scientific theory (and, worse yet, as an "alternative" to evolution), which it plainly isn't. It's not even "wrong" - science has no way of saying that something is right or wrong which plainly doesn't fall into its scope - it's just unscientific. And I dare say that, if you study a science degree in a university, accepting that creationism is unscientific is something that would rather be expected of you, even if you believe it to be otherwise true.
It's almost as if religious folks -know- that they're wrong. Thus to preserve their wrongheadedness, it's requires to not even learn about the alternatives. (presumably, learning would risk realising that the alternative theories are correct.)
Learning about something, doesn't require *agreeing* with it. I've read both the Koran and the Bible, and spend hundreds of hours learning about both. I don't *agree* with it,but it's still useful to understand it and know about it.
But religious folks are frequently panicked about the idea that they might have to learn about something they themselves don't agree with. In my opinion, they're scared. And rightfully so. The thing about reality is that it does not go away, even if you don't believe in it.
this is because its their belief and you should try to look at their point of view. who knows they might be right if you guys do believe in good so stop making sick jokes.
if you read something in the daily fail, assume a NULL that it was misreported and make research from other source.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
This video might seem unrelated, but its actually very relevant to this discussion, be sure to watch all of it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7y2KsU_dhwI
at the point it said 'we as muslims believe', your teacher stopped teaching science and started teaching religion. it's also a fallacious appeal to authority, antiquity, and popularity. authority/antiquity in this case includes your established culture and its relative age, and popularity in this case refers to that 'we as muslims' part. you're welcome to reject darwin if you like, but you'll need to offer a better theory than his if you want to displace it. baseless claims on emotional beliefs dont' cut it. if you have emotional problems with the material in your chosen major, either change majors or get over it. walking out is a lame attempt at making a political statement, which if won, would devalue education even more than it already has been.
religion tells us how to live life as human beings, science tells us how we live as biological creatures
the two domains don't touch. science has no right to answer transcendental questions, and no ability to do so. religion has no right to answer mechanical questions, and no ability to do so. to not recognize these boundaries mean you have failed to properly judge the subject matter and the proper point of view
so, from a religious perspective, if you start finding yourself in the domain of science answering questions religiously, you have spiritually failed
likewise, if, from a scientific perspective, if you find yourself in the domain of religion answering questions scientifically, you have intellectually failed
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Last time I looked "modern thought" was against the Q'oran and henceforth anything science related including the ability read anything other than the Q'oran.
Humbug. What does he know.
fine prove it..or at least offer some evidence. you've made quite a claim.
To quote you, I don't get what the problem is. What does belief/disbelief in evolution have to do with medical treatment?
Presumably such a doctor would have no qualms about handing out antibiotics like candy - after all, it's not as if the bacteria might adapt to it. And how do they explain where all these new diseases come from anyway?
The most fundamentalist folk I've talked to that mentally shut down when you use the word "evolution" have no problem with the concept of individual organisms having varying levels of resistance and that the repeated use of some compound will lead to a population dominated by the most resistant. "Survival of the fittest" is something that the most fundamentalist will accept in a short term context yielding small changes.
Try it out for yourself. Talk to a fundamentalist, do not use the word "evolution", discuss the drug resistant organisms, the moths that changed color pre/post industrialization, etc. Use phrases like "survival of the fittest", "change over time", etc and you will have no problem. Utter the word "evolution" and then its like a switch flips. These people have no problem with the concept of drug resistant organisms, they just don't want to use the word "evolution" for this. To them "evolution" is exclusively apes became man type of stuff.
Flunk them. Students are there to learn science, not to selectively pick and choose which parts they wish to believe in. If someone is stupid enough to sign onto a course which conflicts with their faith then they deserve to be tossed out at the earliest opportunity. They're wasting their time and the college's.
religion tells us how to live life as human beings
This is islam were talking about. Honour killings ... murder .... chopping of hands
Isn't it time we start classifying religion as the pox on society that it is? I mean instead of being all tolerant about it, why not banish it? I know it's a big step to take but if you look at it objectively we all see the negative effects it has, and nothing has promoted violence as much as religion. Not only that, but all the things attributed to 'God' can be explained nowadays. Take the bible, where most of the stories existed _before_ the bible was put together. Not only that, but it's full of evident plot holes. And yet no religious person believes me when I tell them I'm God, so they're not completely insane.
Once we thoroughly start educating people, most of the other ignorance based troubles like xenophobia, racism and bad politics might start to go away too. If it wasn't for the Dark Ages, I'd have my damn flying car by now.
I think we should boycott their bomb-making classes in return
In general, I think people should be free to believe what they want, but at some point when those beliefs conflict with reality, they can become harmful.
My grandmother believes that the number 4 is unlucky. Is it true? No, of course not. I could spend months doing a huge study to "prove" that, but her believing in "4 = evil" is only a minor annoyance, because it isn't likely to hurt anyone else or sway any decision that affects other people in any noticeable way.
On the other hand, if people studying medicine or biology refuse to believe in evolution, it can cause problems, because evolution is real and ongoing - and it has real effects in the medical field. Disorders and such are often caused by genetics, which is a result of evolution, and things like drug resistant bacteria are also a result of evolution. Since evolution is important (and rapidly becoming *more* important) in such fields, people should have to know and understand it - and not just to the extent that "I know that's what the book says, but I think it's bullshit", but to actually use it (which, one would think, would require believing that it works).
Saying "I want to be a doctor but I don't believe in evolution" is like saying "I want to be an electrical engineer, but I don't believe in electricity". You can not believe in it all you want, but it won't go away just because you closed your eyes.
Now, of course, if one believes in god, there is no reason why they can't think that evolution was created by god. Maybe that's his/her "intelligent design".
If the professor was saying things like "God has nothing to do with evolution", then he's probably overstepping his bounds, since there is little way he could know how evolution itself came into being.
It's always a good idea to take articles published in the Daily Mail, especially one published under the mysterious pseudonym 'DAILY MAIL REPORTER' with a rather large pinch of salt: the paper has a well-deserved reputation for fanning the flames of moral panic by regularly publishing poorly researched stories that indicate that "the country is going to the dogs". I wonder how many students boycott lectures on the basis that they conflict with their religious beliefs? My guess would be that it's a tiny minority.
Niels Bohr once said something to the effect of "if you claim to understand quantum mechanics, you don't."
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Pls understand that in Islam, there is no Science vs. Religion conflict like there is in some versions of Christianity. The Prophet admonishes Muslims to seek knowledge in all its forms and wherever it may be, and in Islam to be learned in the sciences is highly prized. The story comes from the daily mail. This is a right wing rag with a well established gutter press tradition and agenda of racist scare stories and lies. This is not the first time Muslims have been portrayed in a negative light there. They have been spewing out these kind of stories over the years with the punchline that Muslims are inherently evil and inferior. It used to be the blacks and the Indians who were on the receiving end of shit stories like that, but its the Muslims turn now. Everything about this story rings false.
I strictly believe in a right to believe your religion in peace. So I will not say that the very idea of Creationism is wrong, If I (and they) want to believe that, it is my(/our) right.
That's fine, but by the same token you have to afford us the same right - to say that we believe that Creationism is wrong.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
However, if an eminent scholar presents forward a *theory*, there is no harm in at least reading what he is writing.
You need to go to a decent school, and learn the difference between a theory, a Theory, and a hypothesis. They are three entirely different things.
The philosophy these people subscribe to is that there is no such thing as "Natural Law" which is constant, but is instead the "will of Allah". Science is based on the assumption that there are fixed, unchanging natural laws, not that the universe exists and behaves according to the whims of a divine Entity. This is why "Intelligent Design" has no place in Evolutionary Theory, and neither does this similar line of thinking.
If you don't know how it works, just say you don't know, stop inventing some magical fairy and saying it works because the fairy wants it to work that way.
That's what you get when you mix religion with ... anything.
Religious beliefs should have no place in a non-religious institute (be that a university or something else), and that means neither the teachers nor the students should bring up religious issues in such an environment. If I understand correctly the starting point, students refused to attend a class dealing with a non-religious issue, although others might (and are, as I see above) disagree. The point is, Darwin's and related theories might not fit into some religious dogmas and ideas, nonetheless they belong to teaching. If some don't want to hear about it, they should be judged as any other student would be judged who refused to attend a class or take an exam.
A student is not required to believe in everything (s)he's taught, nor is (s)he required to integrate what (s)he hears into her/his religious belief. One must be able to differentiate and separate these issues and be able - and grown enough - to not be such sensitive to these issues.
Everyone can enjoy and practice their religion and live according to their beliefs, but should not require everybody else to adhere to their religion in any way. If they go to a non-islamic university, then they should not expect it to follow islamic rules and teachings. It's ridiculous.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
When we talk about scientists being atheistic or irreligious, we tend to mean that they don't accept ideas which are regarded as pretty silly by most of the people in serious university theology departments - and no, I don't mean "Bible colleges".
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
That is the nearest we inthe UK have to Glenn Beck.
Move along, nothing to see here.
I have excellent Karma and I am not afraid to Troll it.
There is a simple way to calm religious nutters down when it comes to evolution.
Just replace the word "Random evolution" with "seemingly random evolution" that little semantic change makes everyone happy. However...religious tolerance has its limits. And if the students dont want to learn the uni should in my opinion have the right to kick them out. So they can learn their Vodoo in a mosque
I am not sure about the intricacies of their arguments, but perhaps they are right? I do not mean to say that there are not clearly established patterns of scientific knowledge, but perhaps there is a God who has an active role in the guidance of evolution.
The problem with that line of thinking is that you can apply it to *anything*.
"Perhaps there is a God who has an active role in the weather."
"Perhaps there is a God who has an active role in a bird's ability to fly."
"Perhaps there is a God who has an active role in nuclear fission."
"Perhaps there is a God who has an active role in moving the electrons around to get this message from my computer to yours."
Perhaps the universe is *utterly* different from the way it seems, but God is faking things to make it look like it seems.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
It takes more faith to believe in evolution than it does to believe in God.
We can't see either, true, but believing in some kind of order and divine infrastructure is easier to comprehend than a godless, hopeless, universe where eventually all life will cease to exist leaving nothing but a cold, black, empty void.
Personally I think anyone who believes in evolution is a total f*cking idiot.
And most f*cking likely they don't f*cking give a f*ck what anyone as f*cking out of f*cking touch with f*cking reality as you f*cking are f*cking thinks.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I have studied psychology and sociology of religion, Far from seeing religion is "just mythology", once you have understood the implications for human society of mythology, you start to see mythology and religion everywhere. "Market economy", "Free markets" and the international elite of bankers and bank economists are aspects of the religion which has largely replaced Christianity in the West. The mythology of the inevitable triumph of capitalism is a powerful and destructive mythology, as influential as was Communism. Like Communism, it claims to be based on "facts" about the world which are in reality remarkably unverifiable. The only way to fight mythologies is to understand their strengths and weaknesses. By regarding them as powerless, we play into the hands of the people who use them to manipulate society.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
I, too, will pitch my hat in the ring to provide a Muslim perspective.
