I didn't say that _I_ took them to see it. But the trailer was still inappropriate. (Actually, I remembered incorrectly. I recall now that the trailer was actually for Hostel.)
Charisma is a kind of intelligence. Reading people's faces and body language, figuring out what they're thinking and why, figuring out what you can do or say to address their concerns without getting yourself in trouble with people who have different concerns. The charisma needed for success in politics requires a lot of complex reasoning and insight. Unfortunately, I think it is a kind of intelligence that tends benefit the individual far more than it benefits society.
The kind of intelligence that enables you to persuade someone to buy a crappy car at a high price benefits you, but has no benefit to the car buyer or to society at large.
The kind of intelligence that enables you to build a slightly better car benefits everyone.
When my kids were young and were outside of America one time they went to see "Transformers". The theatre showed a trailer for "Saw" before the Transformers movie started. The kids were pretty upset by it. I can't imagine what the theatre owner was thinking showing that trailer right before a movie based on a set of children's toys.
Like you, I don't get why a movie like "Saw" isn't more highly restricted like the other movies you mention.
A graphic headshot is never a really a graphic headshot in an American movie. Instead it is special effects being used to simulated a headshot. However when clothes are removed in a movie, it is almost always the case that clothes were really removed during the filming of the movie. I suspect that what matters is not so much how the image appears, but knowledge of how the image was created that bothers American viewers. Women without clothes are depicted in paintings and sculptures very frequently in American art museums and even in American streets that children are known to frequent. But the "headshots" you describe as common in movies are almost never shown for real even on the TV nightly news.
I tend to agree with you on this. As I said, evolution isn't a moral process just like gravity isn't a moral process. Evolution is a physical process. Some people would argue that "morality" is based on evolutionary processes that favored people who were able to cooperate with others, and that such cooperation was encouraged by the development of an internal moral compass. However I believe morality is at least in part something that God gives us.
People are free to believe what they like. They are free to believe 2+2=5. However in math class they are going to be taught an ACCURATE overview of mathematics as understood and practiced by mathematicians, and that means that MUST be taught 2+2=4 because that is THE ONLY ACCURATE way to describe the current field of math as actually understood and practiced by professional mathematicians. To pass they they need to demonstrate they have learned an ACCURATE understanding of math as understood and practiced by mathematicians. They are free to believe all the mathematicians are wrong. They are free to believe 2+2=5. If they become professional mathematicians they first need an ACCURATE understanding of the current state of the field before they can contribute new work proving 2+2=4 is wrong.
The other reason I don't have a great interest in studying philosophy in depth is that I think we have a fundamental catch-22. If we attempt to discern the world by logic alone, if we do a Descartes and conclude "I think therefor I am", then that's it. That's all we know. (the rest of his proof had problems) We can't even be sure our logic is correct. We just don't know with certainty anything about anything.
And yet, one can't live like that. One has to move on and actually do things. One has to believe otherwise the world continually slaps you in the face with what appears to be proof of its existence and that proof appears to get painful after a while, and people appear to get sick of you're appearing to say "appear" all the time.
Tenebrousedge makes some subtle observations about the non-equality of "truths" but they're not very satisfying. They still leave us wanting to be sure of things that we can't logically be sure of. We're stuck with no hope of getting out of the situation. I don't find such a situation terribly interesting. It seems a bit like debating whether your prison cell is 10'x10.1' or 9.9'x10.2'. Either way you're still in a prison and not getting out.
What little philosophy I encountered in school turned me off because most of what we learned was so full of problems and holes and fallacies. Friends who took philosophy would ask me silly questions with fairly obvious answers. It's nice to be able to use more precise language when writing about and discussing philosophical questions, but for the parts of philosophy that I'm most interested in I think the language can easily get in the way. Language is after all an expression of culture and I'm more interested in the kinds of absolutes that are not reliant on culture or even on humans.
If you believe science leads to facts or to truth - the real truth if you will - then you are making assumptions for which you have no proof.
