I think that both of us are saying that people shouldn't be hired or fired based on their view of evolution. But mandating evolution or creationism in the curriculum is going to lead to just that sort of result. "I won't teach that" followed by "you're fired" is a logical progression whenever you put something prematurely into the curriculum.
I haven't played the game but I do understand a bit about libertarianism, fascism, and communism. Anybody who is above average, motivated, able to create something new and unique has a high propensity to want to exit any fascist or communist state. Take a look at England's brain drain, the Berlin wall, and the Jewish scientific exodus under Hitler.
I don't particularly believe that Linux is an application of libertarian views but it is compatible with libertarian views. In other words, I don't think that a libertarian society would necessarily develop linux but it would be the least hostile to it of any possible society.
Actually, a more realistic libertarian modification would be for all the science/economic stats of the Fascist/Communist to be quickly drained and transferred over to the libertarian society. Those wonderful open borders, you know.
If that doesn't cause immediate declarations of war, I don't know what will.
Unfortunately, as other posters on this thread have demonstrated, there are atheists who try to convince others that only their beliefs are scientific and if you believe in the value of science you must abandon God. The worst part about this is that people who actually take a neutral scientific attitude don't go after the atheists with the same relish as they go after creationists who misuse science the other way.
Actually he does address the point of prior function. If you are spending energy producing chemicals that don't do anything, you are evolutionarily disadvantaged and the trait would tend to disappear. He doesn't have a problem with microevolution but you seem to ignore it in your idea that there need be no prior function.
Part of the argument of Behe is that the shuffling necessary to produce these basic systems doesn't allow for enough time to randomly create all these things and that some things like intracellular transport are so easy to get wrong with disasterous consequences that a guiding intelligence is an appropriate inference to make from the irreducible complexity of the biochemical systems of the cell.
Funny, on the cover of the book is the banner "The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution". I could swear that I read it a few times trying to punch holes in it and couldn't. While abiogenesis is covered as well, it hardly takes the majority of the book.
I did read a number of the critiques from talk.origins and also Behe's response. Frankly, I found Behe fairly good at responding to his critics, more than enough for me to label this challenge to the evolutionary models of today as not adequately answered.
One of the typical tactics that I found disturbing in the talk.origins archive was the use of straw men. Behe never claims that the Krebs cycle is an irreducibly complex system but Keith Robinson spends much space demonstrating that the Krebs cycle isn't and tries to claim that this refutes Behe.
Another tactic was to claim that a large number of papers actually answered Behe's criticisms but wait! If you look at another link critical of Behe, you find a critic admitting that there isn't actually much in the literature discussing the areas that Behe raises. Behe himself addresses some of these papers and complains that some are guilty of spinning stories and not providing any chemistry or math to back them up. He calls this wishful thinking "Calvinism" from Calvin and Hobbes (not the protestant reformer). He complains about the lack of rigor in evolutionary thinkers when they examine blood clotting and several other elementary biochemical systems.
The point I'm trying to make is that evolution, while clearly explaining some things, isn't very helpful in others. It certainly doesn't explain everything yet and may yet be refuted by an intelligent design argument.
I don't think that it is kooky or even particularly imprudent to be reluctant to use the coercive power of the state to mandate the teaching of evolution without at least including the serious critics like Behe.
Instead of admitting the incompleteness of evolutionary theory and taking Behe and other challengers seriously there is fury and jihad from many supposedly dispassionate scientists. The sad storyy of Forest Mims and Scientific American in 1990 is a decent example. Mims was never going to write about evolution but about amateur science projects. His belief in creationism doomed his chances for permanent hire even though everybody agreed that his actual work was quite good. What was Scientific American asking Mims opinion on a subject that had nothing to do with his prospective job?
You must not think much of biochemist professors. If you would have followed the link you would have found out that he has a doctorate in biochemistry and teaches at Lehigh University. By your rights his doctorate in a relevant specialty science doesn't earn him the right to have his arguments seriously discussed. He opposes the orthodoxy therefore he must be a kook.
His points on the difficulties that evolution encounters on the biochemical level deserve more than a dismissive wave. He may be wrong, but he's no kook.
