First, taxes are not cut "only for people who make more than X". In fact, the more money you make, the higher your tax bracket. How is it not discrimination for you to pay 15% and someone else to pay 31%? And how is it discrimination if they are given a break, so that they only pay 28%? They're still paying almost double the percentage that you are (and probably many times the actual dollar amount that you are). How is *that* fair?
Further, what kind of bullshit is "either you think taxes are wrong and cut them all or you don't"? I think paying for schooling for your shitty kids isn't justified. I think paying for all the government pork and private industry handouts isn't justified. I think paying to provide government jobs just to bolster employment numbers isn't justified. I think a whole slew of social programs aren't justified. I think the trillions spent on bullshit military action aren't justified. That doesn't mean that taxes pertaining to properly defending the country and doing other vital things that can **only** be done by the collective power of the people aren't justified. Just because one or ten things are a just use of people's taxes doesn't give carte blanche to spray it around like unlimited holy jizz.
As for the final statement. I don't see what that has to do with anything. So $250k is five times an average salary? So what? What if it were ten times? Or a million times? How is that fucking relevant?
Oh, and while we're talking about this supposed "discrimination", the top 10% of tax payers (which includes people making surprisingly little -- not just millionaires, but people in fairly regular every day jobs like doctors and programmers and QA and sales guys) account for something ridiculous like 50% or more of all taxes received by the government. I think they're carrying their fair share and then some, just fine.
Yeah? Well, I know a guy who is pretty bad off and sees anything over $20k as rich. He thinks YOU should spend a lot more in taxes.
How about you stop slapping dicks over how much people make and how unfair it is that they make that and recognize that our money is wasted and that people can do more with their own money and that they deserve as much money as they can keep? That $100k isn't worth so much after you pay taxes. On $100k/yr, you are still having significant budget concerns when it comes to buying a house and funding a car. I can't even imagine how one further manages to raise children and care for a spouse on that amount. And fund retirement while you're at it.
Rich is a state in which your regular income no longer factors into your survival into the future. A point at which your future is taken care of and you are no longer dependent on more income. Being able to afford a mortgate on a typical $250k house and a payment on a car is hardly "rich".
Also, rather than this bullshit about "tax holiday", how about we just stop catering to every pansy out there and fucking CUT the god damned spending?
You're a fucking moron. If I'm a software engineer and I spend all my time busting my ass for a living and pull down a little over six figures and my wife is in a similar field and pulls down similar cash, exactly whose backs are we earning the money off of? Just because you flip burgers for a living and look at everything in life as an opportunity to get others to give you shit rather than earning it doesn't mean that the rest of us didn't fucking earn it and that we don't work fucking hard for our money and deserve it over dishing it out to bullshit programs and wastes of flesh. I pay enough in taxes every year that I could pay for two years at a private university for a kid just on the tax bill alone. What the fuck do you contribute other than bitching about how others aren't paying enough?
I wish more people cut the "if ya don't vote ya can't complain!" bullshit. (Not saying that you're doing that). It's a meaningless and thoughtless bumper-sticker response every few years that people spew. They're better than everyone else, because they voted. They may be ignorant. They may have voted because their guy is going to cram god down everyone's throat or give them more social security rather than voting on principals that strengthen the foundation of our society (freedom, etc). They may not have even thought about who they were going to vote for until that very morning. And they probably gathered a lot of other people to get them out to vote. But god damn it, they voted and that makes them fucking saints or something. Because it doesn't matter if you're smart or stupid or doing damage or the only thing you're doing is wasting your time getting even more stupid people out to vote . . . all that matters is that you fucking earned a blue ribbon signifying participation, like back in grade school. Whoo gold star!
Libertarians are often portrayed as nutjobs, because they don't have enough bias toward religion, corporations, or other entities. Suggesting that people be free to do what they please so long as it doesn't directly negatively impact another unwilling person is just nutty as hell. We need people who talk to jesus in the Oval office before making important decisions and spend their time deciding what church to attend in DC or which lobbyist to accept contributions from.
