Guest Blogger Danio:
Stand up and cheer for the academic standards at UC, and the LA Federal Judge whose ruling on accrediting courses taught in Christian schools upholds these standards.
A federal judge in Los Angeles has thrown out the remaining claims of Calvary Chapel Christian School, which sued the University of California alleging university officials rejected some courses for credit because of their Christian viewpoint.
What a bunch of sticklers those UC guys are! In order to qualify as an accepted college preparatory course, the UC standards require the course content to be largely reality based:
a UC professor who reviewed Calvary’s proposed Christianity’s Influence on America class said the course used a textbook that “instructs that the Bible is the unerring source for analysis of historical events,” “attributes historical events to divine providence rather than analyzing human action,” and “contains inadequate treatment of several major ethnic groups, women and non-Christian religious groups.”
Oh, the uppity secular progressivness of it all! Surely indoctrination into batshit insane bigotry shouldn’t affect one’s admission into a state university, right? Right?
That, apparently, was the basis of the lawsuit filed on behalf of Calvary by the Advocates for Faith and Freedom. The lead counsel for the plaintiffs, of course, plans to appeal, and is playing up the discrimination angle for this poor, embattled majority faith for all it’s worth:
Tyler…fears schools will become afraid to teach from a Christian perspective. “We’re worried in the long term, Christian education is going to be continually watered down in order to satisfy the UC school system,” he said.
That’s right, you tool. Churches and church-sponsored schools are free to teach all the nonsense they want to willing, tuition-paying participants, but they must not be free of the consequences of setting their egregiously misinformed students loose in the real world.
Even in Idiot America sometimes rationalism beats batshit insane.
That’s a shocker. Good for them!
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Any university/alternative teaching collective or individual that explicitly establishes itself as presenting non-mainstream views cannot expect the mainstream to accept those views…..ignoring the question of whether such views are idiotic.
Hopefully that puts things in context for the dominionists, here.
I am so happy to see this – it is helping solidify my desire to move to California.
So following Calvary’s logic, they’d be OK with courses from a school like, oh I don’t know, Hellmouth Coven Wiccan Preparatory, receiving full credit at UC?
Then again, probably not.
Is it just me, or does the response “Thank God!” sum it up very nicely…
Woot! I’m feelin’ a little pride in my university system right now. Of course, this is one tiny little drop in the sea of irrationality that makes up the good ‘ole US of A, but yah. Go UC
-A UCR student
Teaching ideas about the world as facts when there is no evidence to support those ideas should be prosecutable as child abuse. Alas, we’ll be waiting quite a while for that one. In the meanwhile, I’m glad universities are allowed to reject fantacy-based classes for credit.
It’s the old, “my religious freedom means that you pay the consequences for my ignorance” idea.
Sure, we’re supposed to certify that these ignoramuses have knowledge, because they call their prejudices “knowledge”.
That makes baby Jesus cry, especially if he ends up being medically treated by some incompetent who preferred myth to fact.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
“Teaching ideas about the world as facts when there is no evidence to support those ideas should be prosecutable as child abuse.”
Unfortunately, at least in MD, it takes you starving your children to death before the state will take action. You can breed and raise multiple felons, spend years in prison, and avoid working a day in your life, but god bless MD, keep your kids.
Rather than a victory for rationalism, this is an object lesson for antirationalists.
ACSI didn’t lose on the merits, they lost due to overconfidence and bad legal strategy.
They believed they would win a “facial” challenge to the policy — that UC’s policy was inherently discriminatory. They build their whole legal strategy around winning the facial challenge.
They were wrong; in March, the judge said the policy wasn’t inherently discriminatory. As such, ACSI would have to argue that, as applied to this particular case, the policy was discriminatory.
The trouble is, there was no time left to prepare that case — find and depose experts, gather evidence to submit, etc. — before the deadlines imposed by the court schedule. There’s some odd rule about evidence having to be submitted to the court 90 days before trial so the other side has a chance to deal with it.