That is not the purpose of science. The purpose of science is to improve our understanding of the universe and how it works. The ultimate truth about how everything works is likely to be unknowable, always limited by the tools available to us and our ability to mentally grasp and understand them.
Precisely.
However, it does produce a clearer and clearer picture over time. Sometimes it is wrong, and we later learn better. It is not perfect, but it is the best method we have for exploring and understanding our universe.
Whether that clearer and clearer picture is more and more correct depends on whether some basic assumptions are true.
First, you assume that there is no intelligent guiding hand who happens to choose to make things behave in a mathematically coherent way most of the time (but who may change things a bit when a point needs to be made).
Science does not assume this, it simply fails to a) find evidence of such an "intelligent guiding hand" and b) has encountered no situations which require an "intelligent guiding hand" to explain them.
A proper view of science acknowledges that the "intelligent guiding hand" that is omniscient, omnipotent, and doesn't want to be put in a test tube is untestable and therefore not within the realm of science to confirm or deny. On the other hand what I commonly see here (though not in your post) is the belief that if science can't find it then it doesn't exist.
You're assuming that your brain is functioning properly and that you're sense of logic is correct - that If a implies b and b implies c, that a does imply c.
Which is why science is not advanced by the conclusions of any one scientist, but of many who work independently and review each other's work. It is a group effort, never relying solely on the research or conclusions of any one individual, who may have taken a flawed approach.
You misunderstand my point. I'm not suggesting that one individual's brain is messed up - perhaps it is all of our brains. What does of all of our science ultimately rest on? Logic. Simple logical laws like "If a implies b, and b implies c, then a implies c". Well what if it's wrong? You can't even imagine it because you have such an unshakable belief in it. If anything appears to contradict that law, you assume that your senses are lying to you, or that you're misunderstanding what you're seeing, or something else must be the problem. I do the same thing because I too use logic. But what if it's just plain wrong?
For thousands of years we assumed time moved at a constant rate, and then some guy showed us it didn't. How did he do that? He looked at some observations and applied logic. He came up with a problem and something had to give. He decided to toss out his basic assumptions about time and space (assumptions which were good enough for everything our ancestors ever encountered) . What if he tossed out the wrong thing? What if time and space are constant but it is our logic which is only a "good enough" approximation of reality and it is our logic that falls apart at high velocities and when dealing with fundamental questions of light and matter?
Of course this is all speculation because I could never possibly prove the logic is wrong because to do so I would have to use logic! You could argue that all I would need to do is point out contradictions, yet it might be possible for a system of logic to be internally consistent but still be wrong.
Perhaps it does, or perhaps you believe it so fervently that anytime something contradicts it you refuse to see it and come up with some other excuse. Perhap
The European Convention on Human Rights states that education is a human right. Therefore not allowing your children to learn to read and write is a violation of their rights and the government will step in to stop you.
So prior to the invention of writing, people violated their children's rights just by letting them exist? That's pretty harsh. There are reasons Americans don't take European pronouncements on human rights too seriously.
No. Article 7 of the same convention.
ARTICLE 7
No punishment without law
1. No one shall be held guilty of any criminal offence on
account of any act or omission which did not constitute a criminal
offence under national or international law at the time when it
was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than
the one that was applicable at the time the criminal offence was
committed.
And the ECHR was written after the invention of writing.
So it's all relative and human rights are subject to the whim of the Europeans rather than constants that have always existed? The abolitionists of the 19th century were wrong to oppose slavery because ECHR hadn't decided it was wrong yet?
Okay, I shortened it down to this, tell me if I'm correct or misreading what you said:
"Debate with a lot of data but no defined factual outcome should be part of our curriculum."
Cuz if my reading is correct, it already is.
That's pretty much what I'm saying at least for subjects that are likely to cause controversy. It is the curricula in many places. However there are other places that fall on either side - refusing to teach the data and the common interpretations, or insisting that the kids profess their faith in one particular interpretation. That latter seems to be what a lot of people on slashdot want but I think the latter is as bad or worse than the former.