Yeah, Ron Paul comes across as a little nutty sometimes, but they would portray ANY libertarian that way. They just aren't biased enough in favor of controlling people's lives like the left and right are.
Our Constitution also protects against unfounded and unwarranted search and siezure, which is trampled on more every day. It also guarantees the right of the state to determine its laws and future rather than the government (ie, not a Rome-as-the-center-of-it-all type government), which is trampled on further every day from attempts to tax services across state lines to the tens of thousands of FEDERAL laws and the recent health care laws.
Without anyone willing to defend it, the Constitution is just a charming piece of sheepskin with about as much value as toilet paper.
Anyone who went into 2008 thinking "things are going to be really different once we elect a new president!" was incredibly naive and a lot of us told the daydreamers exactly that. And guess what? The next president isn't going to make things really different, either. No matter who he or she is. And the one after that and the one after that and so on. On the occasions that things truly are different or something wonderful actually does occur, the president in office at the time is merely the beneficiary of fortunate coincidence. To be a viable presidential candidate, you must have already been vetted by the same aristocracy that has vetted all the ones before it and only once you have received their blessing (financially and otherwise) is your bid to make bullshit promises and pandering to the American public the next action.
I don't exactly know what "Model UN" is, but if it's supposed to be some sort of high school aged indoctrination into UN activities, why not TRULY make it model the real thing, by having the few fairly decent and affluent kids foot the bill for everything, while letting three or four of the school's biggest troublemakers and bullies head the most vital and important committees on everything and give them veto rights against everything that comes up. Then give a few people a bunch of blue helmets and nerf bats to stand around with and "monitor elections" and if any sort of trouble breaks out, they run and hide in a janitorial closet until the coast is clear.
The great internet nerfing of 2011+, where we sanitize everything for the safety of pwecious wittle eyes has finally begun. Next step is to enforce a requirement that all "obscene" content be moved to xxx (and we all know how "obscene" is so loosely and meaninglessly defined). After that, simply using vulgar language or questionable images and comments online becomes a crime of corrupting a minor. Someome, please monitor my children as I'm incapable of parenting and accepting the world for what it is! Change everything to fit around my pwecious wittle baby!
The only thing I've seen the government do is blow tens of millions of dollars on Drupal websites that should have cost a few thousand dollars, to present half-broken interfaces that supposedly expose all sorts of government data, spearheaded by that Vivek Kundra moron who doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground, based on all the idiotic statements he's made that sound like a marketing guy trying to talk-up a technology he's only briefly read about in a pamphlet.
By your logic, it is then okay to be a police officer and a rapist, as long as you compartmentalize and don't do your raping on the job?
It's hard to take one seriously in a job based on refuting explanations with no rational, testable, provable evidence when one of the most fundamental elements of existence is treated with "well, it says it in a book from a couple thousand years ago, so it's gotta be true and that's good enough for me!".
I can see a vet being religious. I can even perhaps see a medical doctor being religious. These people are essentially practitioners and not explorers and knowledge expanders. For someone whose primary function is to seek out and study new information and test and confirm new hypothesis to accept something so irrational does not make sense to me and it often makes me wonder if those people who claim to be religious scientists are really just some sort of BYU guys edging their way into the field to muck-rake (kind of like how BYU pumps out really good lawyers to do their bidding) or if they just sort of say they're religious the same way my mom would say she's religious, even though she hasn't really ever gone to church in her adult life and doesn't actually do anything religious ever. Sort of like a vestige appendage that these scientists just haven't gotten the gumption to chop off yet, but don't actually use.
Kind of like how I wonder whether most people I encounter day to day are religious, like they say they are, or if they're just atheists who are afraid to admit it. I mean, after all, if you REALLY believed that you were going to be tortured and in agony in a fiery furnace in hell for eternity after you die if you don't obey the bible, surely you would never do anything wrong, right? I mean, fucking the neighbor's wife might be really tempting, but not tempting enough to risk ENDLESS AGONY, surely? And fuck, if you really truly believed all that shit was real (as people claim to) then you wouldn't even take the *smallest* risk. You'd be adhering to every rule in the bible, like stoning adulterers and not wearing mixed textiles.