I am from Pakistan, which is about as conservative and Muslim as you can get (okay, so KSA is even more so...but you get the gist)
You fail it, alas. Because you narrate anecdotal evidence on how Darwinism was introduced in Pakistan. Maybe interesting, but anyone could have narrated that. And I cannot make out any 'Muslim perspective' in your words.
... instead of reading and thinking about the book they believe in.
That's hilarious.
You see, this is nice reading. And nice thinking. Unfortunately, it is totally unscientific. You propagate the idea that theories that sound warm and fuzzy should be accepted as truth, while theories that result in harshness and coldness should be discarded. .... names.
That is your good right.
However, you overstep your perimeter by calling us, who have a different opinion of yours,
Everything about this story rings false.
it does?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/feb/21/religion.highereducation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_views_on_evolution
According to Guardian some British Muslim students have distributed leaflets on campus, advocating against Darwin's theory of evolution. At a conference in the UK in January, 2004, entitled Creationism: Science and Faith in Schools, Dr Khalid Anees, president of the Islamic Society of Britain stated that "Muslims interpret the world through both the Koran and what is tangible and seen. There is no contradiction between what is revealed in the Koran and natural selection and survival of the fittest."
You see, they exclude them selves from science ... ... they will only rise to the potential they allow them selves.
That's OK
Its a matter of time, but the truth is on it's way
The problem with Muslims is that they're violent, uneducated and incredibly stupid... according to the media. But one thing would be if biased media invented this, but they don't have to - the world and especially the Middle East is full of Muslims behaving like morons and all the biased media have to do is turn on the cameras.
If the Muslim world wants respect they need to start acting like they're civilized, from stopping the violence (terrorism in particular) and homicidal rhetoric to stopping the overly theatrical manifestations in the streets. And they need to stop confirming the stereotypes on a daily basis - no more child marriages, no more male supremacy, no more female mutilations, no more 'honor' violence and murder. Finally they need to become more assimilated into society, especially when it comes to appearance. The scarves and other female discriminatory clothing must go - they're not part of the Qur'an probably because they were custom at the time of writing and thus self-evident, but they have been perverted over time into extremes like the burka and enforced by self-serving clerics who have made it into something religiously required which it never was - or is.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
What ever floats your boat
However, if an eminent scholar presents forward a *theory*, there is no harm in at least reading what he is writing.
Nope. No harm at all. If you read this person's writing there will be no harm, and if an eminent scholar presents forward a *theory*, there is no harm in telling others what he is writing.
Nope. No harm at all. If you tell others of this person's writing there will be no harm, but if you slightly change the definition of 'eminent' to place this person in with other scientists like Charles Darwin, THEN there is a problem.
As far as this matter is concerned, this man is a religious nut-case regardless of any other work he may have done. I will remind you that Newton believed in ghosts. I, for one, will not put on my anti-ghost tinfoil hat just because the law of gravity has been proven correct.
Please refrain from using a straw man argument until you can master the concept.
Boycotting lectures are we?
Check it out, you just failed your course.
If they had and serious objections to science that would just failing people would not be acceptable. But they've just chosen to not turn up. You fail. Very simple.
I apologise, but I can't exactly remember *what* biology books said, since it was oh so long ago, and I dropped biology afterwards. Also, due to flaws in our education system, we have had multiple varieties of textbooks (in all subject) due to changes in curriculum every few years, so frankly I am not even sure now which class biology *is* taught!
But I remember the gist of it, it was about the evolution of biological research, how scientist discovered plants needed needed air(oxygen) not just water as earlier hypothesized etc... You get the idea, among those discoveries was Charles Darwin's discovery too, that I definitely remember.
However, I reflecting back, I am not exactly sure whether the verses were there to refute Darwin (or any other scientist for that matter) in particular. There was just a chapter on the Quranic version, where it said how Allah created man from a clot of blood etc. You can search on the internet.
So I guess my setup of the sentence was perhaps wrong, but I think I maybe attributing what my teacher said to what was in the text book.
My apologies, I will try to track down a school level biology book if I can, but I won't be surprised if the entire chapter on research was deleted, not due to Darwin, mind you, but simply because one of the many curriculum changes might have deleted this entire section for something he thought was more appropriate and *up-to-date*, like the discovery cells in wood cork etc.
In fact, I distinctly remember a friend complaining his brother's biology book had the chapter on the verses missing too ("Dude! our education system is being taken over by the Infidels!11!")
AS for the part about beliefs, I am not going to mess over that. Islam insist you take treatment for ills, that whole "prayers alone will save me" shit doesn't fly in our religion, you *must* take action, and pray too, basically the motto is "Do your best, and *then* leave the rest to God", if you won't take medicine or preventative measure, that means you are not doing your part.
However, if a Christian friend were to refuse medicine...well I am not sure. That's a bridge I will cross when I come to it.
I am an ACCA student. Got a query on Accountancy/Finance? Maybe I can help!
The reason religion is getting nuttier is because there are less and less gaps for it to fill. So when you have a subset of religion who defines itself by being able to provide answers to the questions science can't, it gets threatened when science provides more and more of those answers. The gaps that you can fill get smaller and smaller.
That is why there is more and more of it. For some, religion fills a spiritual needs and specific answers about the world aren't a part of it, and as such science isn't a threat. It is a different thing. However for others, they need their religion to be right about explaining things, and science keeps encroaching on that. So they lash out and get all anti-knowledge.
Though it has been going on in Islam for a long time. Again, the talk by Dr. Tyson covers that.
These religious fundamentalist are all alike. Obviously it doesn't matter how they call their deity. For evangelical Christians evolution is a lie (though their own idea of creation of life is not even a theory (if you think it is a theory, please look up the scientific definition of theory)). And now fundamentalist from the monotheistic abrahametic religion version 1.2 come to the same "conclusion".
I always wonder why all these fundamentalist believe in a stupid god who works by rules which are totally imprecise and dependent to certain properties of a region and technical level. Fundamentalists from version 1.0 are not to work on $HolyDay and that included making fire (some 6000 years ago). Nowadays they are therefor not allowed to use cars on $HolyDay or cook on $HolyDay even though today making a fire in your home does not require any big thing to do. And new problems arise with microwaves is that fire in the ancient context? What they forget is. Why the people (er. god) came up with that rule?
I guess they should merge their religion interpretation into the fundamentalists. We could even make a TV series from it.
As I have replied in detail to the other post above, I guess that it was simply me attributing what my teacher might have said to what the book stated. In the book were just two chapter, one on the evolution of biological research, which included reference of the research work of various scientist, including Darwin. Another chapter was a reference of Quran, which included stuff like who God created man from a clot of blood, etc.
I don't think there was a direct refutation of Darwin. I am sorry, it was in school a long time ago, and I dropped biology earlier on. I will see if I can track a current school textbook and see what it says.
As for belief, well, Darwin certainly had a lot of strong points, and I think it would be foolishness to ignore those. But I irrevocably believe in God having created us, in whatever manner or form.
Also, I have just realised that I am not exactly sure what creationism is! I mean, when people refer to "creationism", they are referring to the Christian model, as usually presented in the US, but due to the differences in belief, I guess our "Creationism" might be a lot more different. I am just not sure.
I am an ACCA student. Got a query on Accountancy/Finance? Maybe I can help!
Oh god.. the daily fail
If atheism is a religion then bald is a hair color and off is a tv channel. Stop calling atheism religion!
I, too, will pitch my hat in the ring to provide a Muslim perspective.
Your Pakistani "Muslim perspective" is essentially identical to the "Christian perspective" in many American Schools.
when I was taught biology in school, guess what, I was taught Darwin!
Darwin died a hundred and thirty years ago, and he published On the Origin of Species over a hundred and fifty years ago.
It's certainly reasonable for a biology course to begin the subject mentioning Darwin. However when a class is "Teaching Darwin" it's a huge red flag that the class doesn't teach the last hundred and fifty years of science and evidence, and that the little it does teach of "Darwinism" is merely the superficial strawman version that denialists make of it.
It was simple, the text simply said, "Charles Darwin, a renowned Scientist hypothesized in his theory that..." and then followed by "However, we as Muslims, believe that [insert relevant verses here]"
Sadly, the same thing happens all too often in many American Schools. They tell the students they're teaching them evolution, and they present a cartoon picture of the subject. They present a description that makes evolution look hollow and speculative and even silly. Generally they present a picture that makes evolution look obviously impossible. Well, yeah, what they are teaching sounds impossible because it is impossible. What they are teaching is impossible because what they are teaching is wrong.
If you're being taught is "hypothesized" and "theorized", then your teacher isn't teaching you any of the modern science and evidence. If the lesson is going back and forth with "however other people believe X" then you are in a denialist class and you're being taught a hollow and grossly distorted picture of evolution.
Seriously, imagine you were in a chemistry class and the teacher were saying "hypothesized" and "theorized" and "However, we as Muslims, believe that [insert relevant verses here]". That's obviously not a science class, and it's obviously not teaching you squat about the actual modern science of chemistry. You don't teach "theorized" in a chemistry class, except maybe for a brief bit of historical background. You don't each "other people believe X" in a chemistry class, you can't do that when you're presenting hard evidence and hard experimental results.
That's not a legitimate science class. That's a sham.
A real science class teaches understanding backed up by facts and evidence and experiments. When you complete a real science class, you have enough understanding to know for yourself that it obviously works, and you've learned enough evidence and experiments that it's obviously correct.
Just because your teacher told you he was teaching you "Darwin" doesn't mean that he showed you any of the modern science of evolution, it doesn't mean taught you any of the modern understanding of evolution, and most significantly it doesn't mean he presented you any of the modern evidence and experiments undeniably confirming evolution.
The "theory of evolution" is no more theoretical and no more uncertain than "atomic theory".
A good science class on the evolution will teach enough of an understanding of the process such that evolution is not only obviously possible, evolution is obviously inevitable. A good science class on the subject will present sufficient hard evidence such that evolution is obviously historically accurate.
And any decent theologian will tell you that there's no conflict between science and God. He'll tell you God created the universe, along with and all of the physical laws of the universe. He'll tell you that science is an accurate description of how God designed the universe to work. Does God hand-draw rainbow in the sky?
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
The religious extremists did believe in their religion, so much so that they paid for it with their lives and lives of the others (e.g. suicide-bombers and those 9-11 terrorists). As for the moderates, they had a double reality. For example, there was a drought in Idaho, the farmers went to Church to pray for rain... but at the same time, they also employ the scientific method of seeding the rain. Kind of like Star Trek fans, they knew their fantasy was only fantasy.
