Do not take it personally, but here it goes: What does happen when scientific evidence contradicts something you believe in? Religious "zealots" simply discard any evidence, faith should be preserved at all costs, because it has SO MANY implications in how they conduct their lives. For me, if new evidence comes up that contradict my previous beliefs, I simply adapt my beliefs.
The problem with religion is that it tries to mess with all of your life.
The point is that there are only a few things that I have any kind of certain knowledge of based on my religious convictions, and none of them have to do with the mechanics of the universe. But let's look at an example. I'm a Mormon, and we believe in the Book of Mormon as a volume of scripture that contains an account of actual people who lived somewhere in the Americas between about 2,000 BC and 400 AD. People have many times made archaeological discoveries that seem to contradict certain accounts in the Book of Mormon. But I know that archaeology is an imperfect and inexact science. Every one of those discoveries that I've seen was ultimately adjusted or brought into question as new evidence came to light. None of them made me feel the need to deny the Book of Mormon, because my belief in that Book is not based on archaeological evidence, it's based on my personal experience with the book itself. On the other hand, there is a great deal of Mormon tradition that gets built up around the Book of Mormon, including the belief (still popular in some circles) that the people of the Book of Mormon ranged all over North and South America, and were the principal ancestors of all native Americans on both continents. That idea has been widely discredited based on finding genetic markers that tie North American natives to Mongol ancestors rather than near eastern ancestors. I was never really on board with the idea anyway. I personally favor the theory that they lived in a small area of the Yucatan. But that belief is subject to adjustment as additional evidence comes to light.
I am not a deist, and of course only you can judge whether my beliefs are offensive to you. But if what you consider non offensive is a vague belief in Good without structure or sacraments, then I most certainly am not that person. I'm a Mormon, and we have very specific beliefs about God, as well as well-defined ordinances. In sure you've heard that we hate gays, but I can tell you that I do not. In fact I have some very dear gay friends. If anything, my belief that we are all literally children of God ennobles my fellow men to me. It leads me to view them as more than mere mortal men rather than as subhuman. We are rather unique in believing that we humans are literally of the same species as God, and that we can essentially "grow up" to be like him. We do not believe that commandments are some kind of arbitrary game that God plays to mess with us or be Asus he delights in torturing us. They are rather his loving directions for how to realize our phenomenal potential. We believe in marriage between man and woman because we believe that is how God's race is ultimately propagated, just as it is how we propagate in mortality. But the church has also spoken publicly in support of anti-discrimination laws in favor of gays. As for the point in believing in God, you may as well ask me what is the point in believing in my dad instead of believing that I spontaneously spring from a swamp. I believe that my dad is my dad be because he is. It's not something that I debate with people. This is not a matter of theory. It is based on a deeply personal and ongoing relationship. If you want a reproducible experiment, I'm happy to provide you with one, but I have meet very few people willing to carry through with it.
Did you hear that? That was the sound of millions of religious zealots pressing their palms harder against their ears and screaming LA LA LA even louder.
I'll bite. I'm sure you'd consider me a "religious zealot." I believe in God. I believe in the Bible for what it is---a religious text that has suffered at the hands of multiple translations, compilations, and shenanigans, but that still has managed to retain the essential doctrines of man's relationship to God. It is not, and was never intended to be, a scientific text. The account in Genesis merely says that in six "days" (the original Hebrew word means "time periods") God instructed that the earth should be created, and that this creation was carried out through some unspecified agency. I don't believe God has thrown in CMB and dinosaur bones to deceive us, because I believe that he is a God of truth. My faith certainly doesn't drive me to deny science, because science is (or at least should be) ultimately a search for truth, and all truth brings us closer to the God of truth. The Bible is an excellent spiritual resource that has enhanced my relationship with God, but it tells me very little about physics, engineering, and biology.