When we dismiss challenges to an orthodox scientific idea then we aren't doing science anymore but power politics. You demonstrate the point admirably.
As many evolutionists have pointed out, there are many different creation stories. Of course, I think that the biblical one is closest to the events as they happened but that doesn't mean that I or many others are blinded by the fact that not everybody believes in the bible.
Most people who worked on the constitution and approved it were religious of one faith or another. It is this very diversity of their individual faiths that ended up in the creation of the first amendment and the religion clause. Unfortunately, some people are promoting irreligion above religion and are using evolution as a way to brainwash. You can see this on some of the posts in this thread.
Sorry to hear about your spiritual troubles. My wife is a doctor in internal medicine so I have given more thought than I otherwise would have on the abortion issue.
I think that you may wish to take a deeper look at the catholic position on abortion. It's sort of like the catholic position on euthanasia. You aren't allowed to euthanize somebody as a catholic. But it is no sin to morphine them to the point where they don't feel pain even if that point results in respiratory arrest and death.
Similarly, it is sinful from a catholic perspective to provide abortion services but if legitimate medical treatment ends up in the death of a fetus there is also no sin. I'm not an apologist or a theologian but you may wish to try Catholic Answers for a group of people who may be able to give you the full catholic position. You may still leave the church, but at least then you won't be doing it in angry ignorance of the facts.
CRConrad seems to think that if he claims that science is anti-God and modern we should all turn our backs on God and our history. But the scientific method hasn't demonstrated either the existence or non-existence of God and frankly hasn't examined the subject much.
I wrote on this forum that it's the job of reasonable scientists to flush out and denounce anti-religious bigots like the fellow above and that the failure to do so has led to many religious people viewing scientists in general as similarly bigoted and anti-religious. I look forward to proof that true followers of the scientific method will point out CRConrad's errors.
"You really think that if they start putting creationists on school boards, it will all be the reasonable catholics or whoever you're talking about that actually cares about science? No, of course you're going to have a number of yahoos. "
Let's try looking at this another way -- "You really think that if they start putting evolutionists on school boards, it will all be the reasonable Darwinians or whoever you're talking aobut that actually care about science? No, of course you're going to have a number of lamarkians and lysenkoists."
Sounds pretty silly doesn't it? School boards are mostly elected AFAIK. Are you advocating a beliefs test for elective office in the US? I hope not.
I had my first network admin job working for an anti-animal rights group called Putting People First. The daily death threats were alarming at first, then boring. For the first time in my life I read the 'how to spot a bomb' instructions the post office gives out.
The funny thing was that most of them were addressed from the same town that headquartered PETA, Peter Singer's favorite bunch of pro-animal rights people. Death threats happen to strong advocates on both sides of any controversy. It's just that the media seems to publicize one side more than another.
Science does not rule out a higher power but atheists often claim that it does. This is a horrendous misuse of science and something that I wish scientists would speak up on. People of faith need to reign in the cranks on the creationist side and scientists need to reign in atheists who want to cloak their beliefs in science.
As for Galileo, let's talk about that. The Catholic church did condemn his teachings and has repented and proclaimed its error. So much for "religion can't admit when it's wrong".
Galileo pissed off a head of state (the pope), created a theological controversy when he didn't have to, and alienated his allies (the jesuits) who could have gotten him out of his predicament. He was punished by house arrest and limited to one servant. For the middle ages this is an incredibly restrained response. The inquisatorial manual of the time forbade torture and right under the pope's nose, the manual was followed to the letter.
I do agree about the problems with the literalists. But we aren't beasts and it's much more likely that ecumenism is going to educate and absorb back the literalists into the one church that Christ founded rather than evolutionary elimination.
Frankly, you are missing the wide diversity of religious views on creationism. The Catholic and Orthodox churches are huge parts of christianity and they do not subscribe to the literalist points that you claim they do. Heck, the pope doesn't have a problem with the idea of God using the mechanism of evolution to bring about his glorious creation.
There is no 7,000 year chronology in Catholic doctrine so your point on carbon dating is untrue for a huge chunk of christianity. Ditto for the Orthodox and that section of protestantism that does not use a literalist interpretation of the Bible.
