Yeah, unfortunately the whole internet thing was (of course) after I got out of grade school entirely. We had Apple ][s at my elementary school, IBM PCjrs at my middle school, more Apple ][s and one Mac Plus at the Jr. High I went to after they kicked me out of that middle school, some 286s and 386s at the first high school I went to, and one Mac Classic at the high school after I got kicked out of my first high school:)
PCjrs? What a crappy system. At least Apple ][s would teach you logic. Old DOS machines weren't capable of very much. But I'm shocked that your "good teachers" didn't know about Carmen Sandiego- wonderfull game for teaching history and social studies, and it ran on the Apple ][s just fine.
I didn't really learn shit about history or social studies, though, because I was a precocious little bastard and they couldn't (wouldn't take the time to) keep me busy, so I mouthed off and made a nuisance of myself.
That's where computers, and especially internet-enabled computers, can come in handy if the teacher isn't a complete technophobe. For the fast kids, assign them research topics that mirror school topics, and watch the minds blossom.
Sure, you and others have written how access to computers at your school enabled you to obtain computer skills. But did any of you learn history, math or social studies from them?
Math was at home on the TI99/4A during Grade School- although the computer lab at the high school did help with Trig because the computers could be used to plot standard trig functions. Not history or social studies- this was *before* the World Wide Web, unless you count writing papers for AP history on a word processor. But government and economics class used some pretty simple world generators (that one about Babylon in Government class, in economics class we got a stock market simulator).
They helped- but the 1980s really were the extreme begining of computer labs and computers in the classroom, and for that reason, most of the instructors simply didn't know what the hell to do with them. These days- I'd say a webpliance would be better in the first world. But you've got to remember that the third world is 20 years behind us, so 1980s era software would be a vast improvement over nothing.
Not too far from the truth- I'm sure a smart kid in the third world will quickly learn to hardware hack this laptop to do thinks like provide crank generation electric lights, run small electric water pumps, etc. Thus making himself rich enough to buy the rest.
Remember all those silly computer labs back in high schools in the '80s? Did anyone get any real educational value out of them?
I did- classes in just such a lab were my first introduction to Assembly Language and the PROPER use of spaghetti code (in miniassemblers, spaghetti code is useful because it allows you to edit your program directly in memory. So useful that indeed it's valueable to put in three NOPS after every 5th instruction so that if you need to you can insert a JSR later).
I'm sure it didn't help for the majority of students- but for the few who would otherwise be spending their time being beat up by jocks, it was a godsend.
They could use the profit from selling it at Fry's and CompUSA to pay for free laptops for the kiddies- and the increase in manufacturing demand might even lower the price more.
You can't be seriously so out of touch with political discourse to think liberalism, at any point along it's centuries of history, let alone as a whole tradition has anything to do with socialism. Socialists are anti-liberal almost by definition.
No, that's libertarianism, not liberalism...I'm talking the classing left-to-right spectrum, not just American politics.
Which force is usually left unsaid, for that would clearly expose the motivations behind ID. But we all know which force ID proponents have in mind - namely Jehovah, the god of Moses.
Really? And you know this how? Through some sort of mind reading? What about those who believe the UNIVERSE ITSELF to be an intelligent being? What about those who aren't of a Germanic bent in their transliteration of ancient Hebrew and call that God Yahweh? What about those who believe in Allah, or Krishna? To a certain extent these are all names for the same thing- but you certainly cannot group all ID believers as being Judaeo Christian.
Black Butte Porter from Deschutes Brewery beats the more mass produced stuff all hollow. But I don't know if you can find it anyplace outside of Oregon...
And yet- that's exactly how it works- you stretch your feelings out for a better perception of reality through your senses, use your biochemical computer between your ears to calculate the exact position the ball will be- and catch it. That's all emotions are after all, biochemical firing of neurons accomplishing calculations that the conscious mind can barely contemplate. I realize YOU don't understand this- but that's just another sign of why your religious addiciton to the scientific method is blinding you to the fact that there's a hell of a lot more to the world than just what objective evidence shows us.
You and nobody else. Negative evidence is evidence of something's absence.