That's kind of like saying that "I'm a qualified neuroscientist, except for the part where I believe that the brain is filled with marigold flowers and is imbued upon birth with the magic of dragon breath which keeps it functioning".
No, because "faith" is given an absolutely irrefutable pass. It's the reason we chuckle at a kid asking Santa Clause for presents, but we look upon someone praying for their sports team to win or for their child to recover from a serious illness (perhaps because they don't believe in doctors) as a highly revered activity for which no criticism or judgement can be levied. It's why someone who says "I communicate with aliens" goes to a mental institution, while a president (the last one, in fact) says he talks to jesus every day and that helps him make his worldly decisions.
I have absolutely no problem with people having the freedom to believe what they wish, but society needs to stop playing along and feeling obligated to treat it seriously -- or worse, with some sort of reverence.
You can, but it's dishonest. Why do you subject one thing to scientific process and rational and logical scrutiny while they other is blindly accepted, because you sat in a pew for most of your childhood and had a two thousand year old book filled with thousands of thin pages read to you? Suggesting that the Catholic church supporting something therefore validates it only kind of further invalidates *that*. Where's the integrity in a scientist not accepting evolution as the most commonly held modern theory, because an old guy in the Vatican said it's okay to accept the theory?
They aren't laughed out for considering something like that, because religion is the one "though" system given absolute exception by all in the world (at least in America). It is like a fucking nuclear strike option. All you have to do in any situation is pull the "BUT IT'S MY FAITH!" cord and you win. Every other form of stupidity and irrationality is laughed at. But if you hide behind the cover of "IT'S MY FAITH!", you absolve yourself of any criticism, whatsoever. The proof is in the fact that we even have to have these debates over whether theology should be taught as part of science (hell, why not make theology a part of math and engineering and compute repair, while we're associating and injecting it into things that are not relevant to it?).
We need to stop validating religion by treating it serious in discussions like these. People have the right to believe whatever they want, however irrational or stupid it may be. That doesn't mean the rest of us need to treat it seriously. By responding to it as legislatures and educational institutions are, they are giving it unwarranted credibility. What should have been a simple "what the fuck are you talking about? if you want to teach creationism, do it in church and theology classes" has now been treated with soft gloves by the rest of us (so afraid to appear intolerant, mind you) for so long that it's snuck its way into "well, a magical sky being is just as valid a scientific explanation as any other and therefor belongs as part of scientific instruction!".
Your professors were either idiots or disingenuous. You can not apply any scientific method to religion and if you are a scientific man, you require evidence to reach conclusions and you desire to seek answers to the world. The two could not be more opposed. Rather than believing "it was all part of some grand creator's design", an intellectually honest person who subscribes to the scientific method would say that there is no way to know such things and it is fruitless to speculate.
The problem is that religion is not science and religion offers no scientific explanation of the world and therefore has no place in science. You can teach all the theology you want, in theology classes. Stay the fuck out of the science classes.
Not accepting evolution is not the same thing as asserting a magical explanation to the unknown. How is it so confusing for people to grasp the difference? You can not support the scientific method while simultaneously accepting the irrational and unprovable as an explanation of the unknown. I don't know that there is no creator. I can not prove that there is no creator. However, there is no evidence or proof to suggest that there is one, so the discussion of a creator becomes moot and any belief in it is therefor absolutely and entirely unfounded.
The inherent difference here is that a scientist has the integrity to simply say "we don't know". Just because I don't know what lays across the vast sea beyond the shores of my home doesn't mean I should devise a story about dragons living there and swallowing ships that venture too far.
Nobody would refuse to hire Einstein as a scientist for saying "God does not play dice with the universe", because despite what religious nutcases try to accomplish by trotting that quote out from Einstein is false. They try to use it as a "see, even Einstein believed in God!", which is untrue. In fact, most of Einstein's comments on God and Religion were that he could take neither seriously and that they are figment's of man's imagination. When he referred to "god" in quotes such as you used, he was doing so as a relatable substitute for "the cosmos" or "the universe".