"natural selection" just happens (I use quotes because the term "natural" can have different meanings to different people) and it is still happening. It isn't necessarily moral or something to be encouraged. In fact efforts to encourage it, such as eugenics, are generally considered immoral in the West.
Your statement that "...it is all very natural..." seems to imply that "natural" equals "moral" or "good". It doesn't.
Note also that you are not necessarily correct to say that "he one who is most violent and has the best weapons survives and therefore is the most fit". In the modern world it often seems that those who have the largest weapons don't reproduce much. And for those who do reproduce it is largely a matter of whether or not they choose to do so. So fitness might actually involve refusing technology and/or simply choosing to have a lot of kids.
One of the reasons you don't feel left out is because you know that if you work hard enough and you apply enough intelligence, you have a fair shot at one day owning that yacht or, if not you, your kids do. The capabilities of man are mysterious enough and far enough from technology that it is assumed in places with some basic freedoms like America that every child has a shot at becoming rich. Access education and inheritance only gets you so far if you don't apply yourself. And people like Bill Clinton demonstrate that even someone from a relatively poor background can still become filthy rich.
But what if that changes? What if being born to a wealthy family doesn't just give you external advantages like networking, school tuition and capital, but also gives you inherent mental and physical advantages that a poor simply can't match no matter how hard he tries or how good his genes? This would create a new class system much like that of the middle ages where being born noble guaranteed a life as a noble and being born a commoner guaranteed a life as a commoner.
So demanding that something be taught is too much?
No one is suggesting the removal of any other topic only the minimum inclusion of one.
Should we allow people to never teach their children to read? What about Math? or is it just science you feel this way about?
It depends on what you're demanding be taught. Being taught evolution is not the same as being taught the scientific method in much the same way that being taught Brave New World is not the same as being taught to read. You make a much better case when you say the child must be taught to read than when you say the child must be taught a particular scientific theory. However, when you say the punishment for not teaching these things is to steal children from their families so that the government can make all the decisions about the child's upbringing, I have a real problem with that. Should all the children of oboriginal natives in places like the Brazilian rain forest and Papua New Guinea be removed if the parents can't teach them to read an write? Surely the children would be better off with western parents, wouldn't they - since they can't get educated with their own parents who might waste their time teaching to do things like hunting, gathering, and making clothes and tools?
The European Convention on Human Rights states that education is a human right. Therefore not allowing your children to learn to read and write is a violation of their rights and the government will step in to stop you.
So prior to the invention of writing, people violated their children's rights just by letting them exist? That's pretty harsh. There are reasons Americans don't take European pronouncements on human rights too seriously.
For example they are not allowed to teach them things which would result in psychological harm, even if they really believe that the child is possessed by the devil and doomed to spend eternity being tortured in hell (we have had that in the UK).
What if they teach their children that one day they and everyone they know will simply cease to exist and that their progeny are doomed to be snuffed out by universal collapse or perhaps by heat death? Even if you really believe that it's the truth, should you be allowed to teach it to your children???
If you believe science leads to facts or to truth - the real truth if you will - then you are making assumptions for which you have no proof. First, you assume that there is no intelligent guiding hand who happens to choose to make things behave in a mathematically coherent way most of the time (but who may change things a bit when a point needs to be made). You're assuming that your brain is functioning properly and that you're sense of logic is correct - that If a implies b and b implies c, that a does imply c. Perhaps it does, or perhaps you believe it so fervently that anytime something contradicts it you refuse to see it and come up with some other excuse. Perhaps the logic of the universe is incredibly simple and the only reason we keep having to invent new smaller particles and weird forms of matter is that our brains have a fundamental flaw that doesn't let us see the logic. Of course, none of these other ideas can be proven, but neither can your idea that science reveals the real truth.
Instead we find that science seems to work for us so we use it, and it has been very reliable. That's good enough to make it part of our curriculum. That's good enough for us to trust our lives to it when we get surgery or fly through the sky at Mach 1. But we go too far if we declare that science is therefor the only truth. Looking at it logically, we just can't be sure. So people who try to push science are fine, but people who try to push science to the exclusion of everything else are indeed promoting a religious belief.
