"Seriously? Sure it does nothing to prove or disprove the existence of divine beings in general, but it very clearly and directly contradicts the creation mythos as described in the Bible in all but the most liberal "it's all an analogy for God creating the world" interpretation."
The Theory of Evolution does not do that. It is a model for predicting genetic outcomes. Predicting and interpreting genetic outcomes and therefore the only thing it does. Theories aren't really proven hypothesis, they are proven models that follow from hypothesis. A completely different and incompatible hypothesis from which that model is consistent can come along any day and evolution would not be demoted because it's math would still work. Both could be perfectly valid scientific theories. So if the hypothesis behind the functional model of evolution conflicts with something in the Bible, it is not science asserting the Bible is incorrect mere asserting that anything correct must explain the functional model.
Science the search for practical ways to interpret and manipulate the natural and observable world and not a search for truth. Philosophy is the search for truth. Science is merely one of its tools.
This entire conversation is about the public schools which are not legally permitted to be religious schools.
"Who are you to judge what is and is not equal?"
If you put an apple and an orange on a table he isn't permitted to assert they aren't equal? He isn't judging their relative merit but whether or not they are the same thing.
The purpose of a school is to pass along knowledge and facts. Religion is something you believe in spite of having no evidence and in spite of facts. It might be something a parent wants to pass on to their children but it is not knowledge.
"which includes promoting religion over atheism or vice versa"
Atheism it not a religion, it is what you have left without a religion. Teaching science is not promoting atheism. It is teaching a functional model that successfully predicts outcomes in genetics.
"I don't disagree at a conceptual level. However, much like my views on capital punishment, this is where I have to let actual real-life outcomes overrule academic theorising. There's always going to be a far larger cohort of "deadbeat dads" than there are women getting pregnant for such purposes."
Even without women getting pregnant deliberately the father has the right to make the choice that he isn't in a position to be able to ethically live up to the responsibility that comes with a child and that he doesn't believe it would be fair to the child to bring it into the world with the lifelong trauma of having a father that doesn't want it. Additionally, it is not merely 18 years, that is only the financial obligation. Parenthood is a life long obligation either for the life of the child or the father. The idea of the deadbeat dad is that he is equally responsible for bringing the child into the world but that is no longer true. He is equally responsible for causing the pregnancy. The mother has the ability to terminate that pregnancy or bring a child into the world and terminating the pregnancy is low risk and low impact certainly less so than going through with the pregnancy. Either way, she earned the risks with her part in getting pregnant and her decision of which option she choose. The fathers obligation should be no more than the minimum needed to end the pregnancy and thereby fix the damage he caused. If I total your pinto and my obligation is the cheapest fix or replacement option available, not the cost of the more expensive option you choose. A deadbeat dad by that modern standard is one who failed to pay the minimum amount required to terminate the pregnancy unless he makes the additional choice to want to bring a child into the world. Because unless he makes that deliberate choice he is nothing more than a sperm donor. Whichever parent(s) choose to bring a child into the world should have the obligations and rights that follow from that choice.
I don't think the father should be able to force an abortion but the woman should be required to inform him and he should have the option of providing the cost of the abortion and walking away with no future obligation or rights. In this way he meets his minimum obligation without forcing the woman to do anything. A woman should have no more right to force a continued obligation on him than he has to force her to have an abortion.
In the same token, if the mother doesn't want the child and the father does, she always has the right to choose the abortion anyway. Or she could choose to carry the child to term with the rights and responsibilities falling on the father at birth. It is really no different than any other surrogate scenario except she is acting as surrogate mother for the baby's actual father.
That would be fair and equitable, minimizing the ability to force obligation on either party. Knocking her up no longer means you have a reasonable expectation that you were risking a child, only a pregnancy. Turning a pregnancy into a child is a conscious choice and the one(s) who make it should carry the weight of responsibility for that choice.
I don't know about gay couples. I believe they usually legally adopt. But in most cases when sperm donars have been identified they have been required by the state to pay child support.
Forcing her to keep a baby isn't reasonable. I agree on that. Forcing her to terminate the pregnancy isn't beyond reason.
We already have state forced invasive procedures and an abortion has a short recovery time and is fairly low risk. For instance, forced blood draws carry a risk of infection, blood born illness transmission, and even death but the state routinely forces them on individuals claiming the rights of the public trump the rights of the individual in those cases. It is certainly debatable if the very short term impact of the abortion procedure outweighs the lifelong infringement on the rights of the father and the lifelong emotional trauma to the child caused by having a father who doesn't want or love them.
A compromise might be to allow the father to legally request the abortion and supply the cost or proof he lacks the financial resources in which case the state covers it (generally an abortion is less costly for the state). He would never be told the result, at least not by the state. The woman would then have the option, she can keep the child and the money supplied for the abortion but the father has neither rights nor obligation or she can have the abortion. In fact, in order to preserve her right to privacy and to select her own healthcare provider the state should turn over the funds without directly knowing the result.