Anyway, saying that one can not disprove a creator is one thing. Making a positive assertion that there is a creator and it is an explanation to things is the opposite of scientific and would no more suit a true scientist than being a criminal suits a cop. You either require evidence and understanding to reach conclusions on things or you irrationally accept explanations which undermine the very profession you belong to (or your profession undermines the very belief system you claim to adhere to -- one or the other).
Of course, those same people demanding an "open mind" wouldn't dare accept the same unfounded "explanations" of any other religion modern or pre-dating us (Wiccans, Pagans, Greek and Roman mythologies, indian or asian or norse or african mythologies and so on).
The primary difference between a religious person and a scientist -- and why there can be no honest mixing of the two -- is that one seeks to know things and admits when things are unknown. The other picks and chooses what known things to accept and makes things up for the rest. Making shit up, while not unheard of in the field of science (such as the guy who falsified studies to generate the fear against vaccinations), is not an accepted scientific principal.
So leave your god explanations for the theology majors. Leave the scientific for the science majors.
Scientific research is based on the idea that everything that takes place is determined by laws of nature, and therefore this holds for the action of people. For this reason, a research scientist will hardly be inclined to believe that events could be influenced by a prayer, i.e. by a wish addressed to a Supernatural Being. -- Albert Einstein, 1936, responding to a child who wrote and asked if scientists pray. Source: Albert Einstein: The Human Side, Edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffmann
The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. -- Albert Einstein, in a letter responding to philosopher Eric Gutkind, who had sent him a copy of his book Choose Life: The Biblical Call to Revolt; quoted from James Randerson, "Childish Superstition: Einstein's Letter Makes View of Religion Relatively Clear: Scientist's Reply to Sell for up to £8,000, and Stoke Debate over His Beliefs" The Guardian, (13 May 2008)
And a quote more appropriate for this story: The minority, the ruling class at present, has the schools and press, usually the Church as well, under its thumb. This enables it to organize and sway the emotions of the masses, and make its tool of them. -- Albert Einstein, letter to Sigmund Freud (30 July 1932)
The primary tenet of science is the basis of knowledge according to the scientific process. Having faith (accepting as truth a thing that by its very nature can not be tested or proven) as an explanation for a scientific understanding of the world is about the most minimal requirement you could place on a scientist.
Science is by its core open to all possibilities, given you provide a sound explanation backed up by evidence. You'll notice that when science uncovers new evidence in the world that disproves old theories, we readily abandoned those old false understandings. Religion is the opposite. It is a thing that one clings to in spite of all rational thought and logic. It is directly opposed to the tenets of science. You might work in the scientific field and believe that "a magical sky being wished the world into creation and every animal upon it", but you are not a scientist any more than an atheist in a church pulpit is a priest.
Imagine if your neurosurgeon said that while he is a doctor and a neurosurgeon, he doesn't accept opening up the brain and working on it with medical tools founded on our current medical knowledge. Instead, he believes in rubbing your temples and chanting and dabbing holy water on your forehead.
You even clarify the situation with your final sentence. That science is about facts and your opinions or beliefs don't matter -- only the facts to. How can someone expected to fulfill that obligation also be the same person who accepts the completely irrational as an explanation? It's fine to say "I don't fully accept evolution" or "I'm not sold on the big bang thing". It's another to say "because a two thousand year old book told me that a magic sky god waved his hand and all occurred according to his wishes".
You mean, it shows that the government spends resources and tax payer money helping Microsoft clean up its problem (Windows botnets) that any user can protect themselves against fairly simply.
Send a DMCA notice to Google and the other company and take the other company to court. If Google doesn't respond by removal as per DMCA rules, take them to court, too. These tools exist, so use them. They're not *just* around for the MPAA, RIAA, and BSAA to use.