It depends on the exact way it's done, but there are ways of doing that sort of "we really believe X" that end up coming off as more pro-science than others, sometimes almost just paying lip service to the religious view. A lot of late-middle-ages European scientific books would do things like that, starting off with some blather about how everything is really caused by God of course, with some quotes from the Bible, and then moving on to more or less: "but that said, let me describe for you an experiment I did and a mathematical model that seems to capture it..."
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Isn't reality /supposed/ to clash with fiction?
haha you guys can talk, yeah i was wrong for calling you names but at least 90% of atheists I talk to about evolution end up calling me names when I answer their questions and in particular give them answers to their so called biblical "contradictions".
There seems to be a lot of religious intolerance on Slashdot, I'm not religious myself but respect the right of other to believe what they wish as long as it causes no harm (admittedly debatable).
I have a good doctor, intelligent and always concentrating about what I put into my body and how I treat it before suggesting any drugs (he has never suggested drugs yet!), I don't know if he is Muslim but I would definitely stick with him regardless as he is the best out of the half a dozen doctors I've had.
If these Muslims can pass the exams and understand the necessary sciences and practice good doctorship (!'good medicine' - a chemical for every ail?), then fair enough that they don't wish to see the lecture of a self-proclaimed 'militant atheist' who said "let's all stop being so damned respectful" [of religion] and that is in context.
http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_dawkins_on_militant_atheism.html
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This does not have something to do with the religion. It has something to do with a strange interpretation of the text. Normally, people should read a text and put it in the historical context. Otherwise the language cannot be understand, as language is not a constant thing. Language reflects the traditions and context of the time it is used in, which is no surprise as it is used to communicate (and yes books are also communication). Furthermore, people use analogies to illustrate their thoughts. And in ancient times, people used to describe wonders to elevate a important person. Therefore, texts shouldn't be over interpreted, like god made everything in 6 days. We know today that time and the progression of time is not a constant. And for the assumed deity which exists out of time, 6 days is a stupid construct. It is much more logic to assume that the people of that time, assumed that the creation of everything happened in 6 phases. And this is not untrue, by what we know today. We need matter and energy to form planets and stars. We need planets to create/evolve simple life. We need simple live to evolve complex life. And yes humans appeared very late and from our perspective now the "creation" is complete.
I always wonder why religion fanatics believe in a most stupid deity which act upon a strange set of rules. And by following those rules they act disrespectful to others. Fundamentalists are a little different, they try not to be disrespectful. However, the core message for all those religions out there is: "Be nice to each other." And we all fail greatly in that.
Furthermore, if the god thing is true and one day we stand before god, he will not ask you. Have you always believed in creationism or evolution. He will ask if you tried to be a good person.
I happen to live in a Christian country - England - that not that long ago executed people for stealing food to feed their family, something Islam forbids punishing. You wouldn't think that it'd be something you'd need to forbid, or that chopping off someone's hands would be lenient, but history suggests that it is and that it's not just a problem that applies to weird savages in some country you've never heard of.
Refuse to allow them to graduate. You cannot claim to have a proper understanding of biology without understanding, and accepting, Evolution, which is the unifying theory of Biology. ALL of modern biology, with all its benefits, rests on Darwin's great achievement.You refuse that, and you refuse science, you refuse Biology, and thus refuse Medecine. You can't be a doctor and depend on your totem book for knowledge. People who rely on totems for knowledge are called "witch doctors", not medical doctors.
The same way when someone says "I don't believe in UFO's" I'm inclined to ask: oh, great, have you finally found proof they don't exist?
Commentaries about Pascal wager aside, I believe skepticism is very useful when properly used -- and anything in excess becomes poison.
I also get confused about what part of "God almighty" they can't accept: do they believe Darwin can come up with something the Lord wouldn't know about? And knowing about Evolution, why would He not use it? (btw, also why would He?) I'm really not qualified to say that, but these guys, be they Protestant, Catholic, Muslim or Jew should expect more from their Faith.
If you argue with an idiot, you become an idiot. Any atheist claiming to know for sure there can't be a God is unconscious of his own size -- to say the least.
Hey hey hey! Let's just remember there are plenty of sane religious folk in the world. Some top physicists/biologists/chemists/etc... and scientists in general are religious in one way or another.
Let's not put the crazy with the sane...
How many devout Muslims have won a Nobel Prize?
Lots of devout Christians have.
Islam not only directs its follows to kill non-Muslims, it's also an irrational religion - literally.
Should boycott muslim doctors, and that's that.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
"religion tells us how to live life as human beings, science tells us how we live as biological creatures... the two domains don't touch."
I call this the "Gould Gambit" and I disagree with it. This "don't touch me!" approach fundamentally underestimates the many real-world claims that religion can make, and the multitude of ways that religion structures peoples' thoughts, lives, communities, and schedules. It's not entirely dissimilar from students walking out of a lecture on things they don't want to think about affecting their personal goals.
I say this as a non-religious person (but with a degree in philosophy and religious concentration).
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
And there is this:
tl;dr version: Einstein said that "The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still purely primitive, legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this."
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
It's not quite that simple.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I think both sides are wrong in this thing.
First, i am a believer in creation. This has not prevented me from attending lessons about evolution. Why would it be a sin to understand how other believes? I mean, you do not need to believe in it yourself to study it. In the same way many that study theology are atheists.
Second, why would a medic, not believing in evolution, be a less good medic? Being a medic is about finding cause of symptoms and prescribing something that helps, or to send to a specialist. There is nothing that helps in believing in evolution or not. What is helping is good knowledge in the human body.
(This is offtopic again: I have studied a lot about evolution, been reading several books. I can not prove creation happened but nobody can either prove that evolution happened. I have been looking for bullet proof evidence for evolution and not found even one, except for microevolution, which i believe also in. There are many things making it looks like evolution could have been happening (like similarities in dna) but it could be the same well used as "evidence" for creation. In the same way as you can recognize from the style who the painter of something is, the dna might be the style of God...
As proving one thing or another is difficult we have to just live respecting each other)
Gosh, so... no secret Jewish courts but there are a lot of Sharia courts. Mmm, kinda ruins your whole argument doesn't it?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Text says it all, it is not that they are muslims but that they are fundamentalistes. What bugs me is that they have got that far in the studies, how is possible ?
How about this for a reason: there is absolutely no evidence that random mutations filtered by natural selection have produced any of the following:
o new cell types
o new tissue types
o new organ types
o new body plans
If Dawinism can't produce these things, then it certainly cannot explain the "origin of species".
Reminds me of the throwaway line "There are no atheists in foxholes." Aside from often being wrong, to any degree it is true, this isn't a problem with atheism, it's a problem with foxholes.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
If it comes from Daily Mail, you can ignore it. Thank you.
To prevent this day from getting worse, I'll just read ERROR as GOOD TH
and kick them out of university. They have proven to have a mind that is not compatible with sciene. If they apply the same thinking in medicine, they are a danger to patients.
Maybe they can pursue a career as a mullah or some other function in their cult.
It's not what you say, it's what you do, and Darwin, regardless of the controversy he generated, was buried in Westminster Abbey, near Newton. which pretty much tells you everything you need to know about the Anglican church's attitude to science.
....many are eroneously stating that the original report comes from the Daily Mail. It doesn't - it comes from The Times...
The claim that it's possible that there is a God that affects evolution? That's a very weak claim that requires no evidence, since the burden of proof would be squarely on people to show the converse, i.e. it's not possible for a God that affects evolution to exist.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Talking to imaginary entities is sane?
If I talk to an imaginary person and he/she talks back, I'm insane. If I call that imaginary entity "god" or "God", then all is well? That's crazy.
OTOH I suspect that many so-called "Laws of physics" are really just things that work in a certain way in our part of the universe. For example, F=ma is that truly a "law" or just a simplification that happens to work well for 99.9999% of what we need normally? Are there places where F=ma is not true?
Don't bank on this story actually being true, the Daily Fail^W Mail has published many blatantly false articles.
If you want to know what the Daily Mail is like, just watch this Dan & Dan song about the paper and it tells you pretty much all you need to know:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eBT6OSr1TI
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
This is a common issue that Muslim students are quitting the Darwin's evolution lectures, this happened in University of Huddersfield during the criminology class. The lecturer was explaining the biological reasons of violent crime and when he discussed the human evolution, Muslim students quit the lecture. The lecturer explained the meaning of evolution with examples, which were logical.
The education at the degree level should expand our minds and if we are not expanding our minds than the education is useless. Please do not waste a university seat if you do not want to expand your brain, if you have any logical reason to disagree any matter, please debate or discuss it rather quit or boycott it.
Please respect your lecturer who work very hard, quitting the lecture is very insulting for the lecturer. Islam and all other religions give great importance for the respect and the dignity of teacher.
I'll take anything published by the Daily Mail with a ton of salt. Where there isn't a story, they create one.
Can we please stop posting flamebait stories from the daily mail?
Here's the thing. You could argue against God all you want. I personally don't need to find a reason why I exist.
I have a degree in civil engineering and a graduate degree in material sciences. I'm not a good person but I admit God exits.
There is no way in fucking hell that I evolved from an ape.
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Except they are asking $10 for infinite, eternal, no-login, all-you-want access to Wikipedia.
Instead of $25 for some cute, teasing, but quasi-useless, short-lived plastic trinket.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
I cannot conceive a medical degree without a full comprehensive understanding and acceptance of Darwinism. If these assholes boycott classes it is their problem. It It is also very easy to deal with this issue. If they boycott classes they just do not finish medical school and do not get the degree. They simply cannot be trusted as doctors if they do not accept scientific reasoning. It is as simple as that.
Just drop them from the class
I like to see a different perspective on this.
The anonymous comment "So, the article is from The Daily Mail, also known as The Daily Racist. Not that silly fairytale believing people aren't acting silly, but how big of an issue is this, really? Is there an agenda pushing this "news"?"
speaks volumes. For some reason secular (atheist) propaganda is really popular right now, it's like someone is trying to paint Dawkins as some kind of religious leader, which I don't think he'd be best pleased about.
I remember being lectured on completely different subjects, or at least took issue with for not hearing both sides of the argument. At the time I went along with it for fear of being marked down if I disagreed - it seemed the only way to tell would be to find out after the exam.
Religious groups are not the only groups who disagree with the current bending of evolution to mask other theories. What about people who believe that man was a result of melding ape DNA with ET DNA, thus explaining the evolutionary jump. That group isn't religious but would also be right to be peeved that the discussion of intelligent influence is omitted too.
I think what people have issue with is not that the subject is covered but the way it's thought of in atheist religious terms. An understanding that we evolved from the coastal marine environment has allowed me to come with things in my daily life that help me (electrolytic salts balance), that would have been possible without knowing that we came from the ocean. Likewise for bacteria and resistance to drugs. However,
By on the one hand saying that we act as god in what we do with selective breeding and DNA manipulation while at the same time saying that evolution is the only process on earth and also dismissing all major written and oral traditional records (not just Islam but pretty much every religion has a record of creationism), then what you have is bigotry.