Of course you should have a similar procedure where the woman can declare she doesn't want the child. She then carries the child to term but her rights and obligations are lost at the birth and the father assumes full custody.
This way we no longer have a completely one sided scenario, either party can waive their rights and obligations without robbing the other of choice to the greatest extent possible short of requiring the woman to undergo a physical burden or risk she isn't willing to assume.
The other scenarios don't require any special new paperwork. If both want an abortion they work out the cost between them. If she wants an abortion but he doesn't then she can simply have the abortion because he has no right to force her to undergo pregnancy. If both want to keep it, they keep it.
Yes, but considering that those differences only exist for a short term before the birth of the child it is debatable if they are actually significant enough to warrant denying the right of one party to offset a lifelong impact on both themselves and the child.
At the very least the father should have the right to be informed of the pregnancy in a reasonable time and to legally request an abortion at his expense. The request would include the cost or proof of lack of financial ability and then the state would provide the sum. This then would leave the mother the choice to have the abortion or to accept full legal responsibility for the child should it be born and its care. Naturally this would also mean the father waiving all subsequent legal rights to the child. If she opted out of the abortion she gets the sum paid for the abortion and the father is never told the result... at least not by the state.
Also, we should have more public education for the benefit of children that stress the point that this action isn't a rejection of them, but a rejection of a cell with no brain or personality. Someone who doesn't know you obviously can't reject you in a personal sense. In fact, the father's choice would have been made without even knowing if the child would ever be born.
It isn't as good as being able to require the abortion but it is a reasonable compromise. The way things are done now are completely one sided. That is unjust. The obligations and rights involved are not one sided.
"No, that's recognition of the reality that a woman has a lot more at stake in a pregnancy than a man."
That isn't a reality, it isn't even accurate. The pregnancy is a trivial matter relative to the impact of having a child and the obligations that go with it and that impact applies to both father and mother.
"Indeed. One person cannot force another to undergo an invasive and traumatic medical procedure."
Actually, there are many cases where the rights of one person can outweigh the rights of another. For instance, it is rather common for the state to force a blood draw to gather DNA or test for drugs. That is an invasive procedure with the potential complications including transmission of blood born diseases, infection, and even death.
Considering that an abortion is low risk, low impact, and has a very short term impact. It isn't at all unreasonable to assert that the right of the father to avoid the lifelong obligation and the right of the potential child not to be fatherless and face a life of the disadvantages and emotional trauma this causes as trumping the mothers right to refuse to undergo the procedure. Just because a mother has rights doesn't mean there aren't other rights that take precedence. See yelling "fire" in a theater for the classic example of this principle.
"On the flipside, a woman who does not want children cannot force her husband to have a vasectomy or be castrated, so it seems that balances out."
She can take birth control, the morning after pill, or simply abstain from sex so that really isn't a meaningful point at all. She has both temporary and permanent choices available to her. Further, she has no legal or practical need to inform the man of them. The man does not have these choices. Some vasectomies are reversible in theory but in practice reversal often does not work.
Additionally, an abortion is a one off procedure with no impact after recovery. A vasectomy is not. Castration isn't even a relevant consideration. Mentioning it is an indication that you have an extreme and irrational emotional bias on the topic. If I'd noticed it I wouldn't have bothered typing a response.
Actually I'd contend that even a class on ancient mythology is really a violation of church and state. Such a class is cherry picking a few old religions with few modern followers and giving the strong implication that these beliefs are not correct. No such class covers all ancient religions and there are modern day polytheistic beliefs incorporating those same old deities believing them to be common across many religions and having existed then and now and continue to summon/communicate/and worship these entities.
That is the problem with going with the allow all religions practice vs allowing none. It will always either require a complex list of exceptions and in those exceptions and inclusions there is discrimination for or against one belief or another. The only practical option is to exclude religion entirely.
Atheists aren't a religion and aren't a group. They are everyone who isn't a member of one of the groups.
Last I checked science is based on the logical and mathematical observation of nature, it's discoveries are true for everyone whether they deny them or not... including those who believe in Christmas. I'll be willing to reconsider when you deny into existence a species without DNA common to other species or even counter a scientific theory with far less evidence supporting it like Newtonian physics. For instance, pray into existence a bubble of spiritual power and use it teleport to the moon.
Christian groups tend to use the word "theory" like it means reasonable speculation. That is a hypothesis. A hypothesis is speculation based on evidence. It is then shown mathematically what must also be true, mathematically, if this hypothesis is correct. Only when all the mathematical predictions are met does it become a theory. For instance you might hypothesize that putting a given volume of water into a beaker will cause it to reach the 50ml line after doing so two million times. You will then predict that half that volume of water will read 25ml, double 100ml, and 10x 500ml. You would calculate how much water would be displaced by the beaker and test that. You would publish and incorporate all the things the entire collective of scientific experts world over says must follow from that assertion and add them to the list. It might be years, decades, or centuries before we have the technology required to test all of them. But only when they have all been tested does it become a theory. In the process, you would have built a mathematical model describing the behavior in fact it could be said that model and not the hypothesis you derived it from is the theory. At no point will anything except the individual one off objective measurements EVER be considered a fact. In 10,000 years your model can perfectly predict every observed instance of water volume and STILL it won't be a fact in the science world. Frustration over the demotion of how established a theory is has led to many to incorrectly call them scientific facts.