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First, taxes are not cut "only for people who make more than X". In fact, the more money you make, the higher your tax bracket. How is it not discrimination for you to pay 15% and someone else to pay 31%? And how is it discrimination if they are given a break, so that they only pay 28%? They're still paying almost double the percentage that you are (and probably many times the actual dollar amount that you are). How is *that* fair?
Further, what kind of bullshit is "either you think taxes are wrong and cut them all or you don't"? I think paying for schooling for your shitty kids isn't justified. I think paying for all the government pork and private industry handouts isn't justified. I think paying to provide government jobs just to bolster employment numbers isn't justified. I think a whole slew of social programs aren't justified. I think the trillions spent on bullshit military action aren't justified. That doesn't mean that taxes pertaining to properly defending the country and doing other vital things that can **only** be done by the collective power of the people aren't justified. Just because one or ten things are a just use of people's taxes doesn't give carte blanche to spray it around like unlimited holy jizz.
As for the final statement. I don't see what that has to do with anything. So $250k is five times an average salary? So what? What if it were ten times? Or a million times? How is that fucking relevant?
Oh, and while we're talking about this supposed "discrimination", the top 10% of tax payers (which includes people making surprisingly little -- not just millionaires, but people in fairly regular every day jobs like doctors and programmers and QA and sales guys) account for something ridiculous like 50% or more of all taxes received by the government. I think they're carrying their fair share and then some, just fine.
Yeah? Well, I know a guy who is pretty bad off and sees anything over $20k as rich. He thinks YOU should spend a lot more in taxes.
How about you stop slapping dicks over how much people make and how unfair it is that they make that and recognize that our money is wasted and that people can do more with their own money and that they deserve as much money as they can keep? That $100k isn't worth so much after you pay taxes. On $100k/yr, you are still having significant budget concerns when it comes to buying a house and funding a car. I can't even imagine how one further manages to raise children and care for a spouse on that amount. And fund retirement while you're at it.
Rich is a state in which your regular income no longer factors into your survival into the future. A point at which your future is taken care of and you are no longer dependent on more income. Being able to afford a mortgate on a typical $250k house and a payment on a car is hardly "rich".
Also, rather than this bullshit about "tax holiday", how about we just stop catering to every pansy out there and fucking CUT the god damned spending?
You're a fucking moron. If I'm a software engineer and I spend all my time busting my ass for a living and pull down a little over six figures and my wife is in a similar field and pulls down similar cash, exactly whose backs are we earning the money off of? Just because you flip burgers for a living and look at everything in life as an opportunity to get others to give you shit rather than earning it doesn't mean that the rest of us didn't fucking earn it and that we don't work fucking hard for our money and deserve it over dishing it out to bullshit programs and wastes of flesh. I pay enough in taxes every year that I could pay for two years at a private university for a kid just on the tax bill alone. What the fuck do you contribute other than bitching about how others aren't paying enough?
I wish more people cut the "if ya don't vote ya can't complain!" bullshit. (Not saying that you're doing that). It's a meaningless and thoughtless bumper-sticker response every few years that people spew. They're better than everyone else, because they voted. They may be ignorant. They may have voted because their guy is going to cram god down everyone's throat or give them more social security rather than voting on principals that strengthen the foundation of our society (freedom, etc). They may not have even thought about who they were going to vote for until that very morning. And they probably gathered a lot of other people to get them out to vote. But god damn it, they voted and that makes them fucking saints or something. Because it doesn't matter if you're smart or stupid or doing damage or the only thing you're doing is wasting your time getting even more stupid people out to vote . . . all that matters is that you fucking earned a blue ribbon signifying participation, like back in grade school. Whoo gold star!
Libertarians are often portrayed as nutjobs, because they don't have enough bias toward religion, corporations, or other entities. Suggesting that people be free to do what they please so long as it doesn't directly negatively impact another unwilling person is just nutty as hell. We need people who talk to jesus in the Oval office before making important decisions and spend their time deciding what church to attend in DC or which lobbyist to accept contributions from.
Yeah, Ron Paul comes across as a little nutty sometimes, but they would portray ANY libertarian that way. They just aren't biased enough in favor of controlling people's lives like the left and right are.