I'll know things are back to normal when I hear more of "We think" "Maybe" "It's possible" "But on the other hand" in presentation rather than such a clearly defined history of humanity
A blog I run for the wealth
In turkey, muslim doctors who actually practice the religion (most are muslim only in name and tradition) refuse to touch and treat women. female muslim doctors who practice the religion refuse to treat men.
if you let this evolution refusal thing keep going on, the radicalization will increase.
Read radical news here
Tiberias spends millions on biblically ‘pure’ roads
http://972mag.com/town-spends-millions-on-voodoo-roads/28355/
Just to respond to you here, and keep in mind I'm an Atheist (whom has also read a good chunk of the Old Testament).
-First and foremost, The simple gist of "Creation" is that around 5,000 years ago God created Earth, the Sun, everything around, and then created Adam, then created Eve from Adam's rib. Then Eve ate the apple from the tree of knowledge and got them both kicked out of the garden of Eden.
Come forward to our time where we have evolutionary theory, and they reject anything that could contradict this idea that "God created man through Adam and Eve".
What they've attempted to do in the education system here in the US to placate this theory is to try and separate "macro" vs "micro" evolution. The idea that mutations occur within a species, but speciation is a different process altogether. What this method of teaching allows religious people to do is separate the idea that "man came from Apes" from the idea that "We can selectively breed certain types of food."
Some aren't satisfied with that separation though and wish to go even further.
And here I thought it would have been directed by MIchael Bay.
People blinded by institutionalized prejudices and lies have no business making life-or-death decisions. This is just a symptom. A doctor who believes in creationism or a flat earth is stupid, but need not be a bad doctor. However, a doctor who places any value or faith higher than the life and dignity of a human being can be a danger to anyone he treats.
No I couldn't have narrated that. This is an anecdote that, assuming it's not a lie (wich I assume), proves not all muslims refuse to listen to alternative theories to their own. This is valuable information, although I already had that feeling when talking to some of them.
It is interresting, relevant and new (in the comments to this story).
You may find a fail in his believing some of it is not random chance but Allah's will (assuming GGP is correct) but I find it not: while I do not subscribe to this theory I cannot disprove it and this I cannot conclude it's not true. To conclude it can not be because it can not be proven is a sort of religion in and of itself, because you then decide something is without proof. I'll defend your right to this religion although I do not ascribe to it, but I will call you out on your flaws if I see them.
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
thanks to islam.
Time exists only to keep everything from happening at once; standing outside time, you could see it all as one big 'event'. :)
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
Your arguments are analogical or circular, and then you resort to announcing that "believe" means different things according to context. From the point of view of a sociologist of religion, you are using religious thinking.
Please don't get me wrong. I am not a relativist. I just believe that "religious" thinking is part of the way our brains cope with reality, because what we perceive as reality is actually a lot of analogies. Any scientist who thinks that he or she is 100% free of religious modes of thinking and completely objective is slightly deluded. Accepting that science involves a small kernel of unprovable and untestable assumptions is, in fact, just being objective.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Iran is not an Islamic state.
An Islamic state is constitutional ( defined by the Koran ofc ) where the ruler is chosen by a group of scholars, approved by the population and can be removed.
Malaysia is the only nation that comes close.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
That standard can only apply to sciences which allow for direct experimentation. You couldn't apply that to half of the "exact" sciences, let alone applied sciences or statistics based sciences (like medicine).
By that standard, climate change doesn't exist, you should analyse diseases only on the atomic level (and even then ... experiments are seriously indirect here) ...
Experiments cannot ever prove anything about the past (like prove or disprove evolution) without a time machine. For obvious reasons. Where this becomes really, really problematic is in sciences like history : the evidence that Jesus rose from the grave, from primary historic sources, is a lot more compelling and better confirmed (I mean the books and the text can be traced through the ages *very* well, and we are very sure that they were written by Greeks who were in Jerusalem when it "happened") than, say, the fact that we had something called "world war I".
I don't think you realize the magnitude of the problem here.
Please read Pascal's Wager.
I think that eventually science will be able to detect and measure very faint, although important, links of some kind between various kinds of "life-entities", human or other, biological or other - or something like that. Simply explaining what the origins of religions, spirits, etc were, are, and... not. And everyone will be able to harness whatever insights and powers there are within that, without the 99.9% negative side effects that pre-science faiths currently bring on.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
No. You're assuming that assertions with no weight in evidence have equal value with those assertions which have support in evidence. That is fundamentally unsound thinking. It's the same kind of cognitive error that makes newspapers give equal time to evolution and "gawd didit." The reason that science shows regularity is because science looks at what is real and attempts to reveal it in human terms of metaphor, from math to rules to randomness. In the process, it consistently finds regularity. If irregularity were present, it would find that just as well (see quantum mechanics for a good example of this.)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
universe, can't create a good random number generator????? That's downright funny!
Atheism as in "There is no proof for a god so He can not exist" is a religion. People who claim that assume something is true without proof. The assumption is "there is no god". I know the proof "there can be no omnipotent, omnibenivolent and all knowing god because they are mutually exclusive with evil in the world" but that does not prove there can be no god, just no god with those three traits.
Disclaimer: I assume there is no god because I haven't seen proof for one. I haven't seen proof there is no god either, but Occam's razor applies here. Occam's razor gives only basis for an assumption and if new proof appears it should be applied anew.
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
Muslims, like they religion brothers the Christians (both are offshoot of other religion) are going to go down the history the same way as other religion before them. Going to vanish and become the work of historians. But normally, a religion as system lasts for about 2000 years or so.
As for the current issue. I have seen this for some time now on the internet. They are just copying the creationist nonsense, almost word by word.
— Doctor, am I going to live? — Insha'Allah.
Probably my favorite part about Slashdot religious threads is the extremely biased, condescending, closed minded banter. From both sides. I'm no scientist nor am I any religious scholar, but I've seen only several posts from anyone who seems remotely open to anything resembling a *conversation* where they're open to a new and/or different point of view. Personally I find issues with both sides... and when considering the scientific *facts* but also the theological and metaphysical possibilities, I'd say both sides have good arguments as well as fallacies.
The claim that it's possible that there is a God that affects evolution? That's a very weak claim that requires no evidence, since the burden of proof would be squarely on people to show the converse, i.e. it's not possible for a God that affects evolution to exist.
It is a claim that cannot be falsified, and therefore unscientific. The very first hurdle for any statement to be considered in science is that it can be falsified, that is _if_ it is wrong then there would be some way to find evidence it is wrong. The burden of showing _possibility of proof or disproof_ is squarely on the person making the claim.
Any science student who rejects basic scientific theory in favor of some mythological fantasy should not be granted a degree.
So I will not say that the very idea of Creationism is wrong, If I (and they) want to believe that, it is my(/our) right.
That's so stupid. I could say it's my right to believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster, but that wouldn't make it a sensible belief.
Sure, you can believe in whatever you want, but if you want to get a science degree at a Western university, then you'd better discard your wacko mythologies, at least long enough to attend class and write the exam.
There are several evolutionary topics that doctors must know about, including antibiotic resistant bacteria and animal testing of humans drugs and procedures.
Medical students should be taught about various cases of bacteria acquiring immunity to specific antibiotics, taught how challenging finding new antibiotics is, and taught how many lives would be lost without them. You might even ask them to work through a simplified mathematical model of immunity acquisition.
Medical students should be given an overview of why some animals make more suitable animal models for human medications, including how our closest relatives like chimpanzees make the best models but require more care, more expense, live too long, and raise moral issues. Rats are used earlier in the process because they cost so little but model some human systems reasonably. All these reasons should be explained in terms of convergent and divergent evolution.
If they fail that material, fine don't give them the degree that let's them prescribe drug.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Yes you can applie it to everything. And that's not really wrong. It could be so. It's just a different religion if you are certain it's not so (of wich you seem to be certain). Neither of these assumptions ("God has an active hand in it" or "God doesn't have an active hand in it") can be proven so both are based in faith. Both are some form of religion.
I assume he doesn't have an active hand in it, but I am not certain. I can't be because there is no proof. I do not believe science has anything to do with it, for there is proof for neither assumption and no way to gather said proof.
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
In New England they executed Quakers, whereas that crypto-Catholic Charles II ended their persecution.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Say no more. A paper no better than the Murdoch rags they are not-quite-plagiarising. Next article please?
The OP didn't ask what was scientific, rather what was right.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I am not exactly sure what creationism is! I mean, when people refer to "creationism", they are referring to the Christian model, as usually presented in the US, but due to the differences in belief, I guess our "Creationism" might be a lot more different. I am just not sure.
There have been a small number of times I've run into people using "creationism" to mean "God created the universe". But that is rare, the people doing it are always raging about something, and using the word that way always results in nasty confusion.
99% of the time "creationism" refers to the idea that God created the earth AND specifically all the various "kinds" of plants and animals, and that God dropped those various fully-formed "kinds" onto the earth. Creationists are very vague and contradictory on defining "kinds". Some creationists accept that lions and tigers and panthers and housecats all came from one original "cat kind", but they are all adamant that God separately created cats and dogs and lizards.
Perhaps the best definition is to define it in reverse. A core aspect of evolution is common descent - that cats and dogs and lizards all descended from a common ancestor. Creationists view that concept as a direct assault against God.
For many of them the idea of evolution becomes bizarrely equal to atheism. They seem to feel they have infallible knowledge of how God did things, and if God didn't do things exactly as they imagine, then God can't exist. They either reject, or can't comprehend, the idea of God using evolution to create the diversity of life on earth.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
if the content shows up on a test, and they choose the wrong answer, they fail. i don't see the issue. as an adult i can believe what i want to believe. When i take vendor certification tests the tests are always biased for the product. it doesn't mean i believe all the great and wonderful things they are saying, i just have to know what answer they want me to put. I really don't see an issue with someone walking out of a lecture, for any reason. in the end they are paying for an education if they miss a point and fail a test its their decision to spend more money or pick a different school.
There is no empirical way to prove that anything is random. Evolution, like a series of coin flips, has a strong appearance of randomness, e.g. conforms to central limit theorem. However, positing that there is a timeless (outside of time) omniscient being who knows all that is to happen does not contradict randomness, or free will for that matter.
After all, He is a highly intelligent designer, no?
The only objection I can see to a belief in God is based on the problem of evil. However, it is not clear to me that an all-loving God to allow us to be truly and fully free, and not allow a world as unjust as this one.
Where do I make that assumption? You are just making trolling attacks on things I didn't write because, in reality, you don't have an answer.
And that is a circular argument. You have assumed "reality" is regular, therefore science looks at "reality" and finds regularity. Ignoring your objectivising of "science", you really do not seem to have a clue about epistemology, and your knowledge of philosophy is sub-Aristotelian. In fact, you're almost as blinkered as one of those Muslim students cited.