And if in 10,001 years someone redefines physics in a way that differs from your theory, your theory doesn't stop being a theory. Your mathematical model will still continue to function just as well as it did the day before because math does not lie. The new theory might have a model that is more accurate or is accurate in some special circumstance that you didn't know existed previously but the old calculation still exists.
The theory of evolution is the best model we have for predicting genetic behavior over time. Every credible observation thus far has been consistent with it. When it is taught we aren't teaching children there is no (Gg)od we are teaching them a model that describes what they will see if they study the natural world. It isn't for science to reconcile religious beliefs with it. It is for individuals to reconcile their religious beliefs with the natural world that is accurately reflected in this scientific model.
The idea of a creator is generally believed to not be something that can be disproven through the scientific method or measured objectively and as such science does not assert there isn't one nor that there is one. Science merely ignores the question which has a result that is the same as if there weren't one. The variable is never put in any of the models. Because it isn't and because we can measure the effects of sub-atomic particles that have been in transit over billions of years accurately with models that don't include a deity, this leads many scientists to adopt the personal belief that there is no deity to consider. But that is still a personal belief. There is nothing anti-religion about science or any of its theories including evolution. Christians have the same right to learn and benefit from learning these products of science that atheists do.
Unfortunately, unlike in the scientific community there is a lot of material spread in rel
The power of the states is derived from the constitution, the power of municipalities from their states. So they are most definitely limited by the Constitution and bill of rights. The supreme court has found that this clause requires a complete separation of church and state. No doubt the requirement that none be allowed rather than all is because allowing offensive imagery is contrary to the general welfare which the Constitution also requires be protected.
Better to simply block everything than to have to allow black robed men perform a daily lunch time ritual hailing Satan in the middle of a flaming goat pentagram utilizing a nude virgin as the alter and making sacrifices of their own blood... on the grade school lawn. Blocking specific things amounts to state support of a religion and infringes on the rights of those black robed men blocking everything infringes on the rights of nobody.
"In God We Trust" was put on currency by Christians. The assertion by the state that there is a deity is the establishment of a state religion. Capitalizing the "G" is additional state support of a religion. It's appearance on currency is most definitely a violation of the separation of church and state. I don't think anyone ever really thought otherwise. The Christian lobby fought it's removal and everyone else simply thought removing it after so long felt like a petty attack for just for the sake of it.
"They were not choosing one religion over another, they invited everyone to decorate and the atheists decided not to decorate"
Atheism is not a religion to invite all religions is to favor religion over non-religion. Of course they had no decorations, they aren't some organized group, there is 'the atheists" there is only a bunch of individuals who aren't part of any of the causes. Those individuals would have something in common though, the lack of any desire to put decorations in support of something that is decidedly not a holiday for them. An invitation to decorate for Christmas is the support of christmas a holiday. While roughly the same time window is a holiday for people of many beliefs it is not significant window for those who lack beliefs or for many groups who do not recognize that as a religious holiday. How is the state giving the groups who see this as a holiday special use public grounds to celebrate it not a state promotion of those groups?
This isn't decided on a case by case basis. It was decided across the board. Let's not forget, the interpretation of separation of church and state didn't begin with atheists it began with christians offended by Wiccan and Satanism imagery and the teaching of evolution in schools. You couldn't ban non-christian without banning christian as well so banning everything was the simple solution (of course banning the cornerstone scientific theory of evolution from science class was not an option and not related to religion). The christian groups only want it reversed because the effort failed to get rid of evolution and so they want religion taught in schools and want the inappropriate support for religion they have received due the christian majority in the nation restored.
There is nothing in there granting you the right to public property for any purpose. It says they can't stop you from practicing your religion it doesn't say they have to let you do it on public lands. It isn't just a particular religion congress can't promote, but religion itself. Allowing you to put a natively on the court house lawn is something that many would contend is contrary to the general welfare. Atheisism is not a religion, barring all religious expression does not bar an atheists from staging a protest or showing other material on public lands that isn't in conflict with the general welfare. An atheist has no more right to express a religious view than you do there. It isn't a religious view to express that there are no valid religious views to express.
No small part of the separation of church and state view comes from Christians offended by Wiccans and Satanists (Christians would call them the same thing although one worships nature and the other the devil) having a right to practice their religion. And by trying to block the science of evolution from being taught in schools. I brought this issue to a head in my high school many years ago. I brought a Satanic bible to school, and after being told to stop continued bringing it to school. When challenged on it I pointed out there multiple copies of several versions of the Christian bible in the school library and they either had to allow everything or ban everything and if they did so that I would initiate a lawsuit. The christian extremists who ran the school had the christian bibles removed. A month later they snuck them back in but that is another story. You can't have it both ways, blocking what offends you and still being able to put up your religious imagery.