So please tell me how your faith---which I assume dictates that the universe is a convenient sequence of coincidences, each individually of staggering improbability, and all of them taken together forming something at least as incomprehensible as the most convoluted beliefs about God---is inherently more reasonable than my faith, which is that there is a creative genius operating in all the majesty of creation.
Both are semi-automatic rifles; the difference is that the carbine fires a much lower-powered bullet than the rifle. I don't see that as much of a difference in committing a crime.
There are many, many differences between an M1 Garand and an M1 carbine. The Garand is larger and heavier. The carbine shoots a less powerful round, but has a larger magazine. It was designed specifically for soldiers who wanted a lighter rifle than the M1, like paratroopers and radio specialists. They have something like one butt plate screw in common. The fact that an M1 carbine was used in a crime once 50 years ago---and granted, it was a truly horrific crime---hardly seems like a compelling case for banning the import of a completely different weapon that happens to have a similar name.
I have an M-1 garand that has a 20 round magazine. Later variants had an external magazine with a very small kit to add the capability.
Also if you are deranged, you can remove the nice wooden stock and install composite scary looking parts to make an M-1 look like a modern rifle. Problem is only a complete deranged fool would do such a thing and destroy the value of the rifle.
Is that the.308 variant? I've never seen an extended mag for the.30-06. A.308 with a 20-round mag is basically an M-14 (minus selective fire). And you're right, only a deranged moron would jack up an M1 by putting a black composite stock on it. That would be like letting your kid fingerpaint over an original Rembrandt.
Well, we're reaching WAY back here, but according to Wikipedia, he used an M-1 carbine, which may as well be an M1911 for all the similarity it has to an M-1 Garand.
I use the liberal definition. It's scary and black.
Dude, you're behind the times. Barrack Obama issued an executive order to stop the unthinkable practice of importing scary assault weapons from scary foreign places to be sold to American citizens. What he meant was he stopped the re-importation of American-manufactured M-1 rifles that were shipped to allies overseas and were then being sent back to the CMP for sale to American citizens. M-1s are brown and have no pistol grip. The internal magazine accommodates 7 rounds, plus one in the chamber. And as you probably know, they have been involved in approximately 0% of shooting rampages by disturbed people. Gotta keep those bad boys off the streets.
some newspapers were getting the records and publishing maps of the houses of permit holders
I've never understood the logic of this kind of "retribution." Granted, it's done with malice, so that's bad. But what, a bunch of unarmed anti-gun hippies are going to attack the homes of people they know have guns and are serious enough to get a license to carry one at all times? If anything, this seems like a list of "houses not to hit" for potential burglars. "Okay, we know not to go to that house, because if we do, we're gonna get shot. Let's hit the home of his hippie neighbor who posted a retribution list of concealed carry licensees. He's sure to be unarmed."
You know and I know that it's impossible to prove that a database has stopped any instance of someone shooting up a school. But it logically follows that a database can identify someone who is a felon, mentally unstable, has a PFA against them, etc. It raises the barrier and makes it more difficult for any of these people to get a weapon. Could they get one elsewhere? If they tried hard enough, probably. It's likely it has stopped several mass violence events by at least stopping some of the less motivated potential mass killers, the low hanging fruit. But using the logic behind your often cited argument, we should just have gun and ammo stands outside schools, because, hey, these people are going to get a weapon somehow and shoot up a school, right?
You seem to be confusing the database for background checks, which most certainly does exist, and which is run on me whenever I purchase a gun, with a national gun registry. The former may be reasonably expected to prevent gun violence at some level, and most gun rights advocates that I know don't object to it. The latter has no logical relation to preventing gun violence, but every possible relation to confiscating guns from law-abiding citizens.
You really think the courts are not corrupt? They will just rubber stamp whatever their federal masters want, and suppress what they don't. Violate that gag order that they slap on you and do federal hard time, so after you get buttreamed in court you can't even complain.