Our Constitution also protects against unfounded and unwarranted search and siezure, which is trampled on more every day. It also guarantees the right of the state to determine its laws and future rather than the government (ie, not a Rome-as-the-center-of-it-all type government), which is trampled on further every day from attempts to tax services across state lines to the tens of thousands of FEDERAL laws and the recent health care laws.
Without anyone willing to defend it, the Constitution is just a charming piece of sheepskin with about as much value as toilet paper.
Anyone who went into 2008 thinking "things are going to be really different once we elect a new president!" was incredibly naive and a lot of us told the daydreamers exactly that. And guess what? The next president isn't going to make things really different, either. No matter who he or she is. And the one after that and the one after that and so on. On the occasions that things truly are different or something wonderful actually does occur, the president in office at the time is merely the beneficiary of fortunate coincidence. To be a viable presidential candidate, you must have already been vetted by the same aristocracy that has vetted all the ones before it and only once you have received their blessing (financially and otherwise) is your bid to make bullshit promises and pandering to the American public the next action.
I don't exactly know what "Model UN" is, but if it's supposed to be some sort of high school aged indoctrination into UN activities, why not TRULY make it model the real thing, by having the few fairly decent and affluent kids foot the bill for everything, while letting three or four of the school's biggest troublemakers and bullies head the most vital and important committees on everything and give them veto rights against everything that comes up. Then give a few people a bunch of blue helmets and nerf bats to stand around with and "monitor elections" and if any sort of trouble breaks out, they run and hide in a janitorial closet until the coast is clear.
The great internet nerfing of 2011+, where we sanitize everything for the safety of pwecious wittle eyes has finally begun. Next step is to enforce a requirement that all "obscene" content be moved to xxx (and we all know how "obscene" is so loosely and meaninglessly defined). After that, simply using vulgar language or questionable images and comments online becomes a crime of corrupting a minor. Someome, please monitor my children as I'm incapable of parenting and accepting the world for what it is! Change everything to fit around my pwecious wittle baby!
The only thing I've seen the government do is blow tens of millions of dollars on Drupal websites that should have cost a few thousand dollars, to present half-broken interfaces that supposedly expose all sorts of government data, spearheaded by that Vivek Kundra moron who doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground, based on all the idiotic statements he's made that sound like a marketing guy trying to talk-up a technology he's only briefly read about in a pamphlet.
By your logic, it is then okay to be a police officer and a rapist, as long as you compartmentalize and don't do your raping on the job?
It's hard to take one seriously in a job based on refuting explanations with no rational, testable, provable evidence when one of the most fundamental elements of existence is treated with "well, it says it in a book from a couple thousand years ago, so it's gotta be true and that's good enough for me!".
I can see a vet being religious. I can even perhaps see a medical doctor being religious. These people are essentially practitioners and not explorers and knowledge expanders. For someone whose primary function is to seek out and study new information and test and confirm new hypothesis to accept something so irrational does not make sense to me and it often makes me wonder if those people who claim to be religious scientists are really just some sort of BYU guys edging their way into the field to muck-rake (kind of like how BYU pumps out really good lawyers to do their bidding) or if they just sort of say they're religious the same way my mom would say she's religious, even though she hasn't really ever gone to church in her adult life and doesn't actually do anything religious ever. Sort of like a vestige appendage that these scientists just haven't gotten the gumption to chop off yet, but don't actually use.
Kind of like how I wonder whether most people I encounter day to day are religious, like they say they are, or if they're just atheists who are afraid to admit it. I mean, after all, if you REALLY believed that you were going to be tortured and in agony in a fiery furnace in hell for eternity after you die if you don't obey the bible, surely you would never do anything wrong, right? I mean, fucking the neighbor's wife might be really tempting, but not tempting enough to risk ENDLESS AGONY, surely? And fuck, if you really truly believed all that shit was real (as people claim to) then you wouldn't even take the *smallest* risk. You'd be adhering to every rule in the bible, like stoning adulterers and not wearing mixed textiles.