"Most people accept that children should't see pornography."
"There's no good answers here."
Accepting that the first view is completely illogical and without basis is a start. The advantage of preventing a machine that learns from exposure from being exposed to something it will encounter later is dubious at best. Unless you are trying to lead them to conclusions that wouldn't follow from natural exposure. In other words, brainwashing them.
"Most parents don't have the ability to restrict what their children see on the internet."
Correction, most parents are unwilling to accept the sacrifices required to restrict what their children see on the internet. Human supervision and restricting internet access outright rather than mere filtering can easily restrict what your children seen on the internet. If you aren't willing to do it yourself, have the babysitter do it. If they are old enough to not need a babysitter how do you reconcile feeling they are capable of handling unrestricted access to a house full of actually harmful and in some cases potentially fatal objects and substances while claiming they can't cope with mere imagery?
Christians of any flavor are hardly subjugated in the US. White anglo saxon males are certainly being repressed but if you want to further subdivide them with a religious view the most oppressed would be atheists. Atheists are evil. They are only tolerated at all because nobody gets to vote on who is right on science topics.
All the science can't really make things stop being magic. The "energy" that all the pieces are made of and the "force" that binds them are no less magic simply because we've given them labels and made rules for predicting and manipulating them. Someone who knows the ways of magic is a wizard. It's kind of amusing if you think about it, the quickest to scorn a supposed wizard would be our scientists and engineers but if scientists and engineers aren't our wizards who is?
The ancients derived their 10 sphere tree of life representing major divisions of a universal white light, everything else is a smaller sub division of the frequency represented by a given sphere. If you try working the above numerically you'll quickly arrive at the relationship that results in 10. The universal light is the fundamental property of the wave. Sometimes they said vibration, sometimes light. The discrete spheres, discrete elements within them (like people, rocks, etc) are those vibrations viewed as particles. The cosmic light itself is a sort of great quark with every other discrete element being a subdivision or reflection of that quark and therefore also a quark. The relationship innate to a quark is that the nature of the universe is infinite possibility that when observed collapses into finite elements. Because you can add any number of finite elements with infinity and the result is still infinity you can try to view an infinite universe as finite elements but you must have at least one infinite element or else the equation that represents your universe no longer is equal to infinity. That's why we so often arrive at irrational numbers.
The ancient magi of old knew all these. Not in these terms of course and they attempted to explain it all through the information they had in the day and ended up with the four corners of the world, the four elements and such. But the 4 was a given. Exists, does not exist, and might exist. You can't get simpler than that So three properties that are one thing. 3.1. But that means there is those three plus the thing itself. 3.14. That collection is another thing. 3.141. You can keep going... to infinity. But boy that number is sure beginning to look familiar... of course other paths of logic would have lead to different irrational numbers.
Up is fixed, even on a boat. You can always find noon with a sun dial. By analysis of the shadow cast by a peg (similar to a sundial) you can calculate if you've deviated from a course provided you know what time it is and have a reference position to check against. The vikings would have known what time it was at least once a day.
You can buy them all day long on ebay. They suspected these were used for navigation, this is interesting because it is physical evidence to support that.
10gb is only 500 seconds or 8.3 minutes of actually utilizing a 20mb/s connection. Most people spend what, a minimum of 4-6hrs online a day? There's a reason for opposing bandwidth caps. The bandwidth rating should always accurately reflect the bandwidth you can actually utilize without exceeding the capacity of the connection. Otherwise you can mislead consumers into thinking 100mb link to a 1.5mb uplink shared by 100 people gives them just as much as a 100mb link on a gigabit uplink shared by 10 people.
The dirty little secret is that a cap of 250gb a month is less data than you could have transferred with your 128kbps dsl link gave you 20 years ago.
Hotels overbook like ISP's oversubscribe. The difference is that hotels can't hide it if they overbooked too far and went beyond what they needed to utilize their capacity. ISP's can overbook as much as they please and the guests have no idea they are sleeping 6 to a room and for no reason beyond the ISP wanting to make more money with less infrastructure.
The idea is definitely to rake in the bucks on the $5/gb overages.
If it were a phone plan it wouldn't be a scam but it isn't, it's a home internet plan. I doubt they expect anyone to use less than 1GB a month, the idea is to make profits on the $5/GB overages.
If the law is unjust then it is those who punish people under it who need to absolved. It isn't wrong to break an unjust law, it is wrong to make or uphold one.
The meaning is found is increasing awareness of injustice. Actually suffering the punishment is beside the point. If an unconstitutional law is passed and you deliberately violate it so you can appeal all the way to the supreme court and have it overturned... and are successful, they don't lock you up afterward.
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"Seriously? Sure it does nothing to prove or disprove the existence of divine beings in general, but it very clearly and directly contradicts the creation mythos as described in the Bible in all but the most liberal "it's all an analogy for God creating the world" interpretation."