Depends on the meaning of the word negative- words do have other meanings you know.:-) Or maybe you don't- I suppose it is possible you're one of those types as well, which would well explain your addiction to the myth of objective evidence (hint- objective evidence doesn't really exist; in the end all evidence becomes either subjective of unknowable).
You're just a religious wingnut troll - not even worth baiting for entertainment.
Nope- that's just transferance of your own shortcomings to me.
Go back to your sheltered ignorance and leave us thinking men alone.
I've yet to meet any "thinking men" in this discussion- and certainly anybody adicted to the concept of "objective evidence" has left all actual THOUGHT behind in favor of mere visceral materialism. I'm not the one who has chosen to ignore an entire class of evidence merely because it isn't "objective"- thus you're the sheltered one, choosing censorship when the subject gets hard for you to understand.
Because it's a discredited 19th century theory, duh.
Life coming from a soup of biochemicals is a discredited 19th century theory? I think you've got some problems there.
That's got nothing to do with god.
It's actually got everything to do with God- just not the anthromorphic God of the scriptures and myths, but rather the God of Science. You will know him not by direct experience, but by his works. All of science started as the search for the mind of this God, and without studying evolution, you won't find Him.
And you should go read his journal, where he confides that God may not be necessary, but despairs of telling anybody of this for fear of persecution.
We all have our doubts at times; that's a part of being human also. But doubts are not fact; and in reality, evolution is based on a set of physical laws that point to evidence of a creator.
The entire purpose of science is to answer the question How? and possibly What?
Not originally- that's a 20th century perversion of science towards the religion of atheism.
Subjective evidence? *spit* Show me the subjective part of Physics. It's really big and well studied, so there should be some in there if it exists at all.
Absolutely there is- you can go experience it yourself by playing baseball. The subjective part is in your ability to catch the ball, which you do entirely with emotions. You CAN also do it with equations- but by the time you've figured out the equations the ball will be far past you. The reality of the objective evidence is proved by the subjective emotions.
I like to call subjective evidence "negative evidence". You need objective evidence to prove the truth of a theory- but if all of your objective evidence fails to take into account one person's personal experiences, it won't matter, because that person will NEVER believe your objective evidence. The best science takes into account both- and when a piece of subjective evidence disproves what we previously thought from objective evidence, it's time to reformulate the theory and search for new objective evidence.
This "Fear of God" stuff is ridiculous as the short-age earthers creationist theories for that reason- EVERYBODY should be searching for truth, facts are useless without a philosophical framework to put them in, and worse yet, you might be fooling yourself into believing a fact that is NOT true because you fail to rectify your theories with other people's experiences.
No it isn't. SG speaks of creating microbes from nothing. Evolution (the part that addresses the very early history of the planet) posits protein strands with the ability to reproduce themselves arose out of a soup of life-friendly chemicals, more or less. This is at least something that can be replicated.
Really? Then why hasn't anybody replicated it? Still, I have no doubt that it can be replicated- but if so, it's because of the laws of nature that it can; and there WAS a writer of those laws.
Which is why science doesn't talk about God. Get it through your head: science doesn't care about god. It has nothing to say about gods. We just want you to stop pushing your god into science classrooms.
Why? What have you got against the idea that there are set physical laws that everything has to follow?
Hence it is not a theory. How are you going to test whether God did this? Ask him?
By asking the hard questions that atheists like to avoid by refering to "random chance".
Nope. They may have believed in a God (Darwin did not after going to Galapagos)
Incorrect- you need to read his second book, The Origin of Man.
but they didn't incorporate religion into their science.
Religion was the purpose *behind* their science. The entire purpose of the scientific method is to find a 2nd source of revelation outside of scripture. Without this purpose, science is meaningless, and worse yet, fails to be open minded enough to recognize the importance of subjective evidence.
True scientists respect only objective evidence. They don't actually pursue truth - that's for philosophers.
Such science is utterly useless- and actually often turns out to be wrong at best due to the lack of ability to fit in subjective evidence.
Bullshit. Id is not a theory according to the accepted definition: it is not falsifiable, nor can it be duplicated.
Neither can Spontaneous Generation- which is the theory the so-called evolutionists want in the classroom.
