We seem to have misassessed one another. I don't know what code pink is, I've seen one Michael Moore movie, and so on, so I'm not the raging liberal you may have taken me for.
The "nation at peace" comment is interesting, considering the dozens (down from 100+) killed each day in sectarian violence by death squads, suicide bombers, revenge killings, etc. Over half of Iraqis support (at least ideologically) attacks against US personnel. I'm curious how we'd view it if, say, California or Texas had suicide bombers, private militias, government-backed death squads, Saudi-backed foreign fighters, and Iranian-backed foreign fighters vying to tear each other apart while occasionally working together to target a 150K-strong foreign military occupation.
But if it'll let us leave (as the majority of the US population, Iraqi population, and even US military population want) I'll call it victory so we can get the hell out.
I've long said that, since we don't seem to have a well-defined mission, Pres. Bush can declare victory any day he wants and shower confetti on the military as they leave. He could have declared victory on the day he declared victory, and left then. We've "broken" Al Queida how many times now? We won, we won, we're great, whatever....can we leave now? I'm glad that fewer Iraqis are dying (I love being wrong about something so negative), and I would hope that shining, happy conclusion would intimate that we're not needed there anymore.
Is the assertion "Life arose from non-life around three billion years ago on the prehistoric earth" falsifiable without resorting to some form of the anthropic principle?
Is the assertion that "Disease is not caused be demonic possession" falsifiable? How about "The planets rotate through their orbits because of gravity, not because angels push them?" Is that falsifiable? No, not really. The problem, semantically, is that you've reversed the burden of proof.
All scientific explanations lie within the natural world. They don't "rule out" supernatural explanations, because you can no more rule out something supernatural than you can investigate or test it. Science just doesn't consider supernatural explanations because science only deals with things for which we can find evidence, i.e. things that lie within the natural world. So any explanation science finds for disease, planetary orbits, thunder, and, yes, the origin of life, is going to lie within the natural world.
If you want to believe that disease is caused by demonic possession, or that angels push the planets around in their orbits, then yes, you have a compelling interest in discrediting science by reversing the burden of proof and pretending that it is the scientists, not you, who are making the unverifiable claims.
Don't be a sucker. The govt has revised the way it tracks sectarian violence, and re-revised it again, until the numbers went down. When you can redefine all the terms to suit your agenda, you can paint any picture you want. The Iraqis, including the Prime Minister, think things are going horribly, and it's the Saudis, not the Iranians, who are the problem. The gist of this is that Iraq is not looking better--the US media is just continuing to uncritically report the White House talking points as news. You need to watch less TV, and read more New Yorker, Harper's, Atlantic, and so on.
If you were being ironic, never mind. Sometimes it's hard to tell.
Familiarity with Facebook and Bittorrent is different than choosing a career as a programmer or network administrator. Familiarity is not maintenance and/or development. The number of people familiar with using automobiles is a little larger than the number who choose a career as a mechanic.
Yes, many nations use torture. My question to you, is -- is it wrong? I'm making the moral judgement that torture is immoral, even if every other nation on the planet uses it routinely. If you think torture is a legitimate information-gathering methodology, or a dandy way for our troops to "get some back," then I guess you have nothing to bitch about.
It's well-established that torture results in more disinformation than actionable intelligence, because people will say anything at all with a drill-bit in their kneecap or electrodes on their testicles. So it really comes down to the moral question. When the Egyptions or N. Koreans torture a prisoner (or detainee)-- is that immoral? I really need an answer on this.
Are you implying that torture is immoral? If it's immoral, then I'll stand right beside you saying that the Islamicists are wrong for torturing people. If you think torture is a legitimate information-gathering technique, I'm not sure why the media would give it much attention. Could you clarify your position on this? I happen to think torture is immoral, but I've had my patriotism questioned for saying it.
Kristol et al are fascinated with 24, as their mentor Leo Strauss was fascinated with the TV western Gunsmoke. They think in this mode, where we're the good guys and the good guys have complete moral clarity. The thing about 24 and Gunsmoke is that they are fictional television programs. That seemingly obvious fact, and its implications, eludes many.