The Theory of Evolution does not do that. It is a model for predicting genetic outcomes. Predicting and interpreting genetic outcomes and therefore the only thing it does. Theories aren't really proven hypothesis, they are proven models that follow from hypothesis. A completely different and incompatible hypothesis from which that model is consistent can come along any day and evolution would not be demoted because it's math would still work. Both could be perfectly valid scientific theories. So if the hypothesis behind the functional model of evolution conflicts with something in the Bible, it is not science asserting the Bible is incorrect mere asserting that anything correct must explain the functional model.
Science the search for practical ways to interpret and manipulate the natural and observable world and not a search for truth. Philosophy is the search for truth. Science is merely one of its tools.
Not without coverage of all the other religions and such a course would need to be taught in much the same tone as a course on ancient mythology.
"What if it's a religious school?"
This entire conversation is about the public schools which are not legally permitted to be religious schools.
"Who are you to judge what is and is not equal?"
If you put an apple and an orange on a table he isn't permitted to assert they aren't equal? He isn't judging their relative merit but whether or not they are the same thing.
The purpose of a school is to pass along knowledge and facts. Religion is something you believe in spite of having no evidence and in spite of facts. It might be something a parent wants to pass on to their children but it is not knowledge.
"which includes promoting religion over atheism or vice versa"
Atheism it not a religion, it is what you have left without a religion. Teaching science is not promoting atheism. It is teaching a functional model that successfully predicts outcomes in genetics.
Not too far back there were a few cases where the courts determined the responsibilities existed despite the contract and ordered child support.
You can be certain that if the mother ever falls back on state aid the state will sue on her behalf. In fact it is a standard and forced procedure.
"I don't disagree at a conceptual level. However, much like my views on capital punishment, this is where I have to let actual real-life outcomes overrule academic theorising. There's always going to be a far larger cohort of "deadbeat dads" than there are women getting pregnant for such purposes."
Even without women getting pregnant deliberately the father has the right to make the choice that he isn't in a position to be able to ethically live up to the responsibility that comes with a child and that he doesn't believe it would be fair to the child to bring it into the world with the lifelong trauma of having a father that doesn't want it. Additionally, it is not merely 18 years, that is only the financial obligation. Parenthood is a life long obligation either for the life of the child or the father. The idea of the deadbeat dad is that he is equally responsible for bringing the child into the world but that is no longer true. He is equally responsible for causing the pregnancy. The mother has the ability to terminate that pregnancy or bring a child into the world and terminating the pregnancy is low risk and low impact certainly less so than going through with the pregnancy. Either way, she earned the risks with her part in getting pregnant and her decision of which option she choose. The fathers obligation should be no more than the minimum needed to end the pregnancy and thereby fix the damage he caused. If I total your pinto and my obligation is the cheapest fix or replacement option available, not the cost of the more expensive option you choose. A deadbeat dad by that modern standard is one who failed to pay the minimum amount required to terminate the pregnancy unless he makes the additional choice to want to bring a child into the world. Because unless he makes that deliberate choice he is nothing more than a sperm donor. Whichever parent(s) choose to bring a child into the world should have the obligations and rights that follow from that choice.
I don't think the father should be able to force an abortion but the woman should be required to inform him and he should have the option of providing the cost of the abortion and walking away with no future obligation or rights. In this way he meets his minimum obligation without forcing the woman to do anything. A woman should have no more right to force a continued obligation on him than he has to force her to have an abortion.
In the same token, if the mother doesn't want the child and the father does, she always has the right to choose the abortion anyway. Or she could choose to carry the child to term with the rights and responsibilities falling on the father at birth. It is really no different than any other surrogate scenario except she is acting as surrogate mother for the baby's actual father.
That would be fair and equitable, minimizing the ability to force obligation on either party. Knocking her up no longer means you have a reasonable expectation that you were risking a child, only a pregnancy. Turning a pregnancy into a child is a conscious choice and the one(s) who make it should carry the weight of responsibility for that choice.
I don't know about gay couples. I believe they usually legally adopt. But in most cases when sperm donars have been identified they have been required by the state to pay child support.
Equally simple solution, don't let him put his cock in there. Or take a pill.
Forcing her to keep a baby isn't reasonable. I agree on that. Forcing her to terminate the pregnancy isn't beyond reason.
We already have state forced invasive procedures and an abortion has a short recovery time and is fairly low risk. For instance, forced blood draws carry a risk of infection, blood born illness transmission, and even death but the state routinely forces them on individuals claiming the rights of the public trump the rights of the individual in those cases. It is certainly debatable if the very short term impact of the abortion procedure outweighs the lifelong infringement on the rights of the father and the lifelong emotional trauma to the child caused by having a father who doesn't want or love them.
A compromise might be to allow the father to legally request the abortion and supply the cost or proof he lacks the financial resources in which case the state covers it (generally an abortion is less costly for the state). He would never be told the result, at least not by the state. The woman would then have the option, she can keep the child and the money supplied for the abortion but the father has neither rights nor obligation or she can have the abortion. In fact, in order to preserve her right to privacy and to select her own healthcare provider the state should turn over the funds without directly knowing the result.