Science and religion do not necessarily have to be in contradiction. Where do you think Gregor Mendel was when he was growing those pea plants? He discovered the science of genetics working in the garden of a monastery. Try going out to the jesuitical observatory out in Arizona and argue with the tens of Jesuit/Astronomers that the pope funds to advance our understanding of the heavens. Let's not even try to categorize the important medical science work that is done at Catholic Universities and hospitals because the list would just be way too long.
It's exactly this kind of broad brush, false, misleading, anti-christian bigotry that drives the religious up a wall. You don't read what people are actually saying on the other side of the issue or you encounter a few yahoos and think that everybody on the other side is the same. Try reading Darwin's Black Box for a more serious discussion of the problem of intelligent design and evolution.
Could it be that what creationists want is for evolution to not be given a state endorsement? Could it be that it isn't ramming creationism down people's throats that is the current situation but ramming evolution down people's throats? Read Darwin's Black Box and tell me that evolution is proven enough that we want the state to endorse it as a mandatory part of instruction and that it should be on the mandatory state tests. Diversity of permissible opinion is what creationists want because, frankly, creationists aren't that unified among themselves and it would be preferrable for the coercive power of the state to stay out. TML
I'll give you a counterexample of scientific dogma. My 7th grade science teacher gave me this one and I've encountered it at higher levels as well, the a priori exclusion of God. I've heard it in many forms but it boils down to "we can't put God in a lab and run him through experiments so we aren't even going to deal with the question of his existence".
Barring God coming down and demonstrating his existence in a direct fashion (which most christians call 'the end of the world' see the book of Revelations) this scientific dogma denies God without using the scientific method. How are you going to 'adapt and evolve' science when you deny Him a priori?
Intelligent design is taken into account in archeology. Pathology takes it into account when it considers whether a death is an accident or a crime and other branches of science can use intelligent design as well. But somehow when it comes to biology and biochemistry it is a scientific heresy to consider intelligent design.
A priori, creationists are not reasonable, they wish people not to think, and are hopelessly tied to a false myth. Well, that's three libels in five paragraphs. Bravo. Now try reading Darwin's Black Box and get back to me when you have something constructive to add. TML
This is exactly how science should *not* be done. The argument from authority is a logical fallacy and people arguing outside their specialty make them hardly better than layman who equally don't know the field.
Evolution may or may not be true. The relevant question for any school board is 'has this idea proved its case?' Should the state be involved in excluding alternate theories by making the teaching of this particular theory mandatory? When the state gets involved in supporting one or another scientific theory, we should react with caution, even alarm. Try looking at Lysenkoism to see how dumb an idea this can end up being.
I'm aware that Stuart Kauffman has interesting things to say about complexity theory and evolution, not that he seems to have garnered a great deal of support in the academic world for his position, but the relevance of computer scientists and physicists to biochemical and even anatomical biology doesn't lend them much credence over the ideas of any other logical minded, sober layman IMHO.
Science, even evolutionary science, doesn't necessarily imply atheism but there are idiots who twist and misuse it to advocate atheism (funny, I don't hear as much moaning and groaning about this as I do about crank creationists). It is this unscientific attempt to debunk God that has conservatives among others up in arms. The pope doesn't have a particular problem with evolution as a mechanism that God used to make his creation. And that's as it should be. Religion's in the truth business too.
Science is the struggle for truth no matter where it leads you. But atheism cloaked in science says that a priori you can't include God in the mix regardless of whether or not he exists and is acting or has acted on a system being researched. That's like the little boy hiding behind one finger. Evidence of intelligent design should be as valid in evolutionary biology and biochemistry as it is in archeology and pathology.
When anti-religious bigotry travels under color of science is it any surprise that people of faith resist it? The crank who defends God doesn't effect the existence of God any more than the crank who defends Darwin say anything about the validity of Darwinism. But there are real scientists who question evolution.