Yes, you can have perfect moral clarity and know there is a ticking time bomb when you're part of a TV audience that saw the bad guy setting the bomb, but in reality you don't get to see the bomb--people are being tortured to see if there is a bomb, to see if this guy knows a guy who knows if there's a bomb, and so on...reality lacks the perfect god-like clarity that the neocons think they have.
When you're dealing with someone who thinks that they have this moral clarity that only exists in fictional scenarios, you're dealing with someone very stupid, very arrogant, with a power fetish, or any combination of the three. Opposition to torture is grounded not just in the idea that torture is wrong, but in the recognition that we're fallible, our knowledge is limited, and basically that people can't be trusted with that level of power. This grounding humility is what is lacking in the neocons. They may be humble in other ways, praying to God and so forth, but they believe so strongly in their own vision that they feel that normal morality doesn't apply.
This isn't strictly confined to the neocons--some leftists have tortured for the Marxist/Stalinist/whatever cause, no doubt, but they are long gone. The neocons may not have a monopoly on hubris, but they're the problem we're dealing with today.
Truthfully the issue is a bit silly. The problem is so many people are running around saying that atheism requires either faith or omniscience, since you can't prove that no god exists. But you can not believe in the Easter Bunny or Bigfoot all day long without anyone saying that you must think you're omniscient, since you can't actually disprove the existence of either. It's only when God is the noun that we start this whole "then you must have faith that he doesn't exist, which makes your atheism a religion" crap. All the concern over the precision of language is very selective.
If we popped up with "so you think you're omniscient?" every single time that someone said that they don't believe in something (ghosts, ESP, reincarnation, whatever) conversation would get incredibly tedious because of all the hair-splitting clarifications/disclaimers we'd have to tack on to every sentence.
...for people who don't want the opprobrium that comes with the word atheist. Ask someone if they're agnostic about Zeus or Mithra, and they'll look at you like you're being silly. Are you agnostic about Bigfoot? I may be agnostic about string theory or abiogenesis, but I'm about as agnostic about God as I am about unicorns, because stricly speaking we can't disprove either.
Dictionaries are all over the place on this issue. I'm not saying language is so elastic that we should nod knowingly when someone uses the word dandelion to refer to a tricycle, but the word atheism is so fraught with controversy that we should really be trying to figure out what a particular person is saying, rather than trying to force them into using the definitions we're most comfortable with. Being a medic and using the word apnea to mean "not breathing," and knowing that theism refers to a belief in God, I figure that atheism is a lack of theism, as apnea is a lack of breathing. I'm not calling myself agnostic, because to me it's just a word meant to make people feel better.
I hear all the time that religion leads to moral behavior, and that the absence of religion undermines morality. I don't hear anyone jumping up and crying "correlation is not causation!" when someone credits morality to religion. But when someone collects actual data and points out that there is actually a negative correlation between morality and religion, then and only then are we cautioned that correlation is not causation.
If you want to posit that religion has nothing at all to do with the criteria tracked by the study, then I'll agree with you. But to admit that religion has nothing to do with morality undermines the position that believers take every day, and that I have to listen to ad nauseum. Is that the position you're taking? You (and many others who object to the implications of this study) seem to want it both ways--when you think the data is on your side then you think that religion has an awful lot to do with morality, but when the actual data undermines your conclusion, you become a born-again skeptic with a curiously strong fixation on discrediting the very correlation that you previously had such confidence in.
I'm a medic, and the word we have for absence of breathing is apnea. The word we have for absence of a heart rhythm is arrhythmia. If the finding is not typical, it's atypical. If theism is a belief in God, then I'm an atheist.
Another way of looking at it is that there is a set of all people. Some of those people believe in God--they are theists. Everyone else is an atheist. Some of those atheists posit that there is no God, some consider the idea unknowable and call themselves agnostics, and some have never enountered the idea, but they all lack theism, and so are atheistic.
I don't like the word agnostic, because I think it's silly. Are you agnostic about The Flying Spaghetti Monster? Agnostic about Thor? The invisible magical elf under my bed? No, you just don't believe, because there's no reason to believe. I'm as agnostic about God as I am about the Easter Bunny.