I am 'religiously' tied to the scientific method.
Which is in and of itself an error in this debate- the scientific method is entirely beside the point, you can't prove the non-existance of God with the scientific method.
What are you, insane?
Not at all. True Intelligent Design states that evolutionary mutation was the method by which God created the world. Want to know the mind of God as it pertains to human creation? Study evolution!
God has no place in science class.
Newton, Einstien, Darwin, Galileo, and Copernicus would all disagree with you on that one. So would most true scientists today- the atheists posing as scientists are not, their insistence that the only truth is objective evidence is rather laughable and stupid.
Irrelevant. ID is not a theory and has no place in a science class.
Thus proving yourself to be a religious fundamentalist. ID is a perfectly reasonable theory- but your mind is closed to it, because you are religously tied to a single version of science that claims that a lack of evidence is a lack of existance. You really don't know anything about the milder form or ID OR about evolution to make such a claim.
Who cares? ID is not science. Don't teach it in science class.
Neither is SG, and you shouldn't be teaching that in science class either. ID and evolution are exactly the same theory- that the method by which animals came about is through mutation. ID teaches this, and so does evolution- so what do you care which is taught, as long as the *basics* are taught? Or are you really just an radical atheist in disguise who can't stand the idea of a God for non-scientific reasons- and thus deny any possible evidence he *might* exist merely because the evidence points to the fact that he *might* exist? In both cases- that's not very scientific to deny that the evidence exists, to deny that the effect exists, without extraordinary proof to show that the effect doesn't exist.
And neither should be taught in science class. However, this discussion is about evolution, which doesn't require spontaneous generation.
That's what YOU think the discussion is about- but if that was all it was about, there'd be no problem with teaching science to kids. If it wasn't for the irrational insistence on radically different forms of SG (the theist "short earthers" and the atheist "Evolution is final proof that God Doesn't Exist") there would be no debate- the milder form of ID and evolution are completely compatible if you leave final origin debates out of it. Heck- ID is completely compatible with evolution as long as you leave the stupider short-earth form behind.
The only reason we're discussing it at all is because *some* teachers of evolution are stupid enough to insist on SG- the position that evolution means that God *does not exist*. And the Fundamentalist Christians go the other way- to insisting that evidence doesn't exist. This is not an argument about SCIENCE at all- as I said in the very begining, 45% of Americans agree with evolution outright when you add the numbers together, because MOST Intelligent Designer people believe in some form of evolution already. Only the radicals on the outside tails of the bell curve choose to debate.
Granted, but it's pretty easy for somebody who has a relatively good scan rate and understands speed reading to eliminate the noise- always has been for me.
This reminds me of my observation: A government of, by and for the masses is going to be pretty damn sub standard.
There have been times I would agree with you on that one- but not this time.
We need exceptional people to lead our country. If the masses are majority either uninformed or intent in believing what they FEEL, it's going to be hard to get the government we need to stay successful.
I've got news for you- the only difference between exceptional people and the non exceptional people are that the first fail more. Because they try more. And aren't afraid to fail. Everybody believes what they feel, because that's the way the human brain is wired- we think in emotions, in feelings. Think about what's going on in your head as you read this- can't you almost hear the sound of the words you are reading? That's emotion- that's feeling.
On that note, Washington's high ranks are made up of lawyers who push policy, not scientists who can tell us things like "we're exterminating fisheries we rely on for food", "global warming will screw with weather patterns we rely on to grow our food", etc...
It's worse than that- Washington's high ranks are made up of bribed lawyers who have accepted retainers from people whose livelihoods are at stake in the decision. They don't represent the average voter. They don't represent scientists. They represent money- and money is always about PROFIT, not SURVIVAL.
Seems remarkably short sighted to NOT have a top level "Department of Science"
Actually- sad to say- but yes, most religions, Christianity in paticular, split into sects over minor misunderstandings. Sola Fide, Sola Scriptura, and Sola Gracias are certainly the three pillars or Protestantism that encourages such misunderstandings.
Yep- and that's where I get my original premise- far too many fundamentalists still believe in the three pillars of protestantism- despite the fact that NONE of those three ideas are Biblical in origin.
That's because they're teaching ID as science, which it is not.
