FSM advocates call for equal time in science classrooms

[Yamori]

http://www.venganza.org/

ROFFLE

[Gidan]

That was just hillarious.

[veeneedefeesh]

I want the "I was touched by His Noodly Appendage" shirt.

[Eziekial]

If only all the energy used to create and perpetuate that and other websites both for and against something so beniegn was actually used to better oneself
It's actually kinda sad that someone who seems intelligent would feel it so necessary to create a website that ridicules faith.

[Harrison]

Lately people have this false sense of superiority over those with any amount of faith in anything.

"You BELIEVE there is the possibility that maybe I don't know everything?! HAH WHAT A NOOB THERE IS NO GOD, IF THERE WAS MY CAT BOOTSY WOULDNT HAVE DIED"

[Harrison]

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=midgit

[Thon]

people can believe that a carpenter that got nailed to a cross a few millenia ago is their savior, just keep it out of the fucking science classes

[Gidan]

If only all the energy used to create and perpetuate that and other websites both for and against something so beniegn was actually used to better oneself
It's actually kinda sad that someone who seems intelligent would feel it so necessary to create a website that ridicules faith.

There are just as many very intelligent people out there spending just as much time and effort on websites that ridicule people who do not have faith. It really is sad on both counts.

[Lyion]

people can believe that a single cell organism became a man a few millenia ago, just keep it out of the fucking science classes

[Gidan]

people can believe that a single cell organism became a man a few millenia ago, just keep it out of the fucking science classes

That is a widly accepted scientific theory. True, being widly accepted does not make it true. However it is the best scientific explination for life. It has a place in science classes. In time, shoudl it be proven to be incorrect, I would be all for removing it from science classes, however it has not been proven incorrect and has alot of evidence pointing toward its being true.

ID is not science, thus has no place in science classes.

[mofish]

people can believe that a single cell organism became a man a few millenia ago, just keep it out of the fucking science classes

except thats what is known as, 'science' while creationism is what is known as 'bullshit.'

[Harrison]

Because Mofish is all-knowing!

[Tikker]

people can believe that a single cell organism became a man a few millenia ago, just keep it out of the fucking science classes

except of course there's some evidence for evolution, unlike your god

[Harrison]

Evidence is relative to the person viewing the "evidence".

[Lyion]

http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/k ... 030811.asp

Designs on Us
Conservatives on Darwin vs. ID.

By David Klinghoffer

The New Republic recently published a survey of conservative journalists on the question of “Intelligent Design” (ID), the controversial critique of Darwinian evolution which argues that living creatures did not arise by an unaided, purely material process of evolution through random genetic variation but rather through the design of an intelligence transcending the material universe. To my surprise, it turned out that almost all those surveyed, including several NR editors and contributors, were doubters not of Darwinism but of Intelligent Design.

I realize with some trepidation that I am treading on the views of many of my old NR friends and colleagues, notably John Derbyshire who has written eloquently on the subject, but herewith a dissent on behalf of doubting Darwin.

A majority of biologists reject ID. But a minority of scientists, who are no fools, suggests that it is Darwinism that fails to explain the complexity of organisms. I don’t intend to wade into the details of the debate, but rather to ask how a layman like me, or Derbyshire, can hope to venture a responsible opinion. The question is not merely theoretical. The teaching of Darwinian evolution in public schools is being challenged before local and state school boards across the country.

Some say that, for non-experts, the smartest thing would be to accede to the viewpoint of the majority of scientists. But wait. The point I want to draw out here is that Darwinism, in particular evolutionary psychology, itself undercuts the claim that ID may be safely dismissed.

Charles Darwin’s insight holds that people are simply animals and that, like all animals, we got to be the way we are because our ancestors beat out the evolutionary competition and survived to pass on their genes. Evolutionary psychology extends this idea. There are some behaviors that increase the chances that a given person will be able to pass on his genetic information. One, for instance, might be murder, often committed against rivals who give the appearance of seeking to diminish the odds of our raising viable offspring that will carry our DNA. A classic illustration is the crime of passion, where the angry husband shoots the sexual rival who has been having an affair with his wife.