You are confused. U.S. Federal judges are probably the most independent political actors in the history of the world. It is literally unconstitutional to fire them or even reduce their pay without impeaching and convicting them, which has happened something like twice in almost 240 years. They don't have to kowtow to corporate overlords, because they don't stand for election. Once you get a federal judicial appointment, you are set for life. Sure, you might have aspirations to sit on one of the courts of appeals, or even go up one more level to the Supreme Court, so you may be trying to impress the other guys for that. But if you don't toe the line, nobody can "ruin" you with a public smear campaign or bury your career with allegations and innuendo. The worst that can happen to you is that you're "stuck" as a federal district judge, with a guaranteed salary of about $175,000 for life, and a little kingdom where your word is literally law. Federal judges are, by design, exempt from the political process. They are little gods in their courtrooms. They are entirely free to give the other two branches the finger any time they please.
That led to his next inquiry: If current could turn off regions of the brain making people temporarily math-challenged, could a different type of stimulation improve math performance?
Here's one. What's the long-term effect of using TCMS during development? Strengthening of the affected areas or weakening thereof / dependency on the stimulation?
I believe the Walt Disney Company explored these issues extensively in their excellent documentary on the subject.
Majority of Young American Adults Think a Comma is Nike's "Swoosh" Symbol.
To keep it on topic... "Majority of Young American Adults Think a Comet is the thing you use instead of a period."
I'd say the problem is most likely that they don't know that "astrology" and "astronomy" are different things. "Astrology? Yeah, that's those dudes who study stars, right? Yeah, that's real science."
Assembly language was originally considered automatic programming.
I can't believe you made this point without linking to the legendary story of Mel. Here is a story where simply getting the punchline requires an order of magnitude more understanding than the poster manifests. Tell me how to use an integer overflow to bound a loop in LabView, and I'll believe that graphical programming is the wave of the future.
HP is doing fine, except for being strapped with the stupid names "Agilent" and "Keysight." But that beached whale corpse of a mediocre PC vendor that they wisely dumped has been in a nosedive since day one.
A strawman? Do you mean the character that has a diploma but no brain? Yes, it is rather apt. Perhaps you're not he in real life; I don't know you personally. It's possible you only play him on Slashdot. All I have to work from is what you've said here. And here on Slashdot, your line of argument consists entirely of four ad hominem attacks, two of which are directed at my charitable contributions (huh?), and one of which you lobbed, ironically, to accuse me of having a persecution complex. All because I criticized not evolutionary science itself, but the didactic and unimaginative way that we teach it. If your purpose was to caricature the insecure, hypersensitive, militant fundamentalist secular humanist (who is essentially the same person as the insecure, hypersensitive, militant fundamentalist Christian), you have done an admirable job.
I didn't even take biology in school and I know that you are misrepresenting it.
Just---wow. Your didactic, "us vs. them" attitude is exactly what is broken with our society, from local politics to global conflicts. You (blindly) believe in "Science," so anybody who believes in God, by definition, does not. Anybody who is not exactly like you is automatically the Enemy, is clearly motivated by personal animus against you individually, and must be attacked at all costs, with disinformation and outright lies if necessary, even as you admit your own ignorance. You are exactly what I was talking about. You are the problem. "Evolution" is so sacrosanct to you that anybody who dares to suggest that it has limitations as a theory---even somebody who at the same time says it's the best theory we have available right now---is a heretic and should be stoned. If everybody thought like you, we would still be teaching that the universe revolves around the earth, because the Bible obviously says so, and to even examine the question further is tantamount to blasphemy. Have you even read On the Origin of Species, or do you just blindly worship Darwin based on what somebody else told you, like the many Christians who blindly worship God based on what somebody told them the Bible says?
wants lots of members with money but conveniently thinks Jesus hates poor people
I know, look how muchwe hate poor people. Your research skills are not a credit to you. And since you have appointed yourself the judge of 15 million people's charitable tendencies, I'm curious, how much did you personally give to charity last year?