Neither is insistence on Spontaneous Generation. They're both religious, not scientific, points of view.
Nor do I, but nobody is discussing philosophy here.
The people insisting that Evolution is proof of Spontaneous Generation are. The short earthers are. In fact, just about everybody who goes beyond what is easily proveable in the laboratory are. So sorry, philosophy is EXACTLY what the ID vs. Evolution debate is about, not science. If you think it's about science, you've been blinded to what is really going on.
And the theory doesn't address that. There's no real way to determine what went on before the big bang, aside from watching one form elsewhere. Whether taht's even possible is up for debate.
Not among certain copyright holders it's not- they're so convinced it's not possible that apparently they're not willing to grant ID teaching schools access to their textbooks. When you stiffle debate, that's where the problem arises. I have no problem with debating the existance and nature of God or anything else in the universe. But when these fundamentalists of various stripes crop up and claim to have *the* singular only answer- and flunk students who dare to question that answer- that's where we have a problem.
So you say, but the theory doesn't address this, even indirectly.
Then how did order in a closed system (the universe being the ultimate closed system) come out of chaos in direct violation of the 2nd law of thermodynamics? Where did the constants that all of the physical laws we have discovered thus far depend upon come from? That's what I'm saying by an Effect- at planck time, something changed in the fireball that was the big bang- an infusion of energy from somewhere, an infusion of INFORMATION from something. That's your indirect pointer in the big bang. That's the effect. Now some would have us believe that we can have such an effect without a cause...but nobody has been able to show an effect without a cause anywhere else.
And when did the Big bang theory posit a specifric cause?
It didn't- it posited a specific EFFECT, which demands a specific cause. Certain equations in quantum mechanics appear to have effect follow cause, but NOTHING we know so far says that spontaneous generation of any sort is real, except for the doubts of a few athiests who when you scratch the surface, have other reasons for wanting spontaneous generation to be true.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, unfortunately the whole internet thing was (of course) after I got out of grade school entirely. We had Apple ][s at my elementary school, IBM PCjrs at my middle school, more Apple ][s and one Mac Plus at the Jr. High I went to after they kicked me out of that middle school, some 286s and 386s at the first high school I went to, and one Mac Classic at the high school after I got kicked out of my first high school :)
PCjrs? What a crappy system. At least Apple ][s would teach you logic. Old DOS machines weren't capable of very much. But I'm shocked that your "good teachers" didn't know about Carmen Sandiego- wonderfull game for teaching history and social studies, and it ran on the Apple ][s just fine.
I didn't really learn shit about history or social studies, though, because I was a precocious little bastard and they couldn't (wouldn't take the time to) keep me busy, so I mouthed off and made a nuisance of myself.
That's where computers, and especially internet-enabled computers, can come in handy if the teacher isn't a complete technophobe. For the fast kids, assign them research topics that mirror school topics, and watch the minds blossom.
Dijkstra was a mathematician- what the hell did he know about the mechanics of getting kids interested in technology?
Sure, you and others have written how access to computers at your school enabled you to obtain computer skills. But did any of you learn history, math or social studies from them?
Math was at home on the TI99/4A during Grade School- although the computer lab at the high school did help with Trig because the computers could be used to plot standard trig functions. Not history or social studies- this was *before* the World Wide Web, unless you count writing papers for AP history on a word processor. But government and economics class used some pretty simple world generators (that one about Babylon in Government class, in economics class we got a stock market simulator).
They helped- but the 1980s really were the extreme begining of computer labs and computers in the classroom, and for that reason, most of the instructors simply didn't know what the hell to do with them. These days- I'd say a webpliance would be better in the first world. But you've got to remember that the third world is 20 years behind us, so 1980s era software would be a vast improvement over nothing.
Not too far from the truth- I'm sure a smart kid in the third world will quickly learn to hardware hack this laptop to do thinks like provide crank generation electric lights, run small electric water pumps, etc. Thus making himself rich enough to buy the rest.
Remember all those silly computer labs back in high schools in the '80s? Did anyone get any real educational value out of them?