Of course you should have a similar procedure where the woman can declare she doesn't want the child. She then carries the child to term but her rights and obligations are lost at the birth and the father assumes full custody.
This way we no longer have a completely one sided scenario, either party can waive their rights and obligations without robbing the other of choice to the greatest extent possible short of requiring the woman to undergo a physical burden or risk she isn't willing to assume.
The other scenarios don't require any special new paperwork. If both want an abortion they work out the cost between them. If she wants an abortion but he doesn't then she can simply have the abortion because he has no right to force her to undergo pregnancy. If both want to keep it, they keep it.
Yes, but considering that those differences only exist for a short term before the birth of the child it is debatable if they are actually significant enough to warrant denying the right of one party to offset a lifelong impact on both themselves and the child.
At the very least the father should have the right to be informed of the pregnancy in a reasonable time and to legally request an abortion at his expense. The request would include the cost or proof of lack of financial ability and then the state would provide the sum. This then would leave the mother the choice to have the abortion or to accept full legal responsibility for the child should it be born and its care. Naturally this would also mean the father waiving all subsequent legal rights to the child. If she opted out of the abortion she gets the sum paid for the abortion and the father is never told the result... at least not by the state.
Also, we should have more public education for the benefit of children that stress the point that this action isn't a rejection of them, but a rejection of a cell with no brain or personality. Someone who doesn't know you obviously can't reject you in a personal sense. In fact, the father's choice would have been made without even knowing if the child would ever be born.
It isn't as good as being able to require the abortion but it is a reasonable compromise. The way things are done now are completely one sided. That is unjust. The obligations and rights involved are not one sided.
"No, that's recognition of the reality that a woman has a lot more at stake in a pregnancy than a man."
That isn't a reality, it isn't even accurate. The pregnancy is a trivial matter relative to the impact of having a child and the obligations that go with it and that impact applies to both father and mother.
"Indeed. One person cannot force another to undergo an invasive and traumatic medical procedure."
Actually, there are many cases where the rights of one person can outweigh the rights of another. For instance, it is rather common for the state to force a blood draw to gather DNA or test for drugs. That is an invasive procedure with the potential complications including transmission of blood born diseases, infection, and even death.
Considering that an abortion is low risk, low impact, and has a very short term impact. It isn't at all unreasonable to assert that the right of the father to avoid the lifelong obligation and the right of the potential child not to be fatherless and face a life of the disadvantages and emotional trauma this causes as trumping the mothers right to refuse to undergo the procedure. Just because a mother has rights doesn't mean there aren't other rights that take precedence. See yelling "fire" in a theater for the classic example of this principle.
"On the flipside, a woman who does not want children cannot force her husband to have a vasectomy or be castrated, so it seems that balances out."
She can take birth control, the morning after pill, or simply abstain from sex so that really isn't a meaningful point at all. She has both temporary and permanent choices available to her. Further, she has no legal or practical need to inform the man of them. The man does not have these choices. Some vasectomies are reversible in theory but in practice reversal often does not work.
Additionally, an abortion is a one off procedure with no impact after recovery. A vasectomy is not. Castration isn't even a relevant consideration. Mentioning it is an indication that you have an extreme and irrational emotional bias on the topic. If I'd noticed it I wouldn't have bothered typing a response.
Actually I'd contend that even a class on ancient mythology is really a violation of church and state. Such a class is cherry picking a few old religions with few modern followers and giving the strong implication that these beliefs are not correct. No such class covers all ancient religions and there are modern day polytheistic beliefs incorporating those same old deities believing them to be common across many religions and having existed then and now and continue to summon/communicate/and worship these entities.
That is the problem with going with the allow all religions practice vs allowing none. It will always either require a complex list of exceptions and in those exceptions and inclusions there is discrimination for or against one belief or another. The only practical option is to exclude religion entirely.
Atheists aren't a religion and aren't a group. They are everyone who isn't a member of one of the groups.
Last I checked science is based on the logical and mathematical observation of nature, it's discoveries are true for everyone whether they deny them or not... including those who believe in Christmas. I'll be willing to reconsider when you deny into existence a species without DNA common to other species or even counter a scientific theory with far less evidence supporting it like Newtonian physics. For instance, pray into existence a bubble of spiritual power and use it teleport to the moon.
Christian groups tend to use the word "theory" like it means reasonable speculation. That is a hypothesis. A hypothesis is speculation based on evidence. It is then shown mathematically what must also be true, mathematically, if this hypothesis is correct. Only when all the mathematical predictions are met does it become a theory. For instance you might hypothesize that putting a given volume of water into a beaker will cause it to reach the 50ml line after doing so two million times. You will then predict that half that volume of water will read 25ml, double 100ml, and 10x 500ml. You would calculate how much water would be displaced by the beaker and test that. You would publish and incorporate all the things the entire collective of scientific experts world over says must follow from that assertion and add them to the list. It might be years, decades, or centuries before we have the technology required to test all of them. But only when they have all been tested does it become a theory. In the process, you would have built a mathematical model describing the behavior in fact it could be said that model and not the hypothesis you derived it from is the theory. At no point will anything except the individual one off objective measurements EVER be considered a fact. In 10,000 years your model can perfectly predict every observed instance of water volume and STILL it won't be a fact in the science world. Frustration over the demotion of how established a theory is has led to many to incorrectly call them scientific facts.