You're right. The wording appears to be well-chosen. Science has limitations and even when something is supported by science it may be that 1. further scientific work will show that it was wrong and 2. it may be that its in the realm of things that science can't address.
I realize that many slashdotters take it as an article of faith that everything can and will be addressed by science, but whether or not science can explain everything isn't something we can test.
Science appears to explain most things. It's an incredibly useful tool. It is a fundamental basis for much decision-making in the modern world. You're just not educated if you don't understand it.
The theory of natural selection and evolution, whether you believe it or not, has been very useful for making medical advances and for the study of earth's history. And the basic understanding that what exists today is often an indicator of what was best able to survive and/or copy itself - whether it be cultural ideas or businesses, has become a source of understanding for many other fields besides biology. You just aren't educated unless you understand natural selection and evolution.
The question of whether people have to believe this stuff isn't for the state to decide. And those who are truly confident in science shouldn't worry much about it. If the students really understand the material, won't they have some idea of whether they should believe it?
It doesn't meet the bar. And the bar must be set very high if we are to have a free society. And while I'm not an especially big fan of "diversity" as it is often preached and practiced in America, we must set the bar very high if we are to have diversity because different cultures have very different standards for how children should be raised.
I haven't verified it myself, but I'm familiar enough with chemistry to understand what the IR spectra of CO2 is and I could easily look up the numbers in a book or online if I were so inclined. Given that they are just numbers requiring almost no interpretation I could cross-check several sources to be sure.
Do you disagree with the chemical processes that form or degrade CO2?
I don't know what all those chemical processes are, but if I were willing to invest several hours, or perhaps several days (depending on the complexity) I could probably get a basic understanding of them. Chemical processes can get pretty involved so even then I'm sure I wouldn't know everything about those processes. In fact people most knowledgeable about CO2 degradation probably have a few questions. But for the most part the processes should be easily testable.
Do you disagree with the IR spectra of water or methane?
Same as the IR spectra of C02. I could look it up in several sources and cross-check the numbers. This is something easily measurable.
Well established scientific facts are really quite self explanatory, putting your fingers in your ears and listening to "experts" doesn't change that.
But we're talking about a question of global warming. You can't just put a thermometer on every square inch of the world. You can't put one in every substance and at every layer of the atmosphere. Measuring global warming is something that is very much subject to interpretation and that requires significant educated guesswork. And the AGW isn't testable because we don't have a second earth to serve as a control.
One day I decided to educate myself about AGW so I went to Wikipedia. I was reading some of the articles and it seemed fairly convincing, but I noticed a few minor, and easily correctable, problems - nothing that would change the overall result. So I corrected some of them and referred others to the talk page. The reaction was disappointing. Rather than discuss how to improve the article, I and my motives were immediately attacked. I was called more names than usual (I edit Wikipedia sometimes so I expect at least some name-calling).
For example, a statement about scientific opinion contained 3 or 4 sources. But one of those sources contained a clear sampling bias error. I suggested we remove the one source - not all sources and not the statement, just the one source that had a sampling bias. The howling and hooting and slandering and refusal to consider the facts was enough to make me have serious doubts about the rest of the article and the rest of Wikipedia's articles on climate change.
I once tried to educate myself about the AGW thing by reading the Wikipedia page. I noticed a couple minor errors and as a regular Wikipedia editor I took action. The response was extremely biased and partisan. It didn't bother me so much that everyone had the same views, what bothered me was that anything that was 100% supportive of their position had to be removed and anything that was there that supported their position had to remain (even if it was logically fallacious). The article is very supportive of the belief AGW is real, but my experience in trying to edit the article leaves me wondering what has been left out.
Slashdot Mirror
I didn't say that _I_ took them to see it. But the trailer was still inappropriate. (Actually, I remembered incorrectly. I recall now that the trailer was actually for Hostel.)