Evolution is observed by microbiologists and others every day.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure I said that. I was talking about the untestable "theory" that kids leave their biology classes believing, namely that there is a clean, clear, indisputable line from the Big Bang to earth to proteins to abiogenesis to multi-celled water-based life to apes to humans, and it's all part of a single, well-tested formula that cannot be questioned or examined.
As far as what motivates me, I'm Mormon. I believe in God. I also believe that "evolution" (such as it is) is the best theory we have for how different species arise. My brother, who is also Mormon, got a Masters in Evolutionary Biology at the very-Mormon BYU. His thesis was all about mutating viruses to make them do useful things like form pharmaceutical compounds. He now teaches high school biology in a small Texas town and wants to slap the dumb kids who say, "Can I skip the chapter on evolution, because I don't believe in it?" I'm not attacking evolution, though you seem to think that any acknowledgement of its limitations is tantamount to an attack. My point is that many science teachers teach it as though it is some kind of fixed, unalterable Truth, which is just as destructive to inquiry as teaching kids "Don't ask questions or you're going to hell." My faith does not willfully blind me to inquiry and investigation. Why should my scientific education do so?
Really, this is a criticism of the education system as a whole. It's about regurgitating some official policy line doled out by teachers. It has very little to do with meaningful learning.
Slashdot Mirror
Do not take it personally, but here it goes: What does happen when scientific evidence contradicts something you believe in? Religious "zealots" simply discard any evidence, faith should be preserved at all costs, because it has SO MANY implications in how they conduct their lives. For me, if new evidence comes up that contradict my previous beliefs, I simply adapt my beliefs.
The problem with religion is that it tries to mess with all of your life.
The point is that there are only a few things that I have any kind of certain knowledge of based on my religious convictions, and none of them have to do with the mechanics of the universe. But let's look at an example. I'm a Mormon, and we believe in the Book of Mormon as a volume of scripture that contains an account of actual people who lived somewhere in the Americas between about 2,000 BC and 400 AD. People have many times made archaeological discoveries that seem to contradict certain accounts in the Book of Mormon. But I know that archaeology is an imperfect and inexact science. Every one of those discoveries that I've seen was ultimately adjusted or brought into question as new evidence came to light. None of them made me feel the need to deny the Book of Mormon, because my belief in that Book is not based on archaeological evidence, it's based on my personal experience with the book itself. On the other hand, there is a great deal of Mormon tradition that gets built up around the Book of Mormon, including the belief (still popular in some circles) that the people of the Book of Mormon ranged all over North and South America, and were the principal ancestors of all native Americans on both continents. That idea has been widely discredited based on finding genetic markers that tie North American natives to Mongol ancestors rather than near eastern ancestors. I was never really on board with the idea anyway. I personally favor the theory that they lived in a small area of the Yucatan. But that belief is subject to adjustment as additional evidence comes to light.
So in short, if I find scientific evidence that seems to contradict a religious belief, I keep an open mind while understanding that science evolves, and that my religious knowledge is not comprehensive. To quote from the Book of Mormon, "Yea, wo be unto him that saith: We have received, and we need no more!" And furthermore, "But to be learned is good if they hearken unto the counsels of God." Far from discouraging inquiry, my religious conviction demands it.
Stupid autocorrect.
I am not a deist, and of course only you can judge whether my beliefs are offensive to you. But if what you consider non offensive is a vague belief in Good without structure or sacraments, then I most certainly am not that person. I'm a Mormon, and we have very specific beliefs about God, as well as well-defined ordinances. In sure you've heard that we hate gays, but I can tell you that I do not. In fact I have some very dear gay friends. If anything, my belief that we are all literally children of God ennobles my fellow men to me. It leads me to view them as more than mere mortal men rather than as subhuman. We are rather unique in believing that we humans are literally of the same species as God, and that we can essentially "grow up" to be like him. We do not believe that commandments are some kind of arbitrary game that God plays to mess with us or be Asus he delights in torturing us. They are rather his loving directions for how to realize our phenomenal potential. We believe in marriage between man and woman because we believe that is how God's race is ultimately propagated, just as it is how we propagate in mortality. But the church has also spoken publicly in support of anti-discrimination laws in favor of gays. As for the point in believing in God, you may as well ask me what is the point in believing in my dad instead of believing that I spontaneously spring from a swamp. I believe that my dad is my dad be because he is. It's not something that I debate with people. This is not a matter of theory. It is based on a deeply personal and ongoing relationship. If you want a reproducible experiment, I'm happy to provide you with one, but I have meet very few people willing to carry through with it.