Ah, you meant a society with a relatively larger percentage of atheists. I like the "tolerance for atheism" part of your reply--would societies with less tolerance be called "extremely theistic?"
Atheism doesn't mean "lack of belief for specific gods", it means "belief that no gods exists".
I don't have a positive believe that no gods exist. That's, strictly speaking, a logically untenable assertion (though to the same extent as asserting that no unicorns exist). But I do lack a belief in god(s). I just see no reason to believe in them, or him, or her, whatever. The distinction may seem trivial, but you have to be careful lest someone say "aha! you're making an assertion and you have to defend it!" I'm not making assertions, only saying that I see no reason to believe in God.
There are more atheists not because the culture is more atheistic, but because the Christians have less power to threaten nonbelievers with assault, torture, death, and so on.
There have always been skeptics and freethinkers (I don't like the term, but it's what is used) but in centuries/decades past a skeptic had to keep his mouth shut to avoid being killed, or his property confiscated, or similar problems. That's still true in some Muslim societies, but the USA and Europe benefited from the Enlightenment, which decreased the power of religion. Some, particularly in the USA, are trying to change the clock back, but they haven't been that successful.
How can you be "extremely" atheistic? "I really, really, really don't believe?" Look, do you have an extreme disbelief in Bigfoot? Are you extreme in your rejection of Shiva? Or do you just not believe in those things? Stop trying to make my skepticism into some militant fringe position. I just don't buy the whole diety thing. If you have a problem with that, then you have a problem with that. That doesn't make me extreme--it just makes you hypersensitive.
Granted. I was using it in the sense of "lack of a belief in god." I lack a belief in Shiva, so I am atheistic in regards to Shiva. We may quibble over this (I'm not saying you're wrong) but there is ample precedent for this use. People have long attributed atheism to those who believed in different Gods, or even those who had different interpretations of the same God they believed in. Spinoza and others have been called atheist, though they believed in something they called God.
My post was actually an allusion (visible only to me, I admit) to an argument I read once along the lines of "I don't believe in all the same Gods you don't believe in, only I add one more."
Even if there is no God, and you are an atheist, is it possible that a world containing religious people is actually a "better" society than a world full of atheists?
Well, no. Japan, Holland, Canada, and a slew of other nations have a lower instance of religious belief, and a lower rate of crime, lower infant mortality, etc. Even within the USA, the Bible Belt states (actually the Red States in general) have higher infant mortality rates, lower productivity rates, higher crime rates, worse education systems, along with being worse-off in a range of other criteria. It isn't a stark difference--I'm not saying they're in the dark ages--but the difference is easy to spot if you look at the data.
And in one way or another, we're all atheists. Is the world worse off because people don't believe in Thor anymore?
The percentage of Christians who support violence against unbelievers is vastly smaller than the percentage of Muslims who support violence against unbelievers. There is just no comparison.
Pat Robertson said what he said, and was condemned by many Christians. How many prominent Muslims have openly condemned the contract on Salman Rushdie's life?
Yes, the Bible contains a lot of violence, and yes, many Christians say they believe "every word," but in reality they aren't going to kill their kid for reading a book on Wicca. Well, there might be one nutjob out there who would, but every other Christian would consider the thought horrific. You don't see Christians in Colorado City stoning people to death for adultery or for breaking the Sabbath. How many are stoned to death in Muslim nations?
There are Christian nutjobs, and some have been caught with nerve gas, bombs, whatever, but the fringe of the fringe of the fringe of Christian zealotry is not comparable, size-wise, to the support the suicide bombers find in the Muslim world. I'm an atheist and I'll argue all day that faith undermines rational thinking, that Christianity doesn't make you moral, and that we should keep US society secular, but it is just vastly wrong to conflate the scale of violence perpetrated by the faithful of each of these communities qua their faith. Violent rhetoric isn't violence.
I'm not saying Christianity is violence-free. There IS violence (Matthew Sheppard getting stomped to death, etc) but it isn't as prevalent, sanctioned, or, well, normal as it is in Muslim nations. I'd say that religious killing in the Muslim world is probably as frequent, if not worse, as race lynchings were at the ugliest point in US history. No, I don't have the numbers to support that, but I think the scales are similar.