Charisma is a kind of intelligence. Reading people's faces and body language, figuring out what they're thinking and why, figuring out what you can do or say to address their concerns without getting yourself in trouble with people who have different concerns. The charisma needed for success in politics requires a lot of complex reasoning and insight. Unfortunately, I think it is a kind of intelligence that tends benefit the individual far more than it benefits society.
The kind of intelligence that enables you to persuade someone to buy a crappy car at a high price benefits you, but has no benefit to the car buyer or to society at large.
The kind of intelligence that enables you to build a slightly better car benefits everyone.
When my kids were young and were outside of America one time they went to see "Transformers". The theatre showed a trailer for "Saw" before the Transformers movie started. The kids were pretty upset by it. I can't imagine what the theatre owner was thinking showing that trailer right before a movie based on a set of children's toys.
Like you, I don't get why a movie like "Saw" isn't more highly restricted like the other movies you mention.
A graphic headshot is never a really a graphic headshot in an American movie. Instead it is special effects being used to simulated a headshot. However when clothes are removed in a movie, it is almost always the case that clothes were really removed during the filming of the movie. I suspect that what matters is not so much how the image appears, but knowledge of how the image was created that bothers American viewers. Women without clothes are depicted in paintings and sculptures very frequently in American art museums and even in American streets that children are known to frequent. But the "headshots" you describe as common in movies are almost never shown for real even on the TV nightly news.
I tend to agree with you on this. As I said, evolution isn't a moral process just like gravity isn't a moral process. Evolution is a physical process. Some people would argue that "morality" is based on evolutionary processes that favored people who were able to cooperate with others, and that such cooperation was encouraged by the development of an internal moral compass. However I believe morality is at least in part something that God gives us.
People are free to believe what they like. They are free to believe 2+2=5. However in math class they are going to be taught an ACCURATE overview of mathematics as understood and practiced by mathematicians, and that means that MUST be taught 2+2=4 because that is THE ONLY ACCURATE way to describe the current field of math as actually understood and practiced by professional mathematicians. To pass they they need to demonstrate they have learned an ACCURATE understanding of math as understood and practiced by mathematicians. They are free to believe all the mathematicians are wrong. They are free to believe 2+2=5. If they become professional mathematicians they first need an ACCURATE understanding of the current state of the field before they can contribute new work proving 2+2=4 is wrong.
That's the key point. I'm glad we agree.
You seem very concerned about the morality of evolution. It is about as moral as gravity. It's not immoral, it's not moral. It just happens.
The other reason I don't have a great interest in studying philosophy in depth is that I think we have a fundamental catch-22. If we attempt to discern the world by logic alone, if we do a Descartes and conclude "I think therefor I am", then that's it. That's all we know. (the rest of his proof had problems) We can't even be sure our logic is correct. We just don't know with certainty anything about anything.
And yet, one can't live like that. One has to move on and actually do things. One has to believe otherwise the world continually slaps you in the face with what appears to be proof of its existence and that proof appears to get painful after a while, and people appear to get sick of you're appearing to say "appear" all the time.
Tenebrousedge makes some subtle observations about the non-equality of "truths" but they're not very satisfying. They still leave us wanting to be sure of things that we can't logically be sure of. We're stuck with no hope of getting out of the situation. I don't find such a situation terribly interesting. It seems a bit like debating whether your prison cell is 10'x10.1' or 9.9'x10.2'. Either way you're still in a prison and not getting out.
What little philosophy I encountered in school turned me off because most of what we learned was so full of problems and holes and fallacies. Friends who took philosophy would ask me silly questions with fairly obvious answers. It's nice to be able to use more precise language when writing about and discussing philosophical questions, but for the parts of philosophy that I'm most interested in I think the language can easily get in the way. Language is after all an expression of culture and I'm more interested in the kinds of absolutes that are not reliant on culture or even on humans.
If you believe science leads to facts or to truth - the real truth if you will - then you are making assumptions for which you have no proof.