I did- classes in just such a lab were my first introduction to Assembly Language and the PROPER use of spaghetti code (in miniassemblers, spaghetti code is useful because it allows you to edit your program directly in memory. So useful that indeed it's valueable to put in three NOPS after every 5th instruction so that if you need to you can insert a JSR later).
I'm sure it didn't help for the majority of students- but for the few who would otherwise be spending their time being beat up by jocks, it was a godsend.
They could use the profit from selling it at Fry's and CompUSA to pay for free laptops for the kiddies- and the increase in manufacturing demand might even lower the price more.
You can't be seriously so out of touch with political discourse to think liberalism, at any point along it's centuries of history, let alone as a whole tradition has anything to do with socialism. Socialists are anti-liberal almost by definition.
No, that's libertarianism, not liberalism...I'm talking the classing left-to-right spectrum, not just American politics.
the most liberal of parties opposes what is effectively Free Speech
Since when are Democrats "the most liberal of parties"? What about socialists?
Which force is usually left unsaid, for that would clearly expose the motivations behind ID. But we all know which force ID proponents have in mind - namely Jehovah, the god of Moses.
Really? And you know this how? Through some sort of mind reading? What about those who believe the UNIVERSE ITSELF to be an intelligent being? What about those who aren't of a Germanic bent in their transliteration of ancient Hebrew and call that God Yahweh? What about those who believe in Allah, or Krishna? To a certain extent these are all names for the same thing- but you certainly cannot group all ID believers as being Judaeo Christian.
Black Butte Porter from Deschutes Brewery beats the more mass produced stuff all hollow. But I don't know if you can find it anyplace outside of Oregon...
BWAHAHAHAHAH! That's priceless
:-) Or maybe you don't- I suppose it is possible you're one of those types as well, which would well explain your addiction to the myth of objective evidence (hint- objective evidence doesn't really exist; in the end all evidence becomes either subjective of unknowable).
And yet- that's exactly how it works- you stretch your feelings out for a better perception of reality through your senses, use your biochemical computer between your ears to calculate the exact position the ball will be- and catch it. That's all emotions are after all, biochemical firing of neurons accomplishing calculations that the conscious mind can barely contemplate. I realize YOU don't understand this- but that's just another sign of why your religious addiciton to the scientific method is blinding you to the fact that there's a hell of a lot more to the world than just what objective evidence shows us.
You and nobody else. Negative evidence is evidence of something's absence.
Depends on the meaning of the word negative- words do have other meanings you know.
You're just a religious wingnut troll - not even worth baiting for entertainment.
Nope- that's just transferance of your own shortcomings to me.
Go back to your sheltered ignorance and leave us thinking men alone.
I've yet to meet any "thinking men" in this discussion- and certainly anybody adicted to the concept of "objective evidence" has left all actual THOUGHT behind in favor of mere visceral materialism. I'm not the one who has chosen to ignore an entire class of evidence merely because it isn't "objective"- thus you're the sheltered one, choosing censorship when the subject gets hard for you to understand.
Because it's a discredited 19th century theory, duh.
Life coming from a soup of biochemicals is a discredited 19th century theory? I think you've got some problems there.
That's got nothing to do with god.
It's actually got everything to do with God- just not the anthromorphic God of the scriptures and myths, but rather the God of Science. You will know him not by direct experience, but by his works. All of science started as the search for the mind of this God, and without studying evolution, you won't find Him.
And you should go read his journal, where he confides that God may not be necessary, but despairs of telling anybody of this for fear of persecution.
We all have our doubts at times; that's a part of being human also. But doubts are not fact; and in reality, evolution is based on a set of physical laws that point to evidence of a creator.
The entire purpose of science is to answer the question How? and possibly What?
Not originally- that's a 20th century perversion of science towards the religion of atheism.
Subjective evidence? *spit* Show me the subjective part of Physics. It's really big and well studied, so there should be some in there if it exists at all.
Absolutely there is- you can go experience it yourself by playing baseball. The subjective part is in your ability to catch the ball, which you do entirely with emotions. You CAN also do it with equations- but by the time you've figured out the equations the ball will be far past you. The reality of the objective evidence is proved by the subjective emotions.