The USA is the most religious of the developed (first-world, whatever) nations. Of all the nations who have benefited the most from science, the USA is the most "skeptical" of science, to include evolution, age of the earth, global warming, etc. The situation is a bit surreal.
I don't consider religion per se to be "the problem." Millenarianism, dispensationalism, and the other rapture-centered -isms are the problem. If the religion of most Americans was of the 'love your neighbor, be humble, be nice' variety, I'd have no problem. I'd still think they were a wee bit loopy for thinking that Jesus talked to them, but I'd keep it to myself and just go along to get along.
But the "The End is coming and ain't it grand!" crowd is a pain in the neck. They're arrogant, self-righteous, cruel, pushy, and ignorant. The Rapture would beam a lot of our social problems right up with all of the believers. I hope it happens soon, because we can't take too much more of this kind of Christianity.
I've seen no strong theology that would rule out that evolution did not happen.
You must not deal with creationists much. I've met a YEC who actually denied even microevolution. He thought that even antibiotic resistance was just an example of an organism we'd never encountered, not an effect of genetic change in the microbe population. He is a nurse. There are tens of millions of Americans like that. If you press hard enough, you'll find that about 50 million Americans basically reject the Enlightenment.
I don't see how you can think creationism and evolution aren't at odds. Special creation (i.e. things just poofing into existence) is basically magic. The two models are completely incompatible. Either the life forms we see around us just poofed into existence, or they descended from common ancestors. How can you reconcile the two mental models?
And it's hard not to bash religion once you decide to apply reason to its arguments. The only way for people to feel that you respect their religion is to give it a free pass. As soon as you look at stuff like the resurrection, the holy trinity, the Book of Mormon, etc with the same critical faculties you'd bring to basically any other subject, religion can't escape looking ridiculous.
If someone actually believes that Thor causes thunder, how do you avoid making him feel that you're belittling his beliefs? You have to either give those beliefs a free pass, or treat him like a little child who is too naive to deal with your, ahem, atheistic explanations for the weather. He's going to notice the condescension and resent it. Would you be as concerned over Thor-believer-bashing, or would you just figure that people with irrational beliefs have to deal with people pointing out the obvious?
Can't they seen on the monitor that the plane has landed? I've picked up many people from the airport, and never needed a phone call to find out that their plane was on the ground. If I'm not in the airport to look at the monitor, a phone call isn't going to get me there any faster.
Well, our knowledge is limited, and we are error-prone. Believing in God (or not) doesn't change that. The scientific method is an attempt to minimize the effects of our own hubris, fallibility, limitations, and so on. The alternative, religion, is a collection of stories meant to make us feel better. I'll take science, because it acknowleges our limitations and still attemps to learn.
I'd rather someone be allowed to surf the web next to me, goatse and all, than be allowed to gab on their cell. I even hate it that they can use their cells in the terminals. Why does anyone need to call to say "I'm on the ground now"? Obviously we can't rely on people to be considerate of others, but up till now we could rely on airline restrictions for a little peace. I vote we allow text messages, but no voice messages. Everyone gets to play the quiet game. Shut the hell up.
And if they created something like DNA, we'd hear that they didn't create the proteins from scratch. If they created proteins, we'd here that they didn't create the still more basic building blocks, down to matter itself. Then we'd hear that they didn't create the universe, or the physical constants by which existence is possible, or whatever. No, I'm not saying that he created artificial life. But I've heard the "and God said, 'get your own dirt'" joke before, and as funny as it was at the time, I don't really like the smug we're-smarter-than-those scientists mentality I see behind it. When anti-intellectual populism shows its value in antibiotic research or in any other field of science, I may respect it more. Until then, I'm down with the science.
What the hell do we want from education? Technical proficiency? Cultural knowledge? Time spent learning programming is time not spent pondering Hamlet. The education that produced Joyce is gone, because classics/literature are no longer considered central to education. People want their kids to be able to get a job, but we also end up with well-trained, specialized idiots.