That is not the purpose of science. The purpose of science is to improve our understanding of the universe and how it works. The ultimate truth about how everything works is likely to be unknowable, always limited by the tools available to us and our ability to mentally grasp and understand them.
Precisely.
However, it does produce a clearer and clearer picture over time. Sometimes it is wrong, and we later learn better. It is not perfect, but it is the best method we have for exploring and understanding our universe.
Whether that clearer and clearer picture is more and more correct depends on whether some basic assumptions are true.
First, you assume that there is no intelligent guiding hand who happens to choose to make things behave in a mathematically coherent way most of the time (but who may change things a bit when a point needs to be made).
Science does not assume this, it simply fails to a) find evidence of such an "intelligent guiding hand" and b) has encountered no situations which require an "intelligent guiding hand" to explain them.
A proper view of science acknowledges that the "intelligent guiding hand" that is omniscient, omnipotent, and doesn't want to be put in a test tube is untestable and therefore not within the realm of science to confirm or deny. On the other hand what I commonly see here (though not in your post) is the belief that if science can't find it then it doesn't exist.
You're assuming that your brain is functioning properly and that you're sense of logic is correct - that If a implies b and b implies c, that a does imply c.
Which is why science is not advanced by the conclusions of any one scientist, but of many who work independently and review each other's work. It is a group effort, never relying solely on the research or conclusions of any one individual, who may have taken a flawed approach.
You misunderstand my point. I'm not suggesting that one individual's brain is messed up - perhaps it is all of our brains. What does of all of our science ultimately rest on? Logic. Simple logical laws like "If a implies b, and b implies c, then a implies c". Well what if it's wrong? You can't even imagine it because you have such an unshakable belief in it. If anything appears to contradict that law, you assume that your senses are lying to you, or that you're misunderstanding what you're seeing, or something else must be the problem. I do the same thing because I too use logic. But what if it's just plain wrong?
For thousands of years we assumed time moved at a constant rate, and then some guy showed us it didn't. How did he do that? He looked at some observations and applied logic. He came up with a problem and something had to give. He decided to toss out his basic assumptions about time and space (assumptions which were good enough for everything our ancestors ever encountered) . What if he tossed out the wrong thing? What if time and space are constant but it is our logic which is only a "good enough" approximation of reality and it is our logic that falls apart at high velocities and when dealing with fundamental questions of light and matter?
Of course this is all speculation because I could never possibly prove the logic is wrong because to do so I would have to use logic! You could argue that all I would need to do is point out contradictions, yet it might be possible for a system of logic to be internally consistent but still be wrong.
Perhaps it does, or perhaps you believe it so fervently that anytime something contradicts it you refuse to see it and come up with some other excuse. Perhap
The European Convention on Human Rights states that education is a human right. Therefore not allowing your children to learn to read and write is a violation of their rights and the government will step in to stop you.
So prior to the invention of writing, people violated their children's rights just by letting them exist? That's pretty harsh. There are reasons Americans don't take European pronouncements on human rights too seriously.
No. Article 7 of the same convention.
ARTICLE 7 No punishment without law 1. No one shall be held guilty of any criminal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a criminal offence under national or international law at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the criminal offence was committed.
And the ECHR was written after the invention of writing.
So it's all relative and human rights are subject to the whim of the Europeans rather than constants that have always existed? The abolitionists of the 19th century were wrong to oppose slavery because ECHR hadn't decided it was wrong yet?
yeah... that.
I think we're saying the same thing (I had to look up Epistemology) but you're saying it with bigger words.
Okay, I shortened it down to this, tell me if I'm correct or misreading what you said:
"Debate with a lot of data but no defined factual outcome should be part of our curriculum."
Cuz if my reading is correct, it already is.
That's pretty much what I'm saying at least for subjects that are likely to cause controversy. It is the curricula in many places. However there are other places that fall on either side - refusing to teach the data and the common interpretations, or insisting that the kids profess their faith in one particular interpretation. That latter seems to be what a lot of people on slashdot want but I think the latter is as bad or worse than the former.