By the way, I am not a reductionist and I believe that arguments about "God" are almost always the theologically illiterate arguing with the theologically ignorant. But you missed that, because you do not understand the difference between blindly accepting "science", and accepting that science is an incredibly useful toolkit that explains how, but it cannot explain why and therefore is not a complete explanation of everything.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_More#Campaign_against_the_Reformation
The answer is right there in the summary "...they object to the idea that there is [anything] which is not directed by God."
This is not just a Muslim principle; I was taught exactly the same thing in Catholic school. Everything--even your own existence happens only because God wills it. If God (and I specifically asked the question) were to stop thinking about for even an instant, you would disappear. But you would not only disappear, you would never have existed at all.
The professor may not agree with the premise, but it is perfectly simple and the discrepancy is clear: Any explanation which does not explicitly depend on the direct and immediate involvement of God is false.
Walking out is an absolutely appropriate response if they choose to. If a person believe a statement is false, let them not internalize it. If their faith requires that they not even hear such statements, let them not listen. If it is important to not to be present where such statements are made, let them leave. All these choices affect, almost exclusively, only the person making that choice.
The rest of the students are there to learn; let them.
"Pakistan, which is about as conservative and Muslim as you can get " - yes, we noticed how the muslims in Pakistan applauded the assassination of the christian MP by his muslim bodyguard for his beliefs.
"So I will not say that the very idea of Creationism is wrong, If I (and they) want to believe that, it is my(/our) right." - quite right, it is your right to believe what ever you want but be prepared to be ridiculed if you want to believe in creationism or religion or any other crazy idea
"if an eminent scholar presents forward a *theory*," - depends if its a proper theory backed up by evidence.
I get from your post that you understand the meaning of "theory" is definition 2 (see below) This is the common mis-understanding of "theory" by anti-evolutionists that have done no real research but have just listened to creationists/religious.
Dictionary Definition of THEORY
1. a coherent group of tested general propositions, commonly regarded as correct, that can be used as principles of explanation and prediction for a class of phenomena: Einstein's theory of relativity, gravity, evolution Synonyms: principle, law, doctrine.
2. a proposed explanation whose status is still conjectural and subject to experimentation, in contrast to well-established propositions that are regarded as reporting matters of actual fact. Synonyms: idea, notion hypothesis, postulate. Antonyms: practice, verification, corroboration, substantiation.
3. Mathematics . a body of principles, theorems, or the like, belonging to one subject: number theory.
4. the branch of a science or art that deals with its principles or methods, as distinguished from its practice: music theory.
5. a particular conception or view of something to be done or of the method of doing it; a system of rules or principles: conflicting theories of how children best learn to read.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Since the modern scientific method was invented approximately 400 years ago, not one single repeatable experiment has ever been devised, by anyone, anywhere, anywhen, which has been able to show an "irregularity" (truly random processes such as radioactive decay, quantum weirdness, and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle notwithstanding)
Occam's razor. Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily.
When Newton discovered his laws of motion, he was right to accept them. When the scientists who followed him for the next 300-odd years accepted them, they were right to do so. Even though he was eventually shown to be wrong by Einstein, until that point, no-one had any good reason not to accept those laws. However, as soon as Einsten came up with new data, came up with new theories, came up with new experiments, came up with new evidence and proved Newton wrong, then scientists changed how they saw motion.
Yes, scientists should always be aware that their theories might not be correct, that there may be an edge case they've not seen yet. But until someone's actually found it, the best you can do is go with what you've got. If an experiment ever comes along to show that the universe isn't regular, science will use that to show how the universe is not regular. Anyone who refuses to accept the new evidence will not be, to all intents and purposes, a scientist. And science might have to do a lot of work to probe the boundaries (if any) of that irregularity and work out how much it affects the millions of experiments and observations that have been done over the last few centuries.
But until that time comes along, it's perfectly reasonable to assume that the universe is regular. Because that's what every experiement ever done has ever shown.
Your black swan argument could just as well be a 10-headed sheep argument. So what if no-one's seen them? No-one's proven that there aren't 10-headed sheep. So it's an absurdity to say they don't exist!
Bollocks.
If you show me a 10-headed sheep, I'll believe you. Until then, it is so mind-bogglingly unlikely that such thing exists that they are not worth considering in any reasonable model of the universe, and you're just engaging in philosophical wankery, not science.
Why doesn't the gene pool have a life guard?
I've looked at your website and realised that you aren't a scientist, you are basically an engineer. They are different...engineers tend to take science for granted and ask "how" questions rather than "why" questions. You're arguing about how science works, but from your misconceptions, not from experience. Oh, and given your rants about Muslims, how many do you meet up there in Montana?
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Are they actually teaching that evolution is not by divine design? If so, that's bullshit, as science really has nothing to say about whether or not the process of evolution was designed by a god, and the professor should learn to separate his own beliefs from science. Or are the students simply assuming that evolution denies the existence of a creator? If so, that's bullshit, because it says nothing on the subject--in fact Darwin himself was a devout believer whose quest to understand God's plan led him to his theory of evolution.
I strongly suspect the latter of course, since the article specifically says they're skipping lectures on Darwin. The last thing some anti-evolution morons want to hear is that Darwin was not an atheist like their lying priest/pastor/imam claimed. In that case, grade their work and exams just like everybody else, and if they don't master the material adequately, fail them. And if they're med students and it's a required course, tough shit they need to pick a different major.
On the third hand, I can imagine any religious person walking out of a Dawkins lecture. The man is not just hostile to all religion, he's abrasive and offensive.
I do not want to be treated by a doctor who is unwilling to even listen to basic scientific facts. No matter what their religion, people who refuse to even refuse to listen to the evidence have no business at an academic institution, and they shouldn't practice medicine either.
Does it matter? Empiricism works. The fact that we have technologies that we didn't before is justification enough for its efficacy.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
But black swans do exist.
But in science the story does not end there. You learn that your sample size is insufficient, and if you are lucky you learn something about genetics.
But yes, science does make one assumption - that everything in existence can be explained through natural phenomena. A supernatural actor completely destroys this ability, and the scientific method is useless in the context of a supernatural actor. If cancer can be cured by "miracle", then there is no sense in running rigorous scientific studies because God could come in and screw up the results. Fortunately for science, supernatural actors have not yet been observed screwing with nature. To paraphrase one of my college professors, God may exist but he largely leaves us alone.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
"that not that long ago executed people for stealing food to feed their family" - when exactly?
Islamic law - a system that makes raped women guilty of the crime of rape, you don't want to be a woman living under Sharia law.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
I am not religious, but it seems to me that most of the religious people are not like the people in this article.
Normally, they view science as our attempts to understand the infinitely complex mind of God. Most of them think we will never really get close to understanding it.
Since they approach it that way, to them there is no threat in science, and science should not feel threatened by religion. However, you're not going to read about them in this article, because the squeaky wheel gets all the grease. In this case, the "squeaky wheel" is whoever cooks up a crazy reason to stop paying attention in class.
This newspaper is the most disgusting excuse for a paper in the u.k.Its on par with fox news as a legitimate news channel.Half of the stuff they print isnt even true and just a publicity stunt.
Fail. Them.
Unless your institution is granting degrees for Witch Doctors, Sorcerers and Faith Healers. Oh wait, being a Sorcerer is a crime that gets you beheaded in some Islamic states. Better not grant a degree in that.
Farking idiots. FAIL THEM ALL.
I would add that 's is NOT the way to pluralize words, god damn it.
Let them boycott the class. Let them flunk the tests because they haven't seen the lectures. Let them go elsewhere to get a medical degree - some crackpot university that teaches "Medicine according to Islamic precepts", then let them treat other wackos who are willing to go to a doctor with those credentials, kill them, get their hides sued off and die in poverty. Society as a whole will profit from the death of our most ignorant and closed-minded.
Nothing lasts forever but the certainty of change.
There was just a chapter on the Quranic version, where it said how Allah created man from a clot of blood etc. You can search on the internet.
I like that a lot better than the "made him from dust" theory. To me it suggests that we're all descended from a single organism through a scientific process. I have this "fallen colony" theory :)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It appears to me that a fundamental teaching in some religions or some sects of a religion is the concept that anything that does not fit that sects' interpretation of their holy book is blasphemous and that blasphemous statements cannot be heard or tolerated. To openly witness this blasphemy would be in itself blasphemous.
It appears that some of these so called 'fundamentalists' put this anti-blasphemy policy above all others except for their god. All those commandments, they come after the anti-blasphemy policy.
What is worse, is that many of the commandments in Christian rules are expanded in Islam to include all mankind, not just 'thy neighbor', they this anti-blasphemy policy seems to be rule #1, and appears to salt all the other rules to allow them to be twisted ever so slightly to allow modern Islamic terrorism.
(disclaimer, Islamic religion is not the only one that produces terrorists, even today, but Islam appears to be the greatest source.)
Don't attend a required class? Fail your course of study. Problem solved.
Why people are surprised by those who embrace a different theory than they do amaze me. It reminds me of those who embraced Aristotle's geocentric theories calling everyone else delusional. Aristotle had two excellent and simple logical arguments based on simple repeatable experiments anyone could do for his geocentric theories. For well over a thousand years anyone who contradicted Aristotle's deductive logic was delusional and the academic authority of the times responded with ridicule and humiliation towards anyone who argued with such easily understood logic.
Today I see the exact same attitude expressed toward anyone who refuses to embrace the currently popular and "obviously logical" evolutionary theories.
It is actually pretty hilarious, the way history repeats and the way people who don't waste their time studying history are surprised when it repeats.
How is this news? Why should anyone care what some dumb shits are "boycotting." This affects nobody but them. Not news. Stop wasting your time with this.
You see I think some people are wired from birth to believe and some people are wired not to believe. You are an example of a person who is wired to believe. Your mind cannot disbelieve and others' disbelief is incomprehensible to you. If you were raised by Richard Dawkins and Regina Dawkins, the female Richard Dawkins clone (or a gay Richard Dawkins clone couple, why not?), you'd grow up constantly thinking to yourself "there must be more than this. There must be some consciousness controlling everything in the universe. Deep down I know there is." and at some point you'd seek out religion.
Now flip all that around and maybe you can understand those who are wired not to believe.
Not that this has much to do with your creationism, that's a separate issue where you can't separate the finite universe from your supposedly infinite spiritual world.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I think quite a few people are missing the point here. It's not, as I perceive it, about whether or not there is a personal God or not but the right to believe in the alternate viewpoint no matter how unfashionable.Where evolutionary theory is taught so should Creationism if only as an " alternate theory" to which all generations have the right of access.