I strongly recommend Michael Behe's "Darwin's Black Box" for a biochemical look at evolution and the current problems it has. You can find a link at Behe's page as well as links to criticism of the book and rebuttals to the criticism. Does Behe prove his case? Well enough for me to say that the state should not give evolution a monopoly position in the curriculum.
... than an unemployed bum. AMD is, I believe, publicly traded. Survival and maximizing shareholder value is the bottom line in a public company, bankruptcy is the ultimate failure.
If Athlon wins, great. It is smart for AMD to have a plan B though.
This 'art' is being exhibited on public ground, in a public building. Why does anti-catholicism deserve a pass any more than anti-semitism or any other religious bigotry?
I never favored art subsidy by the government precisely on the grounds that these fights are inevitable. The problem fundamentally is that artists like to tweak the noses of catholics and others who they don't like. That's fine. But they are doing it with the catholic's own money extorted by the government tax man. And that's not right at all. Not every group out there is as defenseless.
In Chicago, they hung up a picture of the late Mayor Harold Washington in his underwear in an unflattering pose. A couple of City Council members personally went down and removed the picture. The picture never went back up and there was no lawsuit.
The vast hypocricy and double standard when it comes to whose ox is being gored is mind boggling.
I saw "Piss Christ". If it wasn't labeled as such, you would just look at a picture and see an interesting lighting effect. The label is there intentionally to offend. If I wasn't paying for it via my tax dollars, I would ignore it as another anti-christian diatribe and move on.
If the lady in the fecal picture in Brooklyn wasn't given the label of the virgin Mary, there are no identifying characteristics that would lead anybody to believe that it was anything else than bad art.
What you seem to be arguing is that withdrawl of funding in the current year is unconstitutional. I don't particularly think this is the case. Let's grant your point for the moment. Does your objection fade if the subsidy is simply no longer renewed next budget year? If so, what's the difference?
The application front is interesting right now. Win2K is going to break a lot of apps. How many? nobody knows except MS and they're not saying. But it's certainly going to open the door at a lot of IT shops who haven't had to recode their apps for years. This is an opportunity for PPC and Sun (java).
Right when MS is breaking apps with Win2K and giving less reason to go with Intel/x86, Apple is going to be coming out with Mac OS X which will be running *more* apps than previous because most apps from the previous OS 8 or 9 are going to run fine, BSD applications will work fine, and Linux apps should be available as well. Since this is a BSD variant, the stability should be rock solid. The currently shipping server version seems to be working quite well. This should fit in for applications that can't use the universal (but slower) performance of java.
Where does AMD fit into this? Not very well. It's going to get hit as much as Intel, perhaps more with the Win2K software breakage problems and they don't have the cash to ride out any rough periods if x86 loses market share. Taking this into account, their teaming up with Motorola to sub out their fab for G4 production is a stroke of genius. Now, no matter what direction the market goes vis a vis these two chip families, they survive.
The speculative issue is whether they are looking to joing the AIM alliance and improve the PPC. It would certainly make for interesting variations on the old religious war flames to have a player in both camps at the same time.
The arguments on the blasphemy/art/govt funding issue are whether or not the vast majority who really don't like this sort of exhibition are obligated to fund it.
If you don't like the GPL or the BSD licenses, are you obligated to work on a project that offends you? Are you obligated to fund it?
The encryption debate is a debate over whether government has the right to forbid. The debate over the Brooklyn Art Museum is whether the state is obligated to fund.
When we mix up the distinctions, we end up looking like we support blasphemy which is the *wrong* way to go about building majority coalitions. Take a look at Jesse Ventura for a how to self-implode this way. Worked properly, churches are an ally because they have a great deal of experience on being suppressed in various countries.
I belong to a branch of the Catholic Church (romanian byzantine catholic http://www.greek-catholic.ro) that was banned by the Communist imperialists in Romania. You betcha that they used secret messages/encryption and every trick in the book to keep the church alive during 1948-1998 when it was legalized again. If things went bad there again, I'm sure that PGP and other cryptographic tools would be critical in the fight and the church knows it.
If you believe seriously that peaceful politics cannot solve the problem of encryption and that human rights will continue to be suppressed indefinetly by the US Govt., you are making the case for the application of Thomas Jefferson's right of rebellion.