And if in 10,001 years someone redefines physics in a way that differs from your theory, your theory doesn't stop being a theory. Your mathematical model will still continue to function just as well as it did the day before because math does not lie. The new theory might have a model that is more accurate or is accurate in some special circumstance that you didn't know existed previously but the old calculation still exists.
The theory of evolution is the best model we have for predicting genetic behavior over time. Every credible observation thus far has been consistent with it. When it is taught we aren't teaching children there is no (Gg)od we are teaching them a model that describes what they will see if they study the natural world. It isn't for science to reconcile religious beliefs with it. It is for individuals to reconcile their religious beliefs with the natural world that is accurately reflected in this scientific model.
The idea of a creator is generally believed to not be something that can be disproven through the scientific method or measured objectively and as such science does not assert there isn't one nor that there is one. Science merely ignores the question which has a result that is the same as if there weren't one. The variable is never put in any of the models. Because it isn't and because we can measure the effects of sub-atomic particles that have been in transit over billions of years accurately with models that don't include a deity, this leads many scientists to adopt the personal belief that there is no deity to consider. But that is still a personal belief. There is nothing anti-religion about science or any of its theories including evolution. Christians have the same right to learn and benefit from learning these products of science that atheists do.
Unfortunately, unlike in the scientific community there is a lot of material spread in rel
The power of the states is derived from the constitution, the power of municipalities from their states. So they are most definitely limited by the Constitution and bill of rights. The supreme court has found that this clause requires a complete separation of church and state. No doubt the requirement that none be allowed rather than all is because allowing offensive imagery is contrary to the general welfare which the Constitution also requires be protected.
Better to simply block everything than to have to allow black robed men perform a daily lunch time ritual hailing Satan in the middle of a flaming goat pentagram utilizing a nude virgin as the alter and making sacrifices of their own blood... on the grade school lawn. Blocking specific things amounts to state support of a religion and infringes on the rights of those black robed men blocking everything infringes on the rights of nobody.
"In God We Trust" was put on currency by Christians. The assertion by the state that there is a deity is the establishment of a state religion. Capitalizing the "G" is additional state support of a religion. It's appearance on currency is most definitely a violation of the separation of church and state. I don't think anyone ever really thought otherwise. The Christian lobby fought it's removal and everyone else simply thought removing it after so long felt like a petty attack for just for the sake of it.
"They were not choosing one religion over another, they invited everyone to decorate and the atheists decided not to decorate"
Atheism is not a religion to invite all religions is to favor religion over non-religion. Of course they had no decorations, they aren't some organized group, there is 'the atheists" there is only a bunch of individuals who aren't part of any of the causes. Those individuals would have something in common though, the lack of any desire to put decorations in support of something that is decidedly not a holiday for them. An invitation to decorate for Christmas is the support of christmas a holiday. While roughly the same time window is a holiday for people of many beliefs it is not significant window for those who lack beliefs or for many groups who do not recognize that as a religious holiday. How is the state giving the groups who see this as a holiday special use public grounds to celebrate it not a state promotion of those groups?
This isn't decided on a case by case basis. It was decided across the board. Let's not forget, the interpretation of separation of church and state didn't begin with atheists it began with christians offended by Wiccan and Satanism imagery and the teaching of evolution in schools. You couldn't ban non-christian without banning christian as well so banning everything was the simple solution (of course banning the cornerstone scientific theory of evolution from science class was not an option and not related to religion). The christian groups only want it reversed because the effort failed to get rid of evolution and so they want religion taught in schools and want the inappropriate support for religion they have received due the christian majority in the nation restored.
There is nothing in there granting you the right to public property for any purpose. It says they can't stop you from practicing your religion it doesn't say they have to let you do it on public lands. It isn't just a particular religion congress can't promote, but religion itself. Allowing you to put a natively on the court house lawn is something that many would contend is contrary to the general welfare. Atheisism is not a religion, barring all religious expression does not bar an atheists from staging a protest or showing other material on public lands that isn't in conflict with the general welfare. An atheist has no more right to express a religious view than you do there. It isn't a religious view to express that there are no valid religious views to express.
No small part of the separation of church and state view comes from Christians offended by Wiccans and Satanists (Christians would call them the same thing although one worships nature and the other the devil) having a right to practice their religion. And by trying to block the science of evolution from being taught in schools. I brought this issue to a head in my high school many years ago. I brought a Satanic bible to school, and after being told to stop continued bringing it to school. When challenged on it I pointed out there multiple copies of several versions of the Christian bible in the school library and they either had to allow everything or ban everything and if they did so that I would initiate a lawsuit. The christian extremists who ran the school had the christian bibles removed. A month later they snuck them back in but that is another story. You can't have it both ways, blocking what offends you and still being able to put up your religious imagery.