Freedom of thought is the primary aim of an Aquarian Society, and it is only denied in Institutes of learning to maintain the power and reputation of the academics in positions of influence. Even where such matters are open to debate, the academic answer is always to simply ridicule and shout down the opposition as opposed to presenting a rational argument, for there simply can't be a rational argument that presents a single viewpoint. To argue otherwise is to pursue the logic of lunacy.
No-one is suggesting that Darwinism, or more correctly, Neo-Darwinism be removed from the educational curriculum but only that the alternative form of censorship by ridicule be removed from the equation.
Why should academics, scientists and politicians be so concerned about whether other people believe in God or not?
The only answer I can see is that it challenges these peoples attempts at people-shaping & mind-control.
As Lao-Tzu said
" To know the truth of any one thing one must compare it to it's opposite "
The above is only possible where the opposite is there to be considered for intelligent discussion and not simply dismissed by those who claim superior knowledge and in doing so assume they have superior rights of freedom of expression, over and above the common man.
Equality is an academic concept, but one they most often refuse to acknowledge also applies to freedom of speech and choice of belief.
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You misunderstand the word "theory", or at least the authors of those books do.
Evolution is a "theory", just as Gravitation is a theory.
A scientific "theory" is a network of scientific observations and predictions which support each other, and together form a well-informed, justified fact.
a layman's usage of the term "theory" is near equivalent of the scientist's "hypothesis", which in turn is near the laymens' "guess".
So, therefore the evolution should be seen as a fact.
If these books write "hypothesis" when talking about evolution they are wrong.
Those guys invent a lot of "science," no use getting huffy about it now. Since it's individuals instead of as-a-whole, I would like to suggest "think for yourself, asshole." If your only response to information that is a threat to your worldview is to flee it (or blow it up) perhaps you are doing something wrong. You wouldn't be here if you didn't accept "scientific method," so if it concerns you that much, how about devising an experiment to test it?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Even if your a University College London Professor.
Even though I do believe that Darwin was right, I'd still walk out on a Dawkins lecture. The man is a horse's ass.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
. . .they expect. That is all that school is about. It's not that you have to agree with 100% of what you're taught. It's that you have to show that you've learned it, understand it, and can regurgitate what they want.
In the end, most medical doctor's can be perfectly competent at practicing medicine even if they don't believe in evolution. So, just pass the class, move on, and go help people who need medical treatment.
This is something I think most conservative Christian students learned long ago (though you do still see the occasional protest from the religious-right students) - they cannot make you believe, they can only make you give them the answer they want.
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If you actually believe in the "multiverse" then you should have no problem with all decisions being made by using quantum random number generators. Please use a quantum coin toss to decide if you should kill yourself - each day. Rest assured that there is a universe somewhere where you are alive and happy...
If they don't want to learn, they have no business in modern medicine, nor old remedies neither (which some consider unholy).
just let them pray for a cure and see if god agree with them.
But the randomness is determined if one takes a deterministic assumption towards physics. So the use of the word "random" would just be convenient from a language perspective. Fix the subset by placing an assumption on the larger set. Sounds primarily like a language issue. Perhaps they should call the process chaotic, instead. Chaotic being "complex", not "without reason".
And to those that want to argue about how quantum mechanics disproves determinism as a philosophical stance (there are plenty of you out there) please be certain you have the differences down between randomness and uncertainty.
What day is it? Could you please tell me?
Why do they call a swan a swan, but a black one is call a "black swan"? Because the definition of "swan" is a white bird. One that happens to be black is so rare that it warrants the exceptional name "black swan". Now have you seen the striped, blue, and yellow varieties that also exist?
I don't think we should blame the religion for those who misinterpret it.
In the Tuskeegee experiments, they thought it was acceptable to put "inferior people" into scientific studies that endangered their lives.
Clearly, that's a misinterpretation of science. In the same way we do not blame science for this misinterpretation, we should not blame religion for those who choose to misinterpret it for their own benefit.
The Bible didn't talk about Newton's third law, quantum mechanics, special and general relativity, Maxwell's equations, etc, but that doesn't mean the features of the Universe these things describe don't exist.
God told Adam to look after God's creations and pay attention to them. Ignore God's creations at your own peril.
----------------------
Furthermore, if you don't believe in this science stuff because it's blasphemous, you're quite the hypocrite if you go 'round using the technology and medicine that science enables. Unplug your computer, telephone, and go live in a yurt.
--
BMO
The plan is working. Now, in a society where there are only two choices, good or evil, right or wrong, Democrat or Republican, the angry right wing Islamaphobes are doomed!!! Their followers will either have to accept that Muslims have very similar beliefs to their own or they will be forced to accept Darwinism!!! Who knows, maybe this will even lead to a cultural shift, where people realize that life is complex and isn't just black and white, but more of a gradient of colors. Nah, maybe it's wishful thinking - but either way, [evil villain grin] the planet will soon be ours!
"The article also reveals that Evolutionary Biologist and former Oxford Professor Richard Dawkins also experienced Muslims walking out of such lectures."
Hell, I'd walk out on Dawkins if he started lecturing on his "philosophy" (faith is a delusion, god doesn't exist, etc.) as opposed to the material at hand as should any other person who is even remotely interested in science, truth, etc.
Remember, just because you cloak yourself in the scientific method, truth, evidence, etc. doesn't mean you still aren't preaching from the pulpit. The sad part is that he is no different from the Women's literature professor who doles out A's for those who tow the line and say "men are bad". The irony is Dawkins spits in the face of science by espousing philosophy as truth. Hey, where have I heard that before?
In terms of damage to intellectualism, the search for truth, I'd take walking out a lecture before spitting in the face of science any day.
I'm not sure I would go so far as to say that a belief in causality is a religion. It sounds more like a fit thing to believe because it allows an organism to predict the future state of its environment and plan to exist and have reproduced in that future state and then take actions which, if successful, result in a future close enough for natural selection to pick organisms that believe in causality. This does not have to be a mental process. Viruses work because their shape causes them to replicate in other cells. From causality it is a straight road to science which is the practice of observing the effects of experiments to determine the nature of the causes that result in the observations.
This positivist interpretation of quantum mechanics in which the underlying dynamics are deterministic and our knowledge is only limited by "measurement uncertainty" is demonstrably incorrect: The wavefunction is a real physical object after all, say researchers
Why did I mean to say Evolution was an untested hypothesis? A theory is something which is satisfactorily tested or proven, but which may possibly be proven false should new evidence arise, even if the likelihood of that evidence arising is small. I would say that Evolution has been proven to a reasonable degree of satisfaction to qualify as a theory.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
This raises an interesting question: can a medical practitioner really be "perfectly competent" if he rejects some of the science underlying modern evolutionary biology?
Adaptation is something that happens all around us, all the time. It's been proven a million times, in a test tube or in natural settings.
Bacteria adapt to antibiotics, forcing us to reformulate our medicines. What would happen if a doctor believes that bacteria never evolve? Or that the patient is succumbing to an infection not because of resistant bacteria but because God wants him to die?
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
Fine. They can fail and stay the hell out of the medical field.
Technoli
Don't take the brainwashing, just because it's free.
There are more AMERICANS of Christian background that deliberately reject Darwin.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Make sure exam questions are weighted so these folks fail.
Simple.
First and foremost, The simple gist of "Creation" is that around 5,000 years ago God created Earth, the Sun, everything around, and then created Adam, then created Eve from Adam's rib. Then Eve ate the apple from the tree of knowledge and got them both kicked out of the garden of Eden.
What you describe is Young Earth Creationism. Even in U.S., most adherents believe in Old Earth (i.e. non-literal "creation days"), and do not dispute the scientifically established age of Earth.
Of course! I would!
As a Muslim, it would sadden me that you don't believe Creation by God (and by proxy, *in* God), but I can only present a good example from me to convince you, it would be the height of Folly to assume you don't have the right to believe in Evolution, just like you have the right to believe in creation by *several* Gods, or whatever.
Kindly don't confuse the issue, I am not saying the Students should NOT study evolution, merely that they should have the right to maintain their belief in being created by God.
I am an ACCA student. Got a query on Accountancy/Finance? Maybe I can help!
If someone's been shot, I think a doctor can sew them up and give them a blood transfusion and antibiotics, etc, without believing in evolution. It's also possible to believe in micro-evolution (small changes within a species - e.g. a bacteria developing drug resistance), without believing that evolution is responsible for the origin of species.
Also, it really doesn't seem like it would matter what you believe regarding the origin of species for most "conventional" medicine, but it might be more important if you are a "research" doctor researching new diseases and possible treatments. For a family practitioner, surgeon, etc, it doesn't seem like it would matter that much.
As for the example of, "the patient is succumbing to an infection not because of resistant bacteria but because God wants him to die?", I think it's a pretty big leap to assume that someone who believes that God created life would just assume God wants you to die if a bacteria is drug resistant. I'm not saying it would *never* happen, but I just don't think the sort of people who are drawn to study and practice medicine, regardless of their views on origin of species, would in general ever tend towards such a view. You might get one doctor somewhere that develops such a view, but I suspect it would be an anomaly, not the norm.
Recently I started to read the Qur'an and the surprising thing for me is just how Jewish friendly it seems to be in many places, calling them the people of the book and telling Muslims not to make war with them (the story of Moses meeting pharaoh is repeated about 300 times). It also seems to be Christian friendly assuming that the Christians aren't orthodox and deny the Trinity (Jesus isn't God and God didn't take a son is repeated about every 10 pages), but since that eliminates the majority of the world's christians its far more anti-christian than anti-Semitic. I guess ignorance is better when you hate another race.
Religion is not God, and God did not create religion. Religion was created by man, which is why it's far from perfect, and sometimes espouses contradictory, and often stupid things.
I was raised to be a Christian, and I do believe in God, and I do believe God created everything. However, I am also an engineer, and I've studied enough physics and chemistry to not be totally ignorant. I also know that there is a lot more that I don't know than I do know. Therefore it would be stupid of me to pretend to have all the answers, or be right on everything (or maybe even anything).
What God did, or how God did it, I have no clue. And neither does anyone else, I think. But we can, and do observe the results in the universe around us.
Here's how I see it. Neither religion (choose your flavor) nor science has all the answers. I think science is how we attempt to understand what God did and how it all works. The longer we pursue science, the more we figure out. The pursuit of that knowledge is very worthwhile, and so far, humankind is better off for having learned what we have. The biggest problem is that right now, there is a lot more that we don't know, than we do know. So we should continue working at it, and learning as we go. Hopefully we don't blow ourselves up along the way.
I really liked the analogy about us being infants in the huge library. That seems quite fitting.
Peoples and cultures that don't "believe" in the real world, nor operate based on empirical evidence, will be natually selected out... eventually. Unfortunately Darwinian selection can take a long time, and in the mean time, they can do a lot of damage...
A society or civilization that doesn't use the scientific method to guide its development won't survive the long haul... unfortunately in the US, with science education and career development at an all time low, science funding being slashed, and creationist museums and textbooks springing up, the US may also suffer the same fate. Certainly the Chinese have a keen appreciation for science and are playing out their role in natural selection...