I don't believe that you are correct. I do believe that the political order hasn't gone so far as to preclude a peaceful solution that restores the respect for our God given rights.
When politics fails, violence against the state is legitimate and even required to uphold the rights of man. We may get there someday. I hope to God we never will.
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I think that both of us are saying that people shouldn't be hired or fired based on their view of evolution. But mandating evolution or creationism in the curriculum is going to lead to just that sort of result. "I won't teach that" followed by "you're fired" is a logical progression whenever you put something prematurely into the curriculum.
TML
I haven't played the game but I do understand a bit about libertarianism, fascism, and communism. Anybody who is above average, motivated, able to create something new and unique has a high propensity to want to exit any fascist or communist state. Take a look at England's brain drain, the Berlin wall, and the Jewish scientific exodus under Hitler.
I don't particularly believe that Linux is an application of libertarian views but it is compatible with libertarian views. In other words, I don't think that a libertarian society would necessarily develop linux but it would be the least hostile to it of any possible society.
TML
Actually, a more realistic libertarian modification would be for all the science/economic stats of the Fascist/Communist to be quickly drained and transferred over to the libertarian society. Those wonderful open borders, you know.
If that doesn't cause immediate declarations of war, I don't know what will.
TML
Unfortunately, as other posters on this thread have demonstrated, there are atheists who try to convince others that only their beliefs are scientific and if you believe in the value of science you must abandon God. The worst part about this is that people who actually take a neutral scientific attitude don't go after the atheists with the same relish as they go after creationists who misuse science the other way.
TML
Actually he does address the point of prior function. If you are spending energy producing chemicals that don't do anything, you are evolutionarily disadvantaged and the trait would tend to disappear. He doesn't have a problem with microevolution but you seem to ignore it in your idea that there need be no prior function.
Part of the argument of Behe is that the shuffling necessary to produce these basic systems doesn't allow for enough time to randomly create all these things and that some things like intracellular transport are so easy to get wrong with disasterous consequences that a guiding intelligence is an appropriate inference to make from the irreducible complexity of the biochemical systems of the cell.
TML
I did read a number of the critiques from talk.origins and also Behe's response. Frankly, I found Behe fairly good at responding to his critics, more than enough for me to label this challenge to the evolutionary models of today as not adequately answered.
One of the typical tactics that I found disturbing in the talk.origins archive was the use of straw men. Behe never claims that the Krebs cycle is an irreducibly complex system but Keith Robinson spends much space demonstrating that the Krebs cycle isn't and tries to claim that this refutes Behe.
Another tactic was to claim that a large number of papers actually answered Behe's criticisms but wait! If you look at another link critical of Behe, you find a critic admitting that there isn't actually much in the literature discussing the areas that Behe raises. Behe himself addresses some of these papers and complains that some are guilty of spinning stories and not providing any chemistry or math to back them up. He calls this wishful thinking "Calvinism" from Calvin and Hobbes (not the protestant reformer). He complains about the lack of rigor in evolutionary thinkers when they examine blood clotting and several other elementary biochemical systems.
The point I'm trying to make is that evolution, while clearly explaining some things, isn't very helpful in others. It certainly doesn't explain everything yet and may yet be refuted by an intelligent design argument.
I don't think that it is kooky or even particularly imprudent to be reluctant to use the coercive power of the state to mandate the teaching of evolution without at least including the serious critics like Behe.
Instead of admitting the incompleteness of evolutionary theory and taking Behe and other challengers seriously there is fury and jihad from many supposedly dispassionate scientists. The sad storyy of Forest Mims and Scientific American in 1990 is a decent example. Mims was never going to write about evolution but about amateur science projects. His belief in creationism doomed his chances for permanent hire even though everybody agreed that his actual work was quite good. What was Scientific American asking Mims opinion on a subject that had nothing to do with his prospective job?
TML
You must not think much of biochemist professors. If you would have followed the link you would have found out that he has a doctorate in biochemistry and teaches at Lehigh University. By your rights his doctorate in a relevant specialty science doesn't earn him the right to have his arguments seriously discussed. He opposes the orthodoxy therefore he must be a kook.