That's kind of like saying that "I'm a qualified neuroscientist, except for the part where I believe that the brain is filled with marigold flowers and is imbued upon birth with the magic of dragon breath which keeps it functioning".
You spend a lot of time listening to Art Bell and the psuedo-science guys he has on, don't you? :)
No, because "faith" is given an absolutely irrefutable pass. It's the reason we chuckle at a kid asking Santa Clause for presents, but we look upon someone praying for their sports team to win or for their child to recover from a serious illness (perhaps because they don't believe in doctors) as a highly revered activity for which no criticism or judgement can be levied. It's why someone who says "I communicate with aliens" goes to a mental institution, while a president (the last one, in fact) says he talks to jesus every day and that helps him make his worldly decisions.
I have absolutely no problem with people having the freedom to believe what they wish, but society needs to stop playing along and feeling obligated to treat it seriously -- or worse, with some sort of reverence.
You can, but it's dishonest. Why do you subject one thing to scientific process and rational and logical scrutiny while they other is blindly accepted, because you sat in a pew for most of your childhood and had a two thousand year old book filled with thousands of thin pages read to you? Suggesting that the Catholic church supporting something therefore validates it only kind of further invalidates *that*. Where's the integrity in a scientist not accepting evolution as the most commonly held modern theory, because an old guy in the Vatican said it's okay to accept the theory?
They aren't laughed out for considering something like that, because religion is the one "though" system given absolute exception by all in the world (at least in America). It is like a fucking nuclear strike option. All you have to do in any situation is pull the "BUT IT'S MY FAITH!" cord and you win. Every other form of stupidity and irrationality is laughed at. But if you hide behind the cover of "IT'S MY FAITH!", you absolve yourself of any criticism, whatsoever. The proof is in the fact that we even have to have these debates over whether theology should be taught as part of science (hell, why not make theology a part of math and engineering and compute repair, while we're associating and injecting it into things that are not relevant to it?).
We need to stop validating religion by treating it serious in discussions like these. People have the right to believe whatever they want, however irrational or stupid it may be. That doesn't mean the rest of us need to treat it seriously. By responding to it as legislatures and educational institutions are, they are giving it unwarranted credibility. What should have been a simple "what the fuck are you talking about? if you want to teach creationism, do it in church and theology classes" has now been treated with soft gloves by the rest of us (so afraid to appear intolerant, mind you) for so long that it's snuck its way into "well, a magical sky being is just as valid a scientific explanation as any other and therefor belongs as part of scientific instruction!".
Your professors were either idiots or disingenuous. You can not apply any scientific method to religion and if you are a scientific man, you require evidence to reach conclusions and you desire to seek answers to the world. The two could not be more opposed. Rather than believing "it was all part of some grand creator's design", an intellectually honest person who subscribes to the scientific method would say that there is no way to know such things and it is fruitless to speculate.
The problem is that religion is not science and religion offers no scientific explanation of the world and therefore has no place in science. You can teach all the theology you want, in theology classes. Stay the fuck out of the science classes.
Not accepting evolution is not the same thing as asserting a magical explanation to the unknown. How is it so confusing for people to grasp the difference? You can not support the scientific method while simultaneously accepting the irrational and unprovable as an explanation of the unknown. I don't know that there is no creator. I can not prove that there is no creator. However, there is no evidence or proof to suggest that there is one, so the discussion of a creator becomes moot and any belief in it is therefor absolutely and entirely unfounded.
The inherent difference here is that a scientist has the integrity to simply say "we don't know". Just because I don't know what lays across the vast sea beyond the shores of my home doesn't mean I should devise a story about dragons living there and swallowing ships that venture too far.
The conflict of interest is plain as fucking day.
Nobody would refuse to hire Einstein as a scientist for saying "God does not play dice with the universe", because despite what religious nutcases try to accomplish by trotting that quote out from Einstein is false. They try to use it as a "see, even Einstein believed in God!", which is untrue. In fact, most of Einstein's comments on God and Religion were that he could take neither seriously and that they are figment's of man's imagination. When he referred to "god" in quotes such as you used, he was doing so as a relatable substitute for "the cosmos" or "the universe".