"natural selection" just happens (I use quotes because the term "natural" can have different meanings to different people) and it is still happening. It isn't necessarily moral or something to be encouraged. In fact efforts to encourage it, such as eugenics, are generally considered immoral in the West.
Your statement that "...it is all very natural..." seems to imply that "natural" equals "moral" or "good". It doesn't.
Note also that you are not necessarily correct to say that "he one who is most violent and has the best weapons survives and therefore is the most fit". In the modern world it often seems that those who have the largest weapons don't reproduce much. And for those who do reproduce it is largely a matter of whether or not they choose to do so. So fitness might actually involve refusing technology and/or simply choosing to have a lot of kids.
One of the reasons you don't feel left out is because you know that if you work hard enough and you apply enough intelligence, you have a fair shot at one day owning that yacht or, if not you, your kids do. The capabilities of man are mysterious enough and far enough from technology that it is assumed in places with some basic freedoms like America that every child has a shot at becoming rich. Access education and inheritance only gets you so far if you don't apply yourself. And people like Bill Clinton demonstrate that even someone from a relatively poor background can still become filthy rich.
But what if that changes? What if being born to a wealthy family doesn't just give you external advantages like networking, school tuition and capital, but also gives you inherent mental and physical advantages that a poor simply can't match no matter how hard he tries or how good his genes? This would create a new class system much like that of the middle ages where being born noble guaranteed a life as a noble and being born a commoner guaranteed a life as a commoner.
2. it may be that its in the realm of things that science can't address.
Give me 3 examples of things in that realm.
You wouldn't believe them anyway :-)
So demanding that something be taught is too much? No one is suggesting the removal of any other topic only the minimum inclusion of one.
Should we allow people to never teach their children to read? What about Math? or is it just science you feel this way about?
It depends on what you're demanding be taught. Being taught evolution is not the same as being taught the scientific method in much the same way that being taught Brave New World is not the same as being taught to read. You make a much better case when you say the child must be taught to read than when you say the child must be taught a particular scientific theory. However, when you say the punishment for not teaching these things is to steal children from their families so that the government can make all the decisions about the child's upbringing, I have a real problem with that. Should all the children of oboriginal natives in places like the Brazilian rain forest and Papua New Guinea be removed if the parents can't teach them to read an write? Surely the children would be better off with western parents, wouldn't they - since they can't get educated with their own parents who might waste their time teaching to do things like hunting, gathering, and making clothes and tools?
The European Convention on Human Rights states that education is a human right. Therefore not allowing your children to learn to read and write is a violation of their rights and the government will step in to stop you.
So prior to the invention of writing, people violated their children's rights just by letting them exist? That's pretty harsh. There are reasons Americans don't take European pronouncements on human rights too seriously.
For example they are not allowed to teach them things which would result in psychological harm, even if they really believe that the child is possessed by the devil and doomed to spend eternity being tortured in hell (we have had that in the UK).
What if they teach their children that one day they and everyone they know will simply cease to exist and that their progeny are doomed to be snuffed out by universal collapse or perhaps by heat death? Even if you really believe that it's the truth, should you be allowed to teach it to your children???
If you believe science leads to facts or to truth - the real truth if you will - then you are making assumptions for which you have no proof. First, you assume that there is no intelligent guiding hand who happens to choose to make things behave in a mathematically coherent way most of the time (but who may change things a bit when a point needs to be made). You're assuming that your brain is functioning properly and that you're sense of logic is correct - that If a implies b and b implies c, that a does imply c. Perhaps it does, or perhaps you believe it so fervently that anytime something contradicts it you refuse to see it and come up with some other excuse. Perhaps the logic of the universe is incredibly simple and the only reason we keep having to invent new smaller particles and weird forms of matter is that our brains have a fundamental flaw that doesn't let us see the logic. Of course, none of these other ideas can be proven, but neither can your idea that science reveals the real truth.