His points on the difficulties that evolution encounters on the biochemical level deserve more than a dismissive wave. He may be wrong, but he's no kook.
When we dismiss challenges to an orthodox scientific idea then we aren't doing science anymore but power politics. You demonstrate the point admirably.
TML
As many evolutionists have pointed out, there are many different creation stories. Of course, I think that the biblical one is closest to the events as they happened but that doesn't mean that I or many others are blinded by the fact that not everybody believes in the bible.
Most people who worked on the constitution and approved it were religious of one faith or another. It is this very diversity of their individual faiths that ended up in the creation of the first amendment and the religion clause. Unfortunately, some people are promoting irreligion above religion and are using evolution as a way to brainwash. You can see this on some of the posts in this thread.
TML
I think that you may wish to take a deeper look at the catholic position on abortion. It's sort of like the catholic position on euthanasia. You aren't allowed to euthanize somebody as a catholic. But it is no sin to morphine them to the point where they don't feel pain even if that point results in respiratory arrest and death.
Similarly, it is sinful from a catholic perspective to provide abortion services but if legitimate medical treatment ends up in the death of a fetus there is also no sin. I'm not an apologist or a theologian but you may wish to try Catholic Answers for a group of people who may be able to give you the full catholic position. You may still leave the church, but at least then you won't be doing it in angry ignorance of the facts.
TML
CRConrad seems to think that if he claims that science is anti-God and modern we should all turn our backs on God and our history. But the scientific method hasn't demonstrated either the existence or non-existence of God and frankly hasn't examined the subject much.
I wrote on this forum that it's the job of reasonable scientists to flush out and denounce anti-religious bigots like the fellow above and that the failure to do so has led to many religious people viewing scientists in general as similarly bigoted and anti-religious. I look forward to proof that true followers of the scientific method will point out CRConrad's errors.
TML
"You really think that if they start putting creationists on school boards, it will all be the reasonable catholics or whoever you're talking about that actually cares about science? No, of course you're going to have a number of yahoos. "
Let's try looking at this another way --
"You really think that if they start putting evolutionists on school boards, it will all be the reasonable Darwinians or whoever you're talking aobut that actually care about science? No, of course you're going to have a number of lamarkians and lysenkoists."
Sounds pretty silly doesn't it? School boards are mostly elected AFAIK. Are you advocating a beliefs test for elective office in the US? I hope not.
TML
I had my first network admin job working for an anti-animal rights group called Putting People First. The daily death threats were alarming at first, then boring. For the first time in my life I read the 'how to spot a bomb' instructions the post office gives out.
The funny thing was that most of them were addressed from the same town that headquartered PETA, Peter Singer's favorite bunch of pro-animal rights people. Death threats happen to strong advocates on both sides of any controversy. It's just that the media seems to publicize one side more than another.
Very sad,
TML
Since the computer program was a creation and it, itself created, I'd hardly call it evolutionary in the sense being used here.
TML
As for Galileo, let's talk about that. The Catholic church did condemn his teachings and has repented and proclaimed its error. So much for "religion can't admit when it's wrong".
Galileo pissed off a head of state (the pope), created a theological controversy when he didn't have to, and alienated his allies (the jesuits) who could have gotten him out of his predicament. He was punished by house arrest and limited to one servant. For the middle ages this is an incredibly restrained response. The inquisatorial manual of the time forbade torture and right under the pope's nose, the manual was followed to the letter.
I do agree about the problems with the literalists. But we aren't beasts and it's much more likely that ecumenism is going to educate and absorb back the literalists into the one church that Christ founded rather than evolutionary elimination.
TML
There is no 7,000 year chronology in Catholic doctrine so your point on carbon dating is untrue for a huge chunk of christianity. Ditto for the Orthodox and that section of protestantism that does not use a literalist interpretation of the Bible.
Science and religion do not necessarily have to be in contradiction. Where do you think Gregor Mendel was when he was growing those pea plants? He discovered the science of genetics working in the garden of a monastery. Try going out to the jesuitical observatory out in Arizona and argue with the tens of Jesuit/Astronomers that the pope funds to advance our understanding of the heavens. Let's not even try to categorize the important medical science work that is done at Catholic Universities and hospitals because the list would just be way too long.