Did you hear that? That was the sound of millions of religious zealots pressing their palms harder against their ears and screaming LA LA LA even louder.
I'll bite. I'm sure you'd consider me a "religious zealot." I believe in God. I believe in the Bible for what it is---a religious text that has suffered at the hands of multiple translations, compilations, and shenanigans, but that still has managed to retain the essential doctrines of man's relationship to God. It is not, and was never intended to be, a scientific text. The account in Genesis merely says that in six "days" (the original Hebrew word means "time periods") God instructed that the earth should be created, and that this creation was carried out through some unspecified agency. I don't believe God has thrown in CMB and dinosaur bones to deceive us, because I believe that he is a God of truth. My faith certainly doesn't drive me to deny science, because science is (or at least should be) ultimately a search for truth, and all truth brings us closer to the God of truth. The Bible is an excellent spiritual resource that has enhanced my relationship with God, but it tells me very little about physics, engineering, and biology.
So please tell me how your faith---which I assume dictates that the universe is a convenient sequence of coincidences, each individually of staggering improbability, and all of them taken together forming something at least as incomprehensible as the most convoluted beliefs about God---is inherently more reasonable than my faith, which is that there is a creative genius operating in all the majesty of creation.
Both are semi-automatic rifles; the difference is that the carbine fires a much lower-powered bullet than the rifle. I don't see that as much of a difference in committing a crime.
There are many, many differences between an M1 Garand and an M1 carbine. The Garand is larger and heavier. The carbine shoots a less powerful round, but has a larger magazine. It was designed specifically for soldiers who wanted a lighter rifle than the M1, like paratroopers and radio specialists. They have something like one butt plate screw in common. The fact that an M1 carbine was used in a crime once 50 years ago---and granted, it was a truly horrific crime---hardly seems like a compelling case for banning the import of a completely different weapon that happens to have a similar name.
I have an M-1 garand that has a 20 round magazine. Later variants had an external magazine with a very small kit to add the capability. Also if you are deranged, you can remove the nice wooden stock and install composite scary looking parts to make an M-1 look like a modern rifle. Problem is only a complete deranged fool would do such a thing and destroy the value of the rifle.
Is that the .308 variant? I've never seen an extended mag for the .30-06. A .308 with a 20-round mag is basically an M-14 (minus selective fire). And you're right, only a deranged moron would jack up an M1 by putting a black composite stock on it. That would be like letting your kid fingerpaint over an original Rembrandt.
I thought Charles Whitman used a M-1.
Well, we're reaching WAY back here, but according to Wikipedia, he used an M-1 carbine, which may as well be an M1911 for all the similarity it has to an M-1 Garand.
I use the liberal definition. It's scary and black.
Dude, you're behind the times. Barrack Obama issued an executive order to stop the unthinkable practice of importing scary assault weapons from scary foreign places to be sold to American citizens. What he meant was he stopped the re-importation of American-manufactured M-1 rifles that were shipped to allies overseas and were then being sent back to the CMP for sale to American citizens. M-1s are brown and have no pistol grip. The internal magazine accommodates 7 rounds, plus one in the chamber. And as you probably know, they have been involved in approximately 0% of shooting rampages by disturbed people. Gotta keep those bad boys off the streets.
no proof that you did not supply the weapons specifically to have your alleged accomplice commit the crime
You seem to misunderstand how burden of proof works.
some newspapers were getting the records and publishing maps of the houses of permit holders
I've never understood the logic of this kind of "retribution." Granted, it's done with malice, so that's bad. But what, a bunch of unarmed anti-gun hippies are going to attack the homes of people they know have guns and are serious enough to get a license to carry one at all times? If anything, this seems like a list of "houses not to hit" for potential burglars. "Okay, we know not to go to that house, because if we do, we're gonna get shot. Let's hit the home of his hippie neighbor who posted a retribution list of concealed carry licensees. He's sure to be unarmed."