I worked with a nurse (RN, Master's degree) who didn't know who Stalin or Freud were, by picture or name. In the USA the education system was designed to produce compliant, useful factory workers and consumers, and I guess in every country education is meant to imbue patriotism, willingness to trot off to war whenever the government wants, and so on. But I think we should preface every argument on education with what we mean by education. That stipulation would obviate a considerable amount of angst on the subject.
We also need to be careful stipulating that education has to be fun and exciting. Learning is not a video game, nor is it watching TV. Basically I've seen education dumbed down to where it COULD be taught in a fun, engaging way that bolsters self-esteem and makes everyone happy. If we raise kids who can opt out of any activity because it's "boring," then we'll have a society of amusement-seeking idiots who can't recognize, much less utilize, critical thinking. Since this seems to be what we have already, I guess it goes a bit further back than the current generation of kids.
Slashdot Mirror
The "nation at peace" comment is interesting, considering the dozens (down from 100+) killed each day in sectarian violence by death squads, suicide bombers, revenge killings, etc. Over half of Iraqis support (at least ideologically) attacks against US personnel. I'm curious how we'd view it if, say, California or Texas had suicide bombers, private militias, government-backed death squads, Saudi-backed foreign fighters, and Iranian-backed foreign fighters vying to tear each other apart while occasionally working together to target a 150K-strong foreign military occupation.
But if it'll let us leave (as the majority of the US population, Iraqi population, and even US military population want) I'll call it victory so we can get the hell out.
I've long said that, since we don't seem to have a well-defined mission, Pres. Bush can declare victory any day he wants and shower confetti on the military as they leave. He could have declared victory on the day he declared victory, and left then. We've "broken" Al Queida how many times now? We won, we won, we're great, whatever....can we leave now? I'm glad that fewer Iraqis are dying (I love being wrong about something so negative), and I would hope that shining, happy conclusion would intimate that we're not needed there anymore.
All scientific explanations lie within the natural world. They don't "rule out" supernatural explanations, because you can no more rule out something supernatural than you can investigate or test it. Science just doesn't consider supernatural explanations because science only deals with things for which we can find evidence, i.e. things that lie within the natural world. So any explanation science finds for disease, planetary orbits, thunder, and, yes, the origin of life, is going to lie within the natural world.
If you want to believe that disease is caused by demonic possession, or that angels push the planets around in their orbits, then yes, you have a compelling interest in discrediting science by reversing the burden of proof and pretending that it is the scientists, not you, who are making the unverifiable claims.
If you were being ironic, never mind. Sometimes it's hard to tell.
Familiarity with Facebook and Bittorrent is different than choosing a career as a programmer or network administrator. Familiarity is not maintenance and/or development. The number of people familiar with using automobiles is a little larger than the number who choose a career as a mechanic.
It's well-established that torture results in more disinformation than actionable intelligence, because people will say anything at all with a drill-bit in their kneecap or electrodes on their testicles. So it really comes down to the moral question. When the Egyptions or N. Koreans torture a prisoner (or detainee)-- is that immoral? I really need an answer on this.
Are you implying that torture is immoral? If it's immoral, then I'll stand right beside you saying that the Islamicists are wrong for torturing people. If you think torture is a legitimate information-gathering technique, I'm not sure why the media would give it much attention. Could you clarify your position on this? I happen to think torture is immoral, but I've had my patriotism questioned for saying it.
Yes, you can have perfect moral clarity and know there is a ticking time bomb when you're part of a TV audience that saw the bad guy setting the bomb, but in reality you don't get to see the bomb--people are being tortured to see if there is a bomb, to see if this guy knows a guy who knows if there's a bomb, and so on...reality lacks the perfect god-like clarity that the neocons think they have.
When you're dealing with someone who thinks that they have this moral clarity that only exists in fictional scenarios, you're dealing with someone very stupid, very arrogant, with a power fetish, or any combination of the three. Opposition to torture is grounded not just in the idea that torture is wrong, but in the recognition that we're fallible, our knowledge is limited, and basically that people can't be trusted with that level of power. This grounding humility is what is lacking in the neocons. They may be humble in other ways, praying to God and so forth, but they believe so strongly in their own vision that they feel that normal morality doesn't apply.