From this perspective, a main evolutionary-psychological impulse that drives males in particular is the drive to fight off rivals. For rivals threaten to reduce our access to reproductive assets — namely, women — by lowering our status in a social hierarchy. In certain neighborhoods, all it takes is a disrespectful look or word, a “diss,” especially in front of women, to get a man killed.

In evolutionary psychology, as in common sense, it is apparent that males highly value whatever source of status or prestige they have managed to secure. We value status so much that some are willing to kill over it. Others are willing at least to wound, if only with words.

One prominent evolutionary psychologist, Harvard’s Steven Pinker, has written frankly about rivalry in academia, and the use of cutting rhetoric in the defense of established ideas: “Their champions are not always averse to helping the ideas along with tactics of verbal dominance, among them intimidation (‘Clearly…’), threat (‘It would be unscientific to…’), authority (‘As Popper showed…’), insult (‘This work lacks the necessary rigor for…’), and belittling (‘Few people today seriously believe that…’).”

I bring this up because Intelligent Design aggressively challenges the status of many professionals currently laboring in secular academia. And because one of the hallmarks of the defense of Darwinism is precisely the kind of rhetorical displays of intimidation, threat, authority, and insult that Pinker describes.

For instance in a section on the website of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, entitled “Q&A on Evolution and Intelligent Design,” you will find numerous statements as if lifted almost verbatim from Pinker’s examples — ridiculing ID as “non-scientific,” an idea whose “advocates have yet to contribute in a scientifically rigorous manner,” who “may use the language of science, but [who] do not use its methodology.”

When you consider that ID theoreticians have published their findings in peer-reviewed scientific journals, in formidable academic presses such as those of Cambridge University and the University of Chicago, such denunciations start to sound like a worried defense of status more than a disinterested search for truth.

If the Darwinian establishment is vexed, that’s understandable. A century and a half ago, the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species with its materialistic implications signaled the overturning of Western society’s traditional matrix for the granting of status: namely religion. From Darwin forward, intellectual prestige was bestowed not by religious institutions but by secular ones, the universities.

It has remained so until today. Now, with many parents and school-board members signaling their impatience with the answers given by secular academia to ultimate questions — like, where did we humans come from — the secular hierarchy would be foolish not to be concerned. It would be perfectly in keeping with their own Darwinist views — about how men especially will fight to defend their source of status — to expect secularists to struggle violently against any challenge that may be raised against Darwinism, no matter where the truth of the matter may actually lie. Being the animals that we are, we are programmed through our genes to do just that.

In a wonderful irony, the only intellectual framework in which people can genuinely be expected to pursue truth dispassionately, even if that truth undermines our sense of personal prestige, happens to be the religious framework, in which people aren’t animals at all but rather beings created in the image of God.

In the case of ID versus Darwin, this observation may not tell us which side to embrace. It should signal, however, that when secularists insist that real science must lead to the view that life and intelligence arose through chance genetic events, we needn’t accept that view as gospel. I’ve offered a reason to doubt the Darwinian establishment, not necessarily to reject it. When laymen, including conservative journalists, follow the scientific majority on a question like this, rather than the dissenting minority, they should at least be aware that they are following guides who, while claiming to be disinterested, are anything but that.

[veeneedefeesh]

In a wonderful irony, the only intellectual framework in which people can genuinely be expected to pursue truth dispassionately, even if that truth undermines our sense of personal prestige, happens to be the religious framework, in which people aren’t animals at all but rather beings created in the image of God.

So if I read this correctly and apply it to the example above, man then murders his rival for his females attention because he is created in the image of God. If that is true then God must be a vengeful and jealous God who is willing to destroy an equal if it happens to be convenient or to stand in the way of perpetuating his genes (ie getting laid). Somehow that doesnt sound like a God I would wish to worship.