I like to call subjective evidence "negative evidence". You need objective evidence to prove the truth of a theory- but if all of your objective evidence fails to take into account one person's personal experiences, it won't matter, because that person will NEVER believe your objective evidence. The best science takes into account both- and when a piece of subjective evidence disproves what we previously thought from objective evidence, it's time to reformulate the theory and search for new objective evidence.
This "Fear of God" stuff is ridiculous as the short-age earthers creationist theories for that reason- EVERYBODY should be searching for truth, facts are useless without a philosophical framework to put them in, and worse yet, you might be fooling yourself into believing a fact that is NOT true because you fail to rectify your theories with other people's experiences.
No it isn't. SG speaks of creating microbes from nothing. Evolution (the part that addresses the very early history of the planet) posits protein strands with the ability to reproduce themselves arose out of a soup of life-friendly chemicals, more or less. This is at least something that can be replicated.
Really? Then why hasn't anybody replicated it? Still, I have no doubt that it can be replicated- but if so, it's because of the laws of nature that it can; and there WAS a writer of those laws.
Which is why science doesn't talk about God. Get it through your head: science doesn't care about god. It has nothing to say about gods. We just want you to stop pushing your god into science classrooms.
Why? What have you got against the idea that there are set physical laws that everything has to follow?
Hence it is not a theory. How are you going to test whether God did this? Ask him?
By asking the hard questions that atheists like to avoid by refering to "random chance".
Nope. They may have believed in a God (Darwin did not after going to Galapagos)
Incorrect- you need to read his second book, The Origin of Man.
but they didn't incorporate religion into their science.
Religion was the purpose *behind* their science. The entire purpose of the scientific method is to find a 2nd source of revelation outside of scripture. Without this purpose, science is meaningless, and worse yet, fails to be open minded enough to recognize the importance of subjective evidence.
True scientists respect only objective evidence. They don't actually pursue truth - that's for philosophers.
Such science is utterly useless- and actually often turns out to be wrong at best due to the lack of ability to fit in subjective evidence.
Bullshit. Id is not a theory according to the accepted definition: it is not falsifiable, nor can it be duplicated.
Neither can Spontaneous Generation- which is the theory the so-called evolutionists want in the classroom.
I am 'religiously' tied to the scientific method.
Which is in and of itself an error in this debate- the scientific method is entirely beside the point, you can't prove the non-existance of God with the scientific method.
What are you, insane?
Not at all. True Intelligent Design states that evolutionary mutation was the method by which God created the world. Want to know the mind of God as it pertains to human creation? Study evolution!
God has no place in science class.
Newton, Einstien, Darwin, Galileo, and Copernicus would all disagree with you on that one. So would most true scientists today- the atheists posing as scientists are not, their insistence that the only truth is objective evidence is rather laughable and stupid.
Fucking idiot.
I'm not the solipsist in this debate.
Irrelevant. ID is not a theory and has no place in a science class.
Thus proving yourself to be a religious fundamentalist. ID is a perfectly reasonable theory- but your mind is closed to it, because you are religously tied to a single version of science that claims that a lack of evidence is a lack of existance. You really don't know anything about the milder form or ID OR about evolution to make such a claim.
Who cares? ID is not science. Don't teach it in science class.
Neither is SG, and you shouldn't be teaching that in science class either. ID and evolution are exactly the same theory- that the method by which animals came about is through mutation. ID teaches this, and so does evolution- so what do you care which is taught, as long as the *basics* are taught? Or are you really just an radical atheist in disguise who can't stand the idea of a God for non-scientific reasons- and thus deny any possible evidence he *might* exist merely because the evidence points to the fact that he *might* exist? In both cases- that's not very scientific to deny that the evidence exists, to deny that the effect exists, without extraordinary proof to show that the effect doesn't exist.
And neither should be taught in science class. However, this discussion is about evolution, which doesn't require spontaneous generation.
That's what YOU think the discussion is about- but if that was all it was about, there'd be no problem with teaching science to kids. If it wasn't for the irrational insistence on radically different forms of SG (the theist "short earthers" and the atheist "Evolution is final proof that God Doesn't Exist") there would be no debate- the milder form of ID and evolution are completely compatible if you leave final origin debates out of it. Heck- ID is completely compatible with evolution as long as you leave the stupider short-earth form behind.