Instead we find that science seems to work for us so we use it, and it has been very reliable. That's good enough to make it part of our curriculum. That's good enough for us to trust our lives to it when we get surgery or fly through the sky at Mach 1. But we go too far if we declare that science is therefor the only truth. Looking at it logically, we just can't be sure. So people who try to push science are fine, but people who try to push science to the exclusion of everything else are indeed promoting a religious belief.
You're right. The wording appears to be well-chosen. Science has limitations and even when something is supported by science it may be that 1. further scientific work will show that it was wrong and 2. it may be that its in the realm of things that science can't address.
I realize that many slashdotters take it as an article of faith that everything can and will be addressed by science, but whether or not science can explain everything isn't something we can test.
Science appears to explain most things. It's an incredibly useful tool. It is a fundamental basis for much decision-making in the modern world. You're just not educated if you don't understand it.
The theory of natural selection and evolution, whether you believe it or not, has been very useful for making medical advances and for the study of earth's history. And the basic understanding that what exists today is often an indicator of what was best able to survive and/or copy itself - whether it be cultural ideas or businesses, has become a source of understanding for many other fields besides biology. You just aren't educated unless you understand natural selection and evolution.
The question of whether people have to believe this stuff isn't for the state to decide. And those who are truly confident in science shouldn't worry much about it. If the students really understand the material, won't they have some idea of whether they should believe it?
It doesn't meet the bar. And the bar must be set very high if we are to have a free society. And while I'm not an especially big fan of "diversity" as it is often preached and practiced in America, we must set the bar very high if we are to have diversity because different cultures have very different standards for how children should be raised.
Lucas also borrowed from Carl Barks.
Do you disagree with the IR spectra of CO2?
I haven't verified it myself, but I'm familiar enough with chemistry to understand what the IR spectra of CO2 is and I could easily look up the numbers in a book or online if I were so inclined. Given that they are just numbers requiring almost no interpretation I could cross-check several sources to be sure.
Do you disagree with the chemical processes that form or degrade CO2?
I don't know what all those chemical processes are, but if I were willing to invest several hours, or perhaps several days (depending on the complexity) I could probably get a basic understanding of them. Chemical processes can get pretty involved so even then I'm sure I wouldn't know everything about those processes. In fact people most knowledgeable about CO2 degradation probably have a few questions. But for the most part the processes should be easily testable.
Do you disagree with the IR spectra of water or methane?
Same as the IR spectra of C02. I could look it up in several sources and cross-check the numbers. This is something easily measurable.
Well established scientific facts are really quite self explanatory, putting your fingers in your ears and listening to "experts" doesn't change that.
But we're talking about a question of global warming. You can't just put a thermometer on every square inch of the world. You can't put one in every substance and at every layer of the atmosphere. Measuring global warming is something that is very much subject to interpretation and that requires significant educated guesswork. And the AGW isn't testable because we don't have a second earth to serve as a control.
One day I decided to educate myself about AGW so I went to Wikipedia. I was reading some of the articles and it seemed fairly convincing, but I noticed a few minor, and easily correctable, problems - nothing that would change the overall result. So I corrected some of them and referred others to the talk page. The reaction was disappointing. Rather than discuss how to improve the article, I and my motives were immediately attacked. I was called more names than usual (I edit Wikipedia sometimes so I expect at least some name-calling).
For example, a statement about scientific opinion contained 3 or 4 sources. But one of those sources contained a clear sampling bias error. I suggested we remove the one source - not all sources and not the statement, just the one source that had a sampling bias. The howling and hooting and slandering and refusal to consider the facts was enough to make me have serious doubts about the rest of the article and the rest of Wikipedia's articles on climate change.
I once tried to educate myself about the AGW thing by reading the Wikipedia page. I noticed a couple minor errors and as a regular Wikipedia editor I took action. The response was extremely biased and partisan. It didn't bother me so much that everyone had the same views, what bothered me was that anything that was 100% supportive of their position had to be removed and anything that was there that supported their position had to remain (even if it was logically fallacious). The article is very supportive of the belief AGW is real, but my experience in trying to edit the article leaves me wondering what has been left out.