It's exactly this kind of broad brush, false, misleading, anti-christian bigotry that drives the religious up a wall. You don't read what people are actually saying on the other side of the issue or you encounter a few yahoos and think that everybody on the other side is the same. Try reading Darwin's Black Box for a more serious discussion of the problem of intelligent design and evolution.
TML
Could it be that what creationists want is for evolution to not be given a state endorsement? Could it be that it isn't ramming creationism down people's throats that is the current situation but ramming evolution down people's throats? Read Darwin's Black Box and tell me that evolution is proven enough that we want the state to endorse it as a mandatory part of instruction and that it should be on the mandatory state tests. Diversity of permissible opinion is what creationists want because, frankly, creationists aren't that unified among themselves and it would be preferrable for the coercive power of the state to stay out. TML
I'll give you a counterexample of scientific dogma. My 7th grade science teacher gave me this one and I've encountered it at higher levels as well, the a priori exclusion of God. I've heard it in many forms but it boils down to "we can't put God in a lab and run him through experiments so we aren't even going to deal with the question of his existence".
Barring God coming down and demonstrating his existence in a direct fashion (which most christians call 'the end of the world' see the book of Revelations) this scientific dogma denies God without using the scientific method. How are you going to 'adapt and evolve' science when you deny Him a priori?
Intelligent design is taken into account in archeology. Pathology takes it into account when it considers whether a death is an accident or a crime and other branches of science can use intelligent design as well. But somehow when it comes to biology and biochemistry it is a scientific heresy to consider intelligent design.
TML
A priori, creationists are not reasonable, they wish people not to think, and are hopelessly tied to a false myth. Well, that's three libels in five paragraphs. Bravo. Now try reading Darwin's Black Box and get back to me when you have something constructive to add. TML
Evolution may or may not be true. The relevant question for any school board is 'has this idea proved its case?' Should the state be involved in excluding alternate theories by making the teaching of this particular theory mandatory? When the state gets involved in supporting one or another scientific theory, we should react with caution, even alarm. Try looking at Lysenkoism to see how dumb an idea this can end up being.
I'm aware that Stuart Kauffman has interesting things to say about complexity theory and evolution, not that he seems to have garnered a great deal of support in the academic world for his position, but the relevance of computer scientists and physicists to biochemical and even anatomical biology doesn't lend them much credence over the ideas of any other logical minded, sober layman IMHO.
Science, even evolutionary science, doesn't necessarily imply atheism but there are idiots who twist and misuse it to advocate atheism (funny, I don't hear as much moaning and groaning about this as I do about crank creationists). It is this unscientific attempt to debunk God that has conservatives among others up in arms. The pope doesn't have a particular problem with evolution as a mechanism that God used to make his creation. And that's as it should be. Religion's in the truth business too.
Science is the struggle for truth no matter where it leads you. But atheism cloaked in science says that a priori you can't include God in the mix regardless of whether or not he exists and is acting or has acted on a system being researched. That's like the little boy hiding behind one finger. Evidence of intelligent design should be as valid in evolutionary biology and biochemistry as it is in archeology and pathology.
When anti-religious bigotry travels under color of science is it any surprise that people of faith resist it? The crank who defends God doesn't effect the existence of God any more than the crank who defends Darwin say anything about the validity of Darwinism. But there are real scientists who question evolution.
I strongly recommend Michael Behe's "Darwin's Black Box" for a biochemical look at evolution and the current problems it has. You can find a link at Behe's page as well as links to criticism of the book and rebuttals to the criticism. Does Behe prove his case? Well enough for me to say that the state should not give evolution a monopoly position in the curriculum.
TML
Don't let the FCC here about this or they will enter the software regulation business based on a potential interference argument...
If it wasn't so scary, it'd be stupid
TML
... than an unemployed bum. AMD is, I believe, publicly traded. Survival and maximizing shareholder value is the bottom line in a public company, bankruptcy is the ultimate failure.