You know and I know that it's impossible to prove that a database has stopped any instance of someone shooting up a school. But it logically follows that a database can identify someone who is a felon, mentally unstable, has a PFA against them, etc. It raises the barrier and makes it more difficult for any of these people to get a weapon. Could they get one elsewhere? If they tried hard enough, probably. It's likely it has stopped several mass violence events by at least stopping some of the less motivated potential mass killers, the low hanging fruit. But using the logic behind your often cited argument, we should just have gun and ammo stands outside schools, because, hey, these people are going to get a weapon somehow and shoot up a school, right?
You seem to be confusing the database for background checks, which most certainly does exist, and which is run on me whenever I purchase a gun, with a national gun registry. The former may be reasonably expected to prevent gun violence at some level, and most gun rights advocates that I know don't object to it. The latter has no logical relation to preventing gun violence, but every possible relation to confiscating guns from law-abiding citizens.
I don't personally use an iOS device, but my kids just turn off WiFi when playing Temple Run. Then it can't download any ads.
Pshaw! Edlin or nothing!
You get Edlin? I have to use a magnet and a magnifying glass to manually align bits in raw binary you insensitive clod!
You really think the courts are not corrupt? They will just rubber stamp whatever their federal masters want, and suppress what they don't. Violate that gag order that they slap on you and do federal hard time, so after you get buttreamed in court you can't even complain.
You are confused. U.S. Federal judges are probably the most independent political actors in the history of the world. It is literally unconstitutional to fire them or even reduce their pay without impeaching and convicting them, which has happened something like twice in almost 240 years. They don't have to kowtow to corporate overlords, because they don't stand for election. Once you get a federal judicial appointment, you are set for life. Sure, you might have aspirations to sit on one of the courts of appeals, or even go up one more level to the Supreme Court, so you may be trying to impress the other guys for that. But if you don't toe the line, nobody can "ruin" you with a public smear campaign or bury your career with allegations and innuendo. The worst that can happen to you is that you're "stuck" as a federal district judge, with a guaranteed salary of about $175,000 for life, and a little kingdom where your word is literally law. Federal judges are, by design, exempt from the political process. They are little gods in their courtrooms. They are entirely free to give the other two branches the finger any time they please.
That led to his next inquiry: If current could turn off regions of the brain making people temporarily math-challenged, could a different type of stimulation improve math performance?
Here's one. What's the long-term effect of using TCMS during development? Strengthening of the affected areas or weakening thereof / dependency on the stimulation?
I believe the Walt Disney Company explored these issues extensively in their excellent documentary on the subject.
Majority of Young American Adults Think a Comma is Nike's "Swoosh" Symbol.
To keep it on topic... "Majority of Young American Adults Think a Comet is the thing you use instead of a period."
I'd say the problem is most likely that they don't know that "astrology" and "astronomy" are different things. "Astrology? Yeah, that's those dudes who study stars, right? Yeah, that's real science."
Assembly language was originally considered automatic programming.
I can't believe you made this point without linking to the legendary story of Mel. Here is a story where simply getting the punchline requires an order of magnitude more understanding than the poster manifests. Tell me how to use an integer overflow to bound a loop in LabView, and I'll believe that graphical programming is the wave of the future.
So you're saying ... you can choose pain, pain, death, and pain, but that's not got much pain it it?
Bloatware? its still probably the smallest footprint browser with a builtin email function.