"Most people accept that children should't see pornography."
"There's no good answers here."
Accepting that the first view is completely illogical and without basis is a start. The advantage of preventing a machine that learns from exposure from being exposed to something it will encounter later is dubious at best. Unless you are trying to lead them to conclusions that wouldn't follow from natural exposure. In other words, brainwashing them.
"Most parents don't have the ability to restrict what their children see on the internet."
Correction, most parents are unwilling to accept the sacrifices required to restrict what their children see on the internet. Human supervision and restricting internet access outright rather than mere filtering can easily restrict what your children seen on the internet. If you aren't willing to do it yourself, have the babysitter do it. If they are old enough to not need a babysitter how do you reconcile feeling they are capable of handling unrestricted access to a house full of actually harmful and in some cases potentially fatal objects and substances while claiming they can't cope with mere imagery?
Christians of any flavor are hardly subjugated in the US. White anglo saxon males are certainly being repressed but if you want to further subdivide them with a religious view the most oppressed would be atheists. Atheists are evil. They are only tolerated at all because nobody gets to vote on who is right on science topics.
All the science can't really make things stop being magic. The "energy" that all the pieces are made of and the "force" that binds them are no less magic simply because we've given them labels and made rules for predicting and manipulating them. Someone who knows the ways of magic is a wizard. It's kind of amusing if you think about it, the quickest to scorn a supposed wizard would be our scientists and engineers but if scientists and engineers aren't our wizards who is?
The ancients derived their 10 sphere tree of life representing major divisions of a universal white light, everything else is a smaller sub division of the frequency represented by a given sphere. If you try working the above numerically you'll quickly arrive at the relationship that results in 10. The universal light is the fundamental property of the wave. Sometimes they said vibration, sometimes light. The discrete spheres, discrete elements within them (like people, rocks, etc) are those vibrations viewed as particles. The cosmic light itself is a sort of great quark with every other discrete element being a subdivision or reflection of that quark and therefore also a quark. The relationship innate to a quark is that the nature of the universe is infinite possibility that when observed collapses into finite elements. Because you can add any number of finite elements with infinity and the result is still infinity you can try to view an infinite universe as finite elements but you must have at least one infinite element or else the equation that represents your universe no longer is equal to infinity. That's why we so often arrive at irrational numbers.
The ancient magi of old knew all these. Not in these terms of course and they attempted to explain it all through the information they had in the day and ended up with the four corners of the world, the four elements and such. But the 4 was a given. Exists, does not exist, and might exist. You can't get simpler than that So three properties that are one thing. 3.1. But that means there is those three plus the thing itself. 3.14. That collection is another thing. 3.141. You can keep going... to infinity. But boy that number is sure beginning to look familiar... of course other paths of logic would have lead to different irrational numbers.
Up is fixed, even on a boat. You can always find noon with a sun dial. By analysis of the shadow cast by a peg (similar to a sundial) you can calculate if you've deviated from a course provided you know what time it is and have a reference position to check against. The vikings would have known what time it was at least once a day.
You can buy them all day long on ebay. They suspected these were used for navigation, this is interesting because it is physical evidence to support that.
10gb is only 500 seconds or 8.3 minutes of actually utilizing a 20mb/s connection. Most people spend what, a minimum of 4-6hrs online a day? There's a reason for opposing bandwidth caps. The bandwidth rating should always accurately reflect the bandwidth you can actually utilize without exceeding the capacity of the connection. Otherwise you can mislead consumers into thinking 100mb link to a 1.5mb uplink shared by 100 people gives them just as much as a 100mb link on a gigabit uplink shared by 10 people.
The dirty little secret is that a cap of 250gb a month is less data than you could have transferred with your 128kbps dsl link gave you 20 years ago.
Hotels overbook like ISP's oversubscribe. The difference is that hotels can't hide it if they overbooked too far and went beyond what they needed to utilize their capacity. ISP's can overbook as much as they please and the guests have no idea they are sleeping 6 to a room and for no reason beyond the ISP wanting to make more money with less infrastructure.
The idea is definitely to rake in the bucks on the $5/gb overages.
If it were a phone plan it wouldn't be a scam but it isn't, it's a home internet plan. I doubt they expect anyone to use less than 1GB a month, the idea is to make profits on the $5/GB overages.
If the law is unjust then it is those who punish people under it who need to absolved. It isn't wrong to break an unjust law, it is wrong to make or uphold one.
The meaning is found is increasing awareness of injustice. Actually suffering the punishment is beside the point. If an unconstitutional law is passed and you deliberately violate it so you can appeal all the way to the supreme court and have it overturned... and are successful, they don't lock you up afterward.
The law is unjust and they are engaging in a civil disobedience protest.