I will avoid Muslim doctors at every opportunity.
If they don't even want to consider that the Earth MAY have been created by a random and dynamic process rather than by a deity, then they have no place in the scientific community where proof exists that Earth WAS created by a random and dynamic process. Clinging to religious dogma is what keeps the Human Race from advancing. Proof is right there.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
I guess it explains away the muslim invasions and conquests and forcible conversions (done in many various ways) etc of the time (700 - 1500AD or thereabouts).
It matters if you're trying to use empiricism to prove the existence of an all-powerful, all-knowing entity. It doesn't work that way. Our scientific method assumes that the world is ordered according to immutable laws. An all-powerful, all-knowing entity escapes that model. Note that this has no bearing on whether the models are useful to our daily lives. They might all fail one day, but until they do, they are useful.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
For US readers who might not know about the Daily Mail I'll just leave this here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eBT6OSr1TI
Please don't post links to Daily Mail "news".
Cheers,
Jeremy.
Nice red herring and avoidance of biblical teaching, when the bible proves your liberal view of religion wrong, pull up a red herring. Religion has always been superstition, filth and lies for the most basest of minds.
For the record I'm not religious but was raised religious so I know all the in's and outs of apologetics of the fundies and the liberal religious folk alike. You're all just incredibly stpid.
well, if in your mind I merit comparison to the late great Stephen Jay Gould in the content of my thoughts, I am nothing but flattered, thank you! I'm not being facetious
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
There are plenty of documented, "Well, I'm buggered, the cancer is gone and we don't know why" incidents. So to say there are no observed "miracles" is bollocks.
I am guessing that they didn't even bother taking a World Religions class. They would apparently only be able to attend like 1 week of the whole term.
I can only present a good example from me to convince you
Whereas scientists have mountains of evidence.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
By the way, thanks for that story about Biology in Pakistan. I will probably never travel there, and it is posts like that help me understand the culture.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Listen, we do not care what you think it should or should not be, you signed up for the course, and the course teaches that. END OF STORY!
If you do not like it, then do not sign up.....idiots!
Do i go to a muslem class and complain about the fact that there is no evolution being taught, no, that would be stupid....
My god they are getting on my nerves... (by my god, I meant the not so muslem one...)
Here it is.
You may be irreligious, but it's clear that someone broke your brain back there. :-(
>assuming I'm religious
Nope, I'm a teapot spotter.
--
BMO
If the students have so little understanding of the subject, then they should be awarded 'F' grades.
That is not true. The golden age of the arabs came about long after Islam.
I'm not saying that religious zealots can't be harmful to science. Thinking you know all the important answers is definitely harmful to curiosity and science. But, just as the european renaissance came about long after christianity, the arab golden age came about long after Islam.
Don't try to frighten us with your sorcerer's ways, Lord Vader. [Vader walks toward Motti, then slowly raises his hand] Your sad devotion to that ancient religion has not helped you conjure up the stolen data tapes [begins to sound strained] or given you clairvoyance enough to find the Rebels' hidden fort- [grasps his throat as if he is being choked]
[laughs] Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid.
Personally my favorite is the Robot Chicken where the Empire fleet officers pretend that Vader actually had the ability to force choke people.
You show me a religion that can force choke, has telekinesis, and the ability to shoot lightning out of my hands and I'll be the first to sign up.
These ones with no proof and lots of faith, not so much.
Not in my lifetime, not in yours. Religion is a human-made tool used to control the masses. Thousand of years of religious dogma and not a shred of proof, but religious idiots won't acknowledge scientific evidence as proof. Can't kill them, can't join them, too bad we can't kill them.
Zero for attendance that day.
Zero for that section on the exam.
It's their right to be intransigent idiots, but it should cost them.
That is an 'explanation' that science uses when they run into something that is 'spiritual'. Science, as we know it, is always in the shadow of the GODS. In ancient Egyptian times Spirit and Science were never separate, thus we had heaven on earth in times of the Pharaoh. Anywho... Peace and blessings to you all!! 'Till all are ONE. Black 2 Africa.
I agree with you that science has no right to answer transcendental questions, and no ability to do so. Conversely, it has the right and the ability to answer technical and mechanical questions.
I also agree with you that religion has no right to answer technical and mechanical questions, and no ability to do so. However, I would say that religion has no right to answer transcendental questions either, nor the slightest ability to do so.
Basically, science answers technical questions about the inner workings of the universe. Religion answers... nothing whatsoever. I mean, sure, it tries, but religion is just as competent on moral or transcendental questions as it is on scientific questions. That is, it is not competent at all. Science and religion don't overlap because religion is the goddamn empty set.
To all those who like to attribute to all Christians the extremist anti-science that perhaps 10% of us US Christians believe, please stop that. The result of such misleading is that you wind up with page upon page of people who know no better writing the same tired how-stupid-can-they-be responses. This thread is a perfect example of that. I do agree that fear of the bible being wrong - and the concomitant possibility of their being no God - is the motivator behind most of the extremism. It is the same fear as in the day of Galileo. I would like to give the example because it highlights the root of most of the nonsense. If the earth rotated around the sun, it meant that the earth was not the center of God's creation, and hence neither was man, which seemed quite logical. That seemed against the grain of the bible. Christians knew from personal experiences with God that He did indeed exist. The possibility of the bible being wrong therefore did not seem plausible, hence science must be wrong. The particular topics of today might be different, such as evolution, but the intransigence of some Christians to not look at evolution has the same root. Fear of confusion about God. There are a much larger number of Christians who have doubts about evolution because they are not educated about it, and they are not interested enough in the subject find out about it. That is not whacky. That is simply a matter of having more to do in their lives. The mechanism God used to bring us into being is something they are simply not interested in. As a fundamentalist Christian (read: not a word-by-word literalist), I felt the need to read up on it in the last few years only because it seemed just a little too important to a few of my brethren. I was not stupid before I became educated about evolution. Nor was I fearful that it might be true. I simply did not care. There is probably an even larger number of Christians who believe that evolution is true without reading up on it. I do not know if the great majority of people, atheists included, take the time to read up on such things, but I tend to doubt it. In any case, those Christians, too, have had personal experiences with God, and they also read the bible. They also hear science accepting evolution. These Christians see no conflict, so they accept it, too. One very big problem is some of the Christian literalists that throw up convincing but bogus science about evolution. They, like the authors of most of the posts/responses in this thread, start with untrue assumptions about what most of the "other side" believes, and then spends page after page showing how whacky the original assumptions are. I have to wonder if the same thing is happening in the Muslim world.
Is the class required for the degree?
If so, and they don't attend, or at least cannot answer the questions on the tests properly (as expected by the professor), then don't give them a degree. Simple as that.
Actually I wasn't raised religious whatsoever. Infact I rarely thought about God and religion until I was 16. Most atheists I've spoken to however say the opposite (to the former not the latter), that they were raised in a religious environment (typically catholic). Looks like if i want my future children to be christian I'll have to raise them to be atheists.
People need to harden the f-ck up, it is life, you will encounter things you disagree with or that offend you. but you still need to fucking deal with them
"This does not have something to do with the religion. It has something to do with a strange interpretation of the text."
I submit that religion = a strange interpretation of a text.
Look my brain isn't broken you should learn about how limited your own mind is first:
http://bit.ly/dYaWUc
The fact that I can even post this is more then enough that I've done the research into my own thought processes and have a good understanding of how limited your mind really is.
You don't think based on reason or rationality, you are a creature of emotion and sentiment and sentiments are easily turned into justifications for self delusion. Human beings are people of their age and their background. It's highly unlikely you came to your opinion after much study and toil, rather you are emotionally transfixed to your narrow point of view because you are too in experienced to make sound judgement of what I have said.
If Heisenberg was right when he said the Universe is "not only stranger than we think but stranger than we can think" then perhaps all these religious 'whack-nut-jobs' are simply looking at something they have no way of understanding. That their interpretation makes no sense does not mean that what they are looking at makes no sense; nor that it doesn't exist. We shouldn't mock a tadpole for not being able to explain how the sun works, even though it can presumably see it.
Let them continue to stick their heads in the sand and fall further behind the rest of the world.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
But ... he argues for liberal and progressive thought.
His whole wikipedia page is full of examples.
He says some things are wrong with it (that liberals have let the conservatives steer the argument through language) but he's never argued against rationality.
--
BMO
Let them live in the stone age.
However, if you've tried to use empiricism to prove the existence of God, you'd run into the small little hick up that in the past 75,000 years of so that humans have had some form of religion, not a single piece of empirical evidence has been found to bolster your argument that there is a god. Applying empiricism to god (or God, or gods) results in THE blanket result of: there isn't one, period.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
"But ... he argues for liberal and progressive thought."
Which has nothing to do with the fact that human reasoning is not literal, it does not 'fit the world'. This is a scientific fact that you cannot deny. I did not link to that video for his politics, rather his science - which is accurate. My point being is that all human beings are terribly unaware of how bad their minds really are at thinking and perceiving the world as it is and that the truth is hard beyond the low hanging fruit.
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
Christianity: Sadly sstuck in second in the struggle to be the world's worst religion.
Play Command HQ online
why Muslims and Evangelical Christians DON'T get along better...I really don't.
"Don't be a martyr -- BE THE ONE WHO GOT AWAY!"
I know I don't want a doctor who is so closed minded as to not even attend a class on evolution. These radical rednecks are real displays of just how insane one can become when trying to conform to some arbitrary religious belief system.
There is no non-PC way to put this. Muslims in any significant numbers in the West, means science simply ends. You can have Muslims, in the West, using their usual methods of Jihad to express themselves: shooting people (Maj. Nidal Hassan), blowing people up (the 7/7 and 7/14 bombers), and flying planes into buildings, not just about the usual stuff Muslims don't like and won't tolerate (even or especially in the West): Beer, other booze, dogs, unveiled women, music, and such.
That also includes SCIENCE. It is an article of faith among Muslims, indeed all Muslims believe this (otherwise they are not Muslims) that Allah can change reality at his whim and will. If Allah wants everyone to be idolators, or cannibals, then everyone will be so. If Allah wants gravity to cease to exist, it will cease to exist. All Muslims believe this, though of course Muslims are known for Taqiya, that is lying to advance their religion.
This is exactly the flipside of what generated the Jihad against the Pope and led to murders of nuns and priests by Muslims. Benedict argued (before becoming Pope, as Cardinal Ratzinger) that there was no point in doing interfaith dialogue with Muslims because unlike other Christians, and Jews, and Bahai, Muslims believe Allah is entirely capricious, makes up the reality of the universe as he goes along, on whims, and does not have love for humanity and is not himself bound by reason (even if that reason is not comprehensible to humanity). Thus, there was no even broad agreement possible between Christians and Muslims, since they disagree profoundly on the very nature of the universe and God. Muslims of course being Muslims, they reacted with rage and murder to this obscure theological lecture from 1998 being publicized (done in German in the original, it attracted little comment at the time).