If Athlon wins, great. It is smart for AMD to have a plan B though.
TML
This 'art' is being exhibited on public ground, in a public building. Why does anti-catholicism deserve a pass any more than anti-semitism or any other religious bigotry?
I never favored art subsidy by the government precisely on the grounds that these fights are inevitable. The problem fundamentally is that artists like to tweak the noses of catholics and others who they don't like. That's fine. But they are doing it with the catholic's own money extorted by the government tax man. And that's not right at all. Not every group out there is as defenseless.
In Chicago, they hung up a picture of the late Mayor Harold Washington in his underwear in an unflattering pose. A couple of City Council members personally went down and removed the picture. The picture never went back up and there was no lawsuit.
The vast hypocricy and double standard when it comes to whose ox is being gored is mind boggling.
I saw "Piss Christ". If it wasn't labeled as such, you would just look at a picture and see an interesting lighting effect. The label is there intentionally to offend. If I wasn't paying for it via my tax dollars, I would ignore it as another anti-christian diatribe and move on.
If the lady in the fecal picture in Brooklyn wasn't given the label of the virgin Mary, there are no identifying characteristics that would lead anybody to believe that it was anything else than bad art.
What you seem to be arguing is that withdrawl of funding in the current year is unconstitutional. I don't particularly think this is the case. Let's grant your point for the moment. Does your objection fade if the subsidy is simply no longer renewed next budget year? If so, what's the difference?
TML
The application front is interesting right now. Win2K is going to break a lot of apps. How many? nobody knows except MS and they're not saying. But it's certainly going to open the door at a lot of IT shops who haven't had to recode their apps for years. This is an opportunity for PPC and Sun (java).
Right when MS is breaking apps with Win2K and giving less reason to go with Intel/x86, Apple is going to be coming out with Mac OS X which will be running *more* apps than previous because most apps from the previous OS 8 or 9 are going to run fine, BSD applications will work fine, and Linux apps should be available as well. Since this is a BSD variant, the stability should be rock solid. The currently shipping server version seems to be working quite well. This should fit in for applications that can't use the universal (but slower) performance of java.
Where does AMD fit into this? Not very well. It's going to get hit as much as Intel, perhaps more with the Win2K software breakage problems and they don't have the cash to ride out any rough periods if x86 loses market share. Taking this into account, their teaming up with Motorola to sub out their fab for G4 production is a stroke of genius. Now, no matter what direction the market goes vis a vis these two chip families, they survive.
The speculative issue is whether they are looking to joing the AIM alliance and improve the PPC. It would certainly make for interesting variations on the old religious war flames to have a player in both camps at the same time.
TML
The arguments on the blasphemy/art/govt funding issue are whether or not the vast majority who really don't like this sort of exhibition are obligated to fund it.
If you don't like the GPL or the BSD licenses, are you obligated to work on a project that offends you? Are you obligated to fund it?
The encryption debate is a debate over whether government has the right to forbid. The debate over the Brooklyn Art Museum is whether the state is obligated to fund.
When we mix up the distinctions, we end up looking like we support blasphemy which is the *wrong* way to go about building majority coalitions. Take a look at Jesse Ventura for a how to self-implode this way. Worked properly, churches are an ally because they have a great deal of experience on being suppressed in various countries.
I belong to a branch of the Catholic Church (romanian byzantine catholic http://www.greek-catholic.ro) that was banned by the Communist imperialists in Romania. You betcha that they used secret messages/encryption and every trick in the book to keep the church alive during 1948-1998 when it was legalized again. If things went bad there again, I'm sure that PGP and other cryptographic tools would be critical in the fight and the church knows it.
TML
If you believe seriously that peaceful politics cannot solve the problem of encryption and that human rights will continue to be suppressed indefinetly by the US Govt., you are making the case for the application of Thomas Jefferson's right of rebellion.
I don't believe that you are correct. I do believe that the political order hasn't gone so far as to preclude a peaceful solution that restores the respect for our God given rights.
When politics fails, violence against the state is legitimate and even required to uphold the rights of man. We may get there someday. I hope to God we never will.
TML