Emacs is still probably the smallest footprint operating system with a builtin editor function, but it still sucks.
HP is doing fine, except for being strapped with the stupid names "Agilent" and "Keysight." But that beached whale corpse of a mediocre PC vendor that they wisely dumped has been in a nosedive since day one.
A strawman? Do you mean the character that has a diploma but no brain? Yes, it is rather apt. Perhaps you're not he in real life; I don't know you personally. It's possible you only play him on Slashdot. All I have to work from is what you've said here. And here on Slashdot, your line of argument consists entirely of four ad hominem attacks, two of which are directed at my charitable contributions (huh?), and one of which you lobbed, ironically, to accuse me of having a persecution complex. All because I criticized not evolutionary science itself, but the didactic and unimaginative way that we teach it. If your purpose was to caricature the insecure, hypersensitive, militant fundamentalist secular humanist (who is essentially the same person as the insecure, hypersensitive, militant fundamentalist Christian), you have done an admirable job.
I didn't even take biology in school and I know that you are misrepresenting it.
Just---wow. Your didactic, "us vs. them" attitude is exactly what is broken with our society, from local politics to global conflicts. You (blindly) believe in "Science," so anybody who believes in God, by definition, does not. Anybody who is not exactly like you is automatically the Enemy, is clearly motivated by personal animus against you individually, and must be attacked at all costs, with disinformation and outright lies if necessary, even as you admit your own ignorance. You are exactly what I was talking about. You are the problem. "Evolution" is so sacrosanct to you that anybody who dares to suggest that it has limitations as a theory---even somebody who at the same time says it's the best theory we have available right now---is a heretic and should be stoned. If everybody thought like you, we would still be teaching that the universe revolves around the earth, because the Bible obviously says so, and to even examine the question further is tantamount to blasphemy. Have you even read On the Origin of Species, or do you just blindly worship Darwin based on what somebody else told you, like the many Christians who blindly worship God based on what somebody told them the Bible says?
wants lots of members with money but conveniently thinks Jesus hates poor people
I know, look how much we hate poor people. Your research skills are not a credit to you. And since you have appointed yourself the judge of 15 million people's charitable tendencies, I'm curious, how much did you personally give to charity last year?
> ... and it's all part of a single, well-tested formula that cannot be questioned or examined.
Oh. I guess we don't need to do any more science, then, if it can't be questioned or examined. Close the textbooks, we're done here!
HOLY FREAKING CRAP I JUST SPENT TWO LONGISH POSTS SAYING THE EXACT FREAKING OPPOSITE!
You almost treat his post as a personal attack against your mother
His mother was a TRS80, you insensitive clod!
Evolution is observed by microbiologists and others every day.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure I said that. I was talking about the untestable "theory" that kids leave their biology classes believing, namely that there is a clean, clear, indisputable line from the Big Bang to earth to proteins to abiogenesis to multi-celled water-based life to apes to humans, and it's all part of a single, well-tested formula that cannot be questioned or examined.
As far as what motivates me, I'm Mormon. I believe in God. I also believe that "evolution" (such as it is) is the best theory we have for how different species arise. My brother, who is also Mormon, got a Masters in Evolutionary Biology at the very-Mormon BYU. His thesis was all about mutating viruses to make them do useful things like form pharmaceutical compounds. He now teaches high school biology in a small Texas town and wants to slap the dumb kids who say, "Can I skip the chapter on evolution, because I don't believe in it?" I'm not attacking evolution, though you seem to think that any acknowledgement of its limitations is tantamount to an attack. My point is that many science teachers teach it as though it is some kind of fixed, unalterable Truth, which is just as destructive to inquiry as teaching kids "Don't ask questions or you're going to hell." My faith does not willfully blind me to inquiry and investigation. Why should my scientific education do so?
Really, this is a criticism of the education system as a whole. It's about regurgitating some official policy line doled out by teachers. It has very little to do with meaningful learning.