This isn't strictly confined to the neocons--some leftists have tortured for the Marxist/Stalinist/whatever cause, no doubt, but they are long gone. The neocons may not have a monopoly on hubris, but they're the problem we're dealing with today.
If we popped up with "so you think you're omniscient?" every single time that someone said that they don't believe in something (ghosts, ESP, reincarnation, whatever) conversation would get incredibly tedious because of all the hair-splitting clarifications/disclaimers we'd have to tack on to every sentence.
Dictionaries are all over the place on this issue. I'm not saying language is so elastic that we should nod knowingly when someone uses the word dandelion to refer to a tricycle, but the word atheism is so fraught with controversy that we should really be trying to figure out what a particular person is saying, rather than trying to force them into using the definitions we're most comfortable with. Being a medic and using the word apnea to mean "not breathing," and knowing that theism refers to a belief in God, I figure that atheism is a lack of theism, as apnea is a lack of breathing. I'm not calling myself agnostic, because to me it's just a word meant to make people feel better.
If you want to posit that religion has nothing at all to do with the criteria tracked by the study, then I'll agree with you. But to admit that religion has nothing to do with morality undermines the position that believers take every day, and that I have to listen to ad nauseum. Is that the position you're taking? You (and many others who object to the implications of this study) seem to want it both ways--when you think the data is on your side then you think that religion has an awful lot to do with morality, but when the actual data undermines your conclusion, you become a born-again skeptic with a curiously strong fixation on discrediting the very correlation that you previously had such confidence in.
Another way of looking at it is that there is a set of all people. Some of those people believe in God--they are theists. Everyone else is an atheist. Some of those atheists posit that there is no God, some consider the idea unknowable and call themselves agnostics, and some have never enountered the idea, but they all lack theism, and so are atheistic.
I don't like the word agnostic, because I think it's silly. Are you agnostic about The Flying Spaghetti Monster? Agnostic about Thor? The invisible magical elf under my bed? No, you just don't believe, because there's no reason to believe. I'm as agnostic about God as I am about the Easter Bunny.
Ah, you meant a society with a relatively larger percentage of atheists. I like the "tolerance for atheism" part of your reply--would societies with less tolerance be called "extremely theistic?"
There have always been skeptics and freethinkers (I don't like the term, but it's what is used) but in centuries/decades past a skeptic had to keep his mouth shut to avoid being killed, or his property confiscated, or similar problems. That's still true in some Muslim societies, but the USA and Europe benefited from the Enlightenment, which decreased the power of religion. Some, particularly in the USA, are trying to change the clock back, but they haven't been that successful.
My post was actually an allusion (visible only to me, I admit) to an argument I read once along the lines of "I don't believe in all the same Gods you don't believe in, only I add one more."
And in one way or another, we're all atheists. Is the world worse off because people don't believe in Thor anymore?
Pat Robertson said what he said, and was condemned by many Christians. How many prominent Muslims have openly condemned the contract on Salman Rushdie's life?
Yes, the Bible contains a lot of violence, and yes, many Christians say they believe "every word," but in reality they aren't going to kill their kid for reading a book on Wicca. Well, there might be one nutjob out there who would, but every other Christian would consider the thought horrific. You don't see Christians in Colorado City stoning people to death for adultery or for breaking the Sabbath. How many are stoned to death in Muslim nations?
There are Christian nutjobs, and some have been caught with nerve gas, bombs, whatever, but the fringe of the fringe of the fringe of Christian zealotry is not comparable, size-wise, to the support the suicide bombers find in the Muslim world. I'm an atheist and I'll argue all day that faith undermines rational thinking, that Christianity doesn't make you moral, and that we should keep US society secular, but it is just vastly wrong to conflate the scale of violence perpetrated by the faithful of each of these communities qua their faith. Violent rhetoric isn't violence.
I'm not saying Christianity is violence-free. There IS violence (Matthew Sheppard getting stomped to death, etc) but it isn't as prevalent, sanctioned, or, well, normal as it is in Muslim nations. I'd say that religious killing in the Muslim world is probably as frequent, if not worse, as race lynchings were at the ugliest point in US history. No, I don't have the numbers to support that, but I think the scales are similar.