The only reason we're discussing it at all is because *some* teachers of evolution are stupid enough to insist on SG- the position that evolution means that God *does not exist*. And the Fundamentalist Christians go the other way- to insisting that evidence doesn't exist. This is not an argument about SCIENCE at all- as I said in the very begining, 45% of Americans agree with evolution outright when you add the numbers together, because MOST Intelligent Designer people believe in some form of evolution already. Only the radicals on the outside tails of the bell curve choose to debate.
Granted, but it's pretty easy for somebody who has a relatively good scan rate and understands speed reading to eliminate the noise- always has been for me.
This reminds me of my observation: A government of, by and for the masses is going to be pretty damn sub standard.
There have been times I would agree with you on that one- but not this time.
We need exceptional people to lead our country. If the masses are majority either uninformed or intent in believing what they FEEL, it's going to be hard to get the government we need to stay successful.
I've got news for you- the only difference between exceptional people and the non exceptional people are that the first fail more. Because they try more. And aren't afraid to fail. Everybody believes what they feel, because that's the way the human brain is wired- we think in emotions, in feelings. Think about what's going on in your head as you read this- can't you almost hear the sound of the words you are reading? That's emotion- that's feeling.
On that note, Washington's high ranks are made up of lawyers who push policy, not scientists who can tell us things like "we're exterminating fisheries we rely on for food", "global warming will screw with weather patterns we rely on to grow our food", etc...
It's worse than that- Washington's high ranks are made up of bribed lawyers who have accepted retainers from people whose livelihoods are at stake in the decision. They don't represent the average voter. They don't represent scientists. They represent money- and money is always about PROFIT, not SURVIVAL.
Seems remarkably short sighted to NOT have a top level "Department of Science"
Profit is nothing if not short sighted.
Actually- sad to say- but yes, most religions, Christianity in paticular, split into sects over minor misunderstandings. Sola Fide, Sola Scriptura, and Sola Gracias are certainly the three pillars or Protestantism that encourages such misunderstandings.
Yep- and that's where I get my original premise- far too many fundamentalists still believe in the three pillars of protestantism- despite the fact that NONE of those three ideas are Biblical in origin.
That's because they're teaching ID as science, which it is not.
Neither is insistence on Spontaneous Generation. They're both religious, not scientific, points of view.
Nor do I, but nobody is discussing philosophy here.
The people insisting that Evolution is proof of Spontaneous Generation are. The short earthers are. In fact, just about everybody who goes beyond what is easily proveable in the laboratory are. So sorry, philosophy is EXACTLY what the ID vs. Evolution debate is about, not science. If you think it's about science, you've been blinded to what is really going on.
And the theory doesn't address that. There's no real way to determine what went on before the big bang, aside from watching one form elsewhere. Whether taht's even possible is up for debate.
Not among certain copyright holders it's not- they're so convinced it's not possible that apparently they're not willing to grant ID teaching schools access to their textbooks. When you stiffle debate, that's where the problem arises. I have no problem with debating the existance and nature of God or anything else in the universe. But when these fundamentalists of various stripes crop up and claim to have *the* singular only answer- and flunk students who dare to question that answer- that's where we have a problem.
So you say, but the theory doesn't address this, even indirectly.
Then how did order in a closed system (the universe being the ultimate closed system) come out of chaos in direct violation of the 2nd law of thermodynamics? Where did the constants that all of the physical laws we have discovered thus far depend upon come from? That's what I'm saying by an Effect- at planck time, something changed in the fireball that was the big bang- an infusion of energy from somewhere, an infusion of INFORMATION from something. That's your indirect pointer in the big bang. That's the effect. Now some would have us believe that we can have such an effect without a cause...but nobody has been able to show an effect without a cause anywhere else.
And when did the Big bang theory posit a specifric cause?
It didn't- it posited a specific EFFECT, which demands a specific cause. Certain equations in quantum mechanics appear to have effect follow cause, but NOTHING we know so far says that spontaneous generation of any sort is real, except for the doubts of a few athiests who when you scratch the surface, have other reasons for wanting spontaneous generation to be true.