I don't mind Muslims being Muslims in their own lands, if they wish to behead each other, stone women to death, hang teen prostitutes and gays, molest young boys (as in Afghanistan) and kill any who convert from Islam, that's their business in their own lands. Since they don't behave themselves or act in accordance with our rules, in our lands, I say expel them.
Slashdotters are naive and PC-bound if they think they have any other choice. You can either have science, a robust one (no one believes in Christianity, just look at how many Muslims kill for their beliefs and how no Christian does for theirs) and no Muslims, or whole areas of science forbidden by violent actions by Muslims, which means in reality no science since its always easier to simply give in to Muslim violence than to fight them. You want bio-science that can cure that cancer you might get at age 75? You better kick out Muslims. Because otherwise they'll forbid your governments from allowing it, by blowing stuff up or shooting people.
I can sense a shift again from science to religion. I'm not sure what it is these days, but religion and science is clashing more and more, and I feel that religion is winning.
It isn't: it shows an utter lack of insight into human thinking processes. Because you're an engineer, you simply feel able to dismiss whole realms of human experience as "crazy shit". This is flamebait for you to get your friends to moderate: Have you thought for a moment that the biggest societies run by engineers were the former Soviet Union and the current Chinese dictatorship? Have you thought about why? Because engineers tend to reject all what they see as pink fluffy cloud thinking and pointless arguments about the difference between "what works" (for some value of works) and "proof". The amazing thing is that you are able to sit there in Montana writing this stuff because of a lot of people who had degrees in humanities.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
hahahaha, you can't see gravity either but its there and i bet you believe it. If you can't accept proof then you need to start doing a bit more research to gain an understanding. Once you begin to gain an understanding then you will know its easier to acknowledge evolution than it is to believe in a god ordained world - i mean , who created God to have such powers? and then in turn who created the being that created god etc etc etc
"Personally I think anyone who doesn't believe in evolution is a total f*cking idiot." - there i just fixed that for you...
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
As I understand now the situation was rather more complicated, in that even before Luther it was not uncommon for lay people to read the Bible, either by themselves or in groups. The Catholic church did not particularly mind, provided the conclusions reached and promulgated were in line with orthodox thinking.
So there most certainly is this proviso, and people were not at liberty to interpret the Bible if that led to deviation from orthodox doctrine, let alone open contradiction of the authority of the Catholic church. That would (as is amply described in popular literature) lead to attention from the authorities, with the Inquisition as the final authority.
So in that (rather more limited) respect my negative comments on the Catholic church stand.
I could be mistaken, but after the rise of the Abbasid Empire in what is called nowadays Iraq, science flourished a period of time
Nothing happens in a vacuum.
What happened in the Islamic world at that time - in your own word, science flourished" - coincide with the black death plague of Europe.
If Europe wasn't plagued by the black death, the Islamic world wouldn't have the opportunity to see any of their science/math flourish at all
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
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I'm not a huge fan of religion or religious beliefs.... but maybe he discounted the concept that the god as the bible thumpers know him is different. Maybe he saw god as something far bigger and greater... possibly someone/thing responsible for the big bang and evolution itself. If you look at it from that perspective and suggest that he doesn't play dice then the laws of physics and theories of quantum mechanics can been seen as designed by divinity as they should all be explainable by suggesting that this god created these concepts when he created the laws of the universe.
If anything, this argument which constantly is used by the bible thumpers to say that even one of the greatest scientific minds in known human history agreed with them as opposed to us. I'd prefer to believe that he perceived the bible as a book of rules meant to keep a desert dwelling race with no education from killing themselves off and instead saw the universe and what we can perceive from scientific study as the work of something greater.
I don't believe in a god or any other divine being. I don't believe in a heaven, hell spirit or afterlife. I do however think that if you must believe in a god of such greatness, at least give him his due and admit that maybe an eternal being of infinite greatness could have spent a few billion years making something that is supposedly his masterpiece as opposed to slapping some shit together in 7 days to support the lives of a few billion specs of dust.
a Mexican pretending to be Philipino!
"Religion was born when the first con man met the first fool." --Mark Twain
Slashdot = Sarcasm
The others will shurely follow... (typo was deliberate)
Credible science requires definitive proof. Until we know every detail of how this universe works, we will not have ruled out religion. For this reason, it is best if science does not pass judgment on the matter or make itself an enemy of religion.
If we were to create a science-versus-religion dichotomy, we would be following the same path these religious fundamentalists in the article did by suggesting a religion-versus-science dichotomy. Both, which are one and the same, are false.
I'm sure you know this, but I can't let it go because other people might come along and read it: Newton wasn't wrong.
Well, not entirely wrong.
Newton's laws of gravity and motion still work very, very well. If you attempt to calculate the trajectory of a ball in a gravity field given a certain force acting on it, Newton's laws are the ones that you'll use. They're also the ones that will work.
Einstein's work didn't invalidate Newton so much as recontextualize where it was appropriate to use his laws to make predictions. But F=ma continues to function just as well as it did before Einstein said anything in 99% of the applications that are relevant to us.
There's plenty of very widely published empirical evidence bolstering arguments that there is a God, I can think of a couple of huge tomes full. When I was in Uppsala Cathedral last week, I even saw with my own eyes the fingernail of St. Bogosius - it doesn't get more real than that.
(And before you reply, reread the above, and make sure you've understood what I've written, and why.)
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
Anyone who's on training to become a doctor, and refuses to do important parts of the studies, should simply be barred from graduation.
I would not like to be treated, less operated on, by some doctor that skipped classes and got away with it, simply because it suited them.
It just tells me that they are not fit for their chosen career, and this goes for anyone, regardless of what ideas they may have.
It's like saying an IT person going for a MCSE qualification should be allowe to skip the classes and still get full score, because they don't like MS.
Evolution theory may not be the most important subject, but it is certainly important in relation to hereditary diseases, and if we allow this, what's next that is to be skipped because someone doesn't like it?
Show me solid evidence for evolution. God wasn't created, he has always existed, there has never been a moment when he didn't exist, not ever.
Yeah, I know.
But I didn't want to add too much more to the body of the post, or saddle it with footnotes which would have detracted from the ending.
On the other hand, I couldn't think of a better example to use. Except maybe the curvature of the Earth, but that'd feel like ripping off Asimov's "The Relativity of Wrong" essay. Any suggestions on a better example I could use next time? (Because it's not like posts like the GGPs aren't going to come up again)
Why doesn't the gene pool have a life guard?
It's an interesting question.
Most bad science doesn't really persist for long. So once we entered the real scientific era, concepts tended to be good, but too simplistic. So the model of the atom hasn't really been wrong for decades, just imprecise. Similarly with models of the solar system. Basically correct, but not so wrong that they were unworkable.
Really, I think maybe it's just better to point out that the scientific method tends not to entirely invalidate old systems, but make them better and more complete, and the 'failure' of old systems is mainly imprecision. That's certainly the case in terms of Newton, or the Bohr-Rutherford atom, or most of evolutionary biology. I honestly can't remember the last time anyone had a theory that held sway for a long time but then was proved abjectly wrong under further analysis.
Fools on the left have been trying to repackage 1500 years of Islamic bloodshed and intolerance as "a peaceful religion" while warning everyone that Christians are the real threat. The bigoted hypocrisy of these politically correct cranks is exceeded only by their sheer stupidity.
Those who've made a religion of Darwin are guilty of their own irrational fanaticism, acting as creepy as Apple's mindless iGoons who worship at the altar of Steve Jobs.
Christians refusing to march in the secular goose-step don't issue Fatwas against their opponents, so it would be great to watch all the pushy "marriage equality" nut jobs go one-on-one with Terhan's unhinged street thugs. Better yet, let pseudo-intellectuals on the left and their barbarian counterparts in the Middle Eastern both push each other off the cliff.
I don't want to be treated by a doctor whose religious beliefs, no matter what they are, are so much more powerful than their ability to reason that they walk out of a an evolution lecture. These are people who are entering an evidence based discipline, and a bigot (yes, I use the word correctly) has no place in such a field. I don't think it's unreasonable to ask your doctor their thoughts on evolution, refusing their services and branding them 'mental pigmies' based on their response, irrespective of their religious beliefs or lack thereof. But then, I don't live in the US nor the middle east, so I can afford to do that.
Subject says it all.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
A great scientist; and flat-out wrong about religion.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
The deeper question is why are religious people so scared by the theory that we might have just been randomly created? Perhaps the all-powerful-one(s) just wanted to see what would happen if they tossed a bunch of physics rules together and applied them to a bunch of particles... "Oooo, look! Life!" Does the random creation of life make it less meaningful? Ask that question to parents that had an unplanned pregnancy (you know who you are). They still value their children despite being unplanned and their children understand their parents love. (sorry, getting all sentimental now...need a moment) So the point is: Grow up and stop being so self-defensive about being unplanned. You're still special and unique...just like everyone else. ;)
--
Luck is just skill you didn't know you had.
if they are going to try to foist off all their beliefs on us. then I say, boycott them: their stores, their offices, everything.
until they act like real human beings.
its one thing to believe something, and excuse yourself from something you don't believe is right. its another thing entirely to go off the deep end. whats next? changing the constitution?
I don't think enough has been said about the anti-western politics implicit in this boycott. (Of course, any boycott tends to have political implications.) Here we have some fine intelligent minds from a non-western culture, and although they are in the modern world and use its technology they have a very different idea of what cultural ideal should prevail.
As food for thought I am going to quote a paragraph from the latest Mark Steyn column, "Egypt's Descent":
"Since the collapse of the Warsaw Pact two decades ago we have lived in a supposedly “unipolar” world. Yet somehow it doesn’t seem like that, does it? The term “Facebook Revolution” presumes that technology marches in the cause of modernity. But in Khartoum a few years ago a citywide panic that shaking hands with infidels caused your penis to vanish was spread by text messaging. In London, young Muslim men used their cellphones to share Islamist snuff videos of Westerners being beheaded in Iraq. In les banlieues of France, satellite TV and the Internet enable third-generation Muslims to lead ever more disassimilated, segregated lives, immersed in an electronic pan-Islamic culture, to a degree that would have been impossible for their grandparents. To assume that Western technology in and of itself advances the cause of Western views on liberty or women’s rights or gay rights is delusional."
1) I don't see why a professor can't tell their fundamentalist students that just because a process looks random to us, doesn't mean a supernatural omnipotent being might not be pulling strings behind the scenes... can't be disproven (and isn't science) but might keep them in class. 2) My favorite story about Islam and science is from a conference on nuclear physics in Pakistan in the 80's - they had a talk about the role ifrits played in nuclear fission. Why not! Jinn and ifrits might lie behind all phenomena!