No all things considered I would prefer to believe that IF there is a God (and I am not at all sure that there is), I would like to believe that a benevolent Greater Power is somehow watching over us and guiding our actions in some "Grande Design" which no human could possibly fathom. If there isn't a God then I would like to lead a life which benefits others more than it harms them.

Regardless of whether there is or isn't a God I am certainly not going to spend my valuable little time on this earth perpetuating self-serving, self-righteous ideals to justify persecuting people who don't believe the way "we" do or trying to force my beliefs down an unwilling throat.

[Lyion]

You did not read it or apply it correctly, Veenee, but you already knew that.

[veeneedefeesh]

Damn you didnt take the bait!

I think the ID is jsut an effort to appease the creationalists by saying "hey there is room for your religious beliefs within the framework of scientific data which can be proven" It is a nice gesture, but doesnt appear to hold much water to either side.

[araby]

I liked the "I want to believe" tshirt and would get one if they were black instead of white.

[Lyion]

I think the ID is jsut an effort to appease the creationalists

Just as evolution is just an effort to appease Athiests.

Anyways, the point is not science or rational discourse, both of which we should employ and vigorously engage, it is this

One prominent evolutionary psychologist, Harvard’s Steven Pinker, has written frankly about rivalry in academia, and the use of cutting rhetoric in the defense of established ideas: “Their champions are not always averse to helping the ideas along with tactics of verbal dominance, among them intimidation (‘Clearly…’), threat (‘It would be unscientific to…’), authority (‘As Popper showed…’), insult (‘This work lacks the necessary rigor for…’), and belittling (‘Few people today seriously believe that…’).”

I bring this up because Intelligent Design aggressively challenges the status of many professionals currently laboring in secular academia. And because one of the hallmarks of the defense of Darwinism is precisely the kind of rhetorical displays of intimidation, threat, authority, and insult that Pinker describes.

Anyways, in regards to this:

Damn you didnt take the bait!

I'm sure Mindia will come along and derail the thread and kill it soon.

[Captain Insano]

people can believe that a carpenter that got nailed to a cross a few millenia ago is their savior, just keep it out of the fucking science classes

I got a piece of my finger caught with a staple gun once while helping my dad build a shed... For all I know I could be jesus.


Worship ME!

[mofish]

lol, evolution is an effort to appease atheists? Yes, this 150 year old theory, supported by thousands of experiments, millions of observations, millions of fossils, DNA, genetics, is all just an atheist conspiracy. OK.

You are aware that you can be christian and also understand that the process of evolution is real? Not every christian lives in denial.

[mofish]

Because Mofish is all-knowing!

I must seem like it to a dumb, angry dropout like you.

[Jimmy Durante]

You are aware that you can be christian and also understand that the process of evolution is real? Not every christian lives in denial.

Not to mention Pope John Paul.

In his Encyclical Humani generis [1950], my predecessor Pius XII had already stated that there was no opposition between evolution and the doctrine of the faith about man and his vocation, on condition that one did not lose sight of several indisputable points (cf. AAS 42 [1950], pp. 575-576)."

[Rust]

I think the ID is jsut an effort to appease the creationalists

Just as evolution is just an effort to appease Athiests (sic).

No, ID is the latest effort by fundamentalist Christians to force the teaching of their religious beliefs in science classes. They lost in trying to get 'equal time' for Scientific Creationism (e.g. teach Genesis as science), so they tried to scrape off some of the more obvious bits lifted from Genesis, and rebranded it as ID. Just watch them in front of church crowds some time and they take the science masks off...

If ID wants to be taken seriously, let them come up with a more fruitful theory than evolution that explains more about life on Earth. Simply claiming 'Goddidit, no idea how' isn't in any way shape or form a scientific explanation of *anything*. New theories displace old theories by being better at solving problems or answering questions. ID is a long step back from trying to explain anything - it's a surrender. Not to mention the 'irreducible complexity' examples they keep trying to bring up keep getting shot down...

--R. 'athy, athier, athiest?'