Anyway, saying that one can not disprove a creator is one thing. Making a positive assertion that there is a creator and it is an explanation to things is the opposite of scientific and would no more suit a true scientist than being a criminal suits a cop. You either require evidence and understanding to reach conclusions on things or you irrationally accept explanations which undermine the very profession you belong to (or your profession undermines the very belief system you claim to adhere to -- one or the other).
Of course, those same people demanding an "open mind" wouldn't dare accept the same unfounded "explanations" of any other religion modern or pre-dating us (Wiccans, Pagans, Greek and Roman mythologies, indian or asian or norse or african mythologies and so on).
The primary difference between a religious person and a scientist -- and why there can be no honest mixing of the two -- is that one seeks to know things and admits when things are unknown. The other picks and chooses what known things to accept and makes things up for the rest. Making shit up, while not unheard of in the field of science (such as the guy who falsified studies to generate the fear against vaccinations), is not an accepted scientific principal.
So leave your god explanations for the theology majors. Leave the scientific for the science majors.
Scientific research is based on the idea that everything that takes place is determined by laws of nature, and therefore this holds for the action of people. For this reason, a research scientist will hardly be inclined to believe that events could be influenced by a prayer, i.e. by a wish addressed to a Supernatural Being.
-- Albert Einstein, 1936, responding to a child who wrote and asked if scientists pray. Source: Albert Einstein: The Human Side, Edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffmann
The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this.
-- Albert Einstein, in a letter responding to philosopher Eric Gutkind, who had sent him a copy of his book Choose Life: The Biblical Call to Revolt; quoted from James Randerson, "Childish Superstition: Einstein's Letter Makes View of Religion Relatively Clear: Scientist's Reply to Sell for up to £8,000, and Stoke Debate over His Beliefs" The Guardian, (13 May 2008)
And a quote more appropriate for this story:
The minority, the ruling class at present, has the schools and press, usually the Church as well, under its thumb. This enables it to organize and sway the emotions of the masses, and make its tool of them.
-- Albert Einstein, letter to Sigmund Freud (30 July 1932)
The primary tenet of science is the basis of knowledge according to the scientific process. Having faith (accepting as truth a thing that by its very nature can not be tested or proven) as an explanation for a scientific understanding of the world is about the most minimal requirement you could place on a scientist.
Science is by its core open to all possibilities, given you provide a sound explanation backed up by evidence. You'll notice that when science uncovers new evidence in the world that disproves old theories, we readily abandoned those old false understandings. Religion is the opposite. It is a thing that one clings to in spite of all rational thought and logic. It is directly opposed to the tenets of science. You might work in the scientific field and believe that "a magical sky being wished the world into creation and every animal upon it", but you are not a scientist any more than an atheist in a church pulpit is a priest.
Imagine if your neurosurgeon said that while he is a doctor and a neurosurgeon, he doesn't accept opening up the brain and working on it with medical tools founded on our current medical knowledge. Instead, he believes in rubbing your temples and chanting and dabbing holy water on your forehead.
You even clarify the situation with your final sentence. That science is about facts and your opinions or beliefs don't matter -- only the facts to. How can someone expected to fulfill that obligation also be the same person who accepts the completely irrational as an explanation? It's fine to say "I don't fully accept evolution" or "I'm not sold on the big bang thing". It's another to say "because a two thousand year old book told me that a magic sky god waved his hand and all occurred according to his wishes".
Neither does mistaking religion for science.
You mean, it shows that the government spends resources and tax payer money helping Microsoft clean up its problem (Windows botnets) that any user can protect themselves against fairly simply.
Know what I mean, Vern?
Send a DMCA notice to Google and the other company and take the other company to court. If Google doesn't respond by removal as per DMCA rules, take them to court, too. These tools exist, so use them. They're not *just* around for the MPAA, RIAA, and BSAA to use.