I don't consider religion per se to be "the problem." Millenarianism, dispensationalism, and the other rapture-centered -isms are the problem. If the religion of most Americans was of the 'love your neighbor, be humble, be nice' variety, I'd have no problem. I'd still think they were a wee bit loopy for thinking that Jesus talked to them, but I'd keep it to myself and just go along to get along.
But the "The End is coming and ain't it grand!" crowd is a pain in the neck. They're arrogant, self-righteous, cruel, pushy, and ignorant. The Rapture would beam a lot of our social problems right up with all of the believers. I hope it happens soon, because we can't take too much more of this kind of Christianity.
I don't see how you can think creationism and evolution aren't at odds. Special creation (i.e. things just poofing into existence) is basically magic. The two models are completely incompatible. Either the life forms we see around us just poofed into existence, or they descended from common ancestors. How can you reconcile the two mental models?
And it's hard not to bash religion once you decide to apply reason to its arguments. The only way for people to feel that you respect their religion is to give it a free pass. As soon as you look at stuff like the resurrection, the holy trinity, the Book of Mormon, etc with the same critical faculties you'd bring to basically any other subject, religion can't escape looking ridiculous.
If someone actually believes that Thor causes thunder, how do you avoid making him feel that you're belittling his beliefs? You have to either give those beliefs a free pass, or treat him like a little child who is too naive to deal with your, ahem, atheistic explanations for the weather. He's going to notice the condescension and resent it. Would you be as concerned over Thor-believer-bashing, or would you just figure that people with irrational beliefs have to deal with people pointing out the obvious?
Can't they seen on the monitor that the plane has landed? I've picked up many people from the airport, and never needed a phone call to find out that their plane was on the ground. If I'm not in the airport to look at the monitor, a phone call isn't going to get me there any faster.
Well, our knowledge is limited, and we are error-prone. Believing in God (or not) doesn't change that. The scientific method is an attempt to minimize the effects of our own hubris, fallibility, limitations, and so on. The alternative, religion, is a collection of stories meant to make us feel better. I'll take science, because it acknowleges our limitations and still attemps to learn.
I'd rather someone be allowed to surf the web next to me, goatse and all, than be allowed to gab on their cell. I even hate it that they can use their cells in the terminals. Why does anyone need to call to say "I'm on the ground now"? Obviously we can't rely on people to be considerate of others, but up till now we could rely on airline restrictions for a little peace. I vote we allow text messages, but no voice messages. Everyone gets to play the quiet game. Shut the hell up.
And if they created something like DNA, we'd hear that they didn't create the proteins from scratch. If they created proteins, we'd here that they didn't create the still more basic building blocks, down to matter itself. Then we'd hear that they didn't create the universe, or the physical constants by which existence is possible, or whatever. No, I'm not saying that he created artificial life. But I've heard the "and God said, 'get your own dirt'" joke before, and as funny as it was at the time, I don't really like the smug we're-smarter-than-those scientists mentality I see behind it. When anti-intellectual populism shows its value in antibiotic research or in any other field of science, I may respect it more. Until then, I'm down with the science.
I worked with a nurse (RN, Master's degree) who didn't know who Stalin or Freud were, by picture or name. In the USA the education system was designed to produce compliant, useful factory workers and consumers, and I guess in every country education is meant to imbue patriotism, willingness to trot off to war whenever the government wants, and so on. But I think we should preface every argument on education with what we mean by education. That stipulation would obviate a considerable amount of angst on the subject.
We also need to be careful stipulating that education has to be fun and exciting. Learning is not a video game, nor is it watching TV. Basically I've seen education dumbed down to where it COULD be taught in a fun, engaging way that bolsters self-esteem and makes everyone happy. If we raise kids who can opt out of any activity because it's "boring," then we'll have a society of amusement-seeking idiots who can't recognize, much less utilize, critical thinking. Since this seems to be what we have already, I guess it goes a bit further back than the current generation of kids.