ACSI got expert depositions in, but after the deadline.
The judge basically disposed of the case piece by piece, reminding ACSI repeatedly that to prevail, they need admissible evidence, and the evidence they submitted was too late, thus not admissible, so they had no admissible evidence, so they couldn’t to prevail.
I expect that ACSI will be back, soon, with another school “discriminated” against, and won’t miss the deadlines next time.
Oh, I so want to quit my job and found a school with precisely that name! Anyone want to join the faculty? I’m already writing cheers and fightsongs in my head, and designing the diplomas (scorched edges, natch!).
No pointless poll? You’re no fun at all, Californian.
“We’re worried in the long term, Christian education is going to be continually watered down in order to satisfy the UC school system”
..and he would rather see the UC school system watered down to satisfy Christians.
D’oh!! What’s my major malfunction? Obviously, only the word “so” was supposed to be styled; I didn’t mean to be shouting.
Yup, the devil’s in the details.
Don’t be silly! Random angry shouting is exactly the kind of behaviour we would expect from the headmaster at Hellmouth Coven Wiccan Preparatory.
As a UCLA alum, I cheer for UC’s fortitude. It is amazing to watch people claim that just because we don’t believe the sky is green, we’re the ones with the problem.
“…afraid to teach from a Christian perspective.”
should read:
“…afraid to teach from an Ignorant perspective.”
They constantly confuse belief with fact, opinion with evidence. Idiots.
Great ruling Judge.
Bill @ #12.
Oh, and I want to join whatever post-graduate program HCWP offers.
Great ruling! The Bible is not inherently historically accurate book!
YAY! Danio thank you for posting this – you just made my day!
I have had personal experience with many of these so called christian educators at schoolboard meetings and thru my local paper. No matter how hard I try to discuss with them the importance of education standards that meet or exceed that which is required for secondary education, they will always revert back to there religious mindset.
I second foxfire- thanks, Danio, for brightening our day by posting this good news.
That textbook does sound like a bit of a fright. The sort of material you’d expect to see used by godbothering parents of “homeschooled” unfortunates, certainly not part of a scholastic matriculation process.
I think UCLA should start a specialist veterinary course, and reserve it exclusively for Christians. They should accept applications from ANYONE at Calvary Chapel Christian School; no entrance examinations or prerequisites required. None.
The coursework should comprise of lectures, assignments, and practicals (or “pracs” – lab work). The first prac should be set on the first day of the first term, as an introduction to the world of veterinary science. For this first prac, the students will get “up close and personal” with an animal – they will handle an animal, one student at a time, in order to get themselves acquainted with the nature of the work they’re going to do.
For the purpose of this exercise, the nominated animal shall be a lion.
Jackal, #8,
Curious how that would work in several situations, given that “rationality” is arguing on the basis of evidence:
1) Some rational atheists argue for the efficacy of human torture. Some other rational atheists argue against it. So would teaching your children that it is OK to torture enemy combatants be child abuse, or would teaching them that it is not OK to torture enemy combatants be child abuse?
2) Some rational atheists argue for the justness of the Iraq war. Some other argue against it. So would teaching your children that the Iraq war was just be child abuse, or would teaching them that it was unjust be child abuse?
3) Some rational atheists argue that, unlike western religion, eastern mysticism is on firm empirical footing. Some other rational atheists argue that eastern mysticism is as irrational as Christianity. So would teaching your children to practice eastern mysticism be child abuse, or would teaching them that eastern mysticism is nonsense be child abuse?
4) Some rational atheists argue that animal testing is ethical, some rational atheists argue that it is unethical. So would teaching your children that animal testing is ethical be child abuse, or would teaching them that it is unethical be child abuse?
5) Some rational atheists argue that strong gun control is needed. Some other rational atheists argue that strong gun control is ill advised. So would teaching your children that strong gun control is needed be child abuse, or would teaching them that it is unnecessary be child abuse?
6) Some rational atheists argue that libertarianism is the cat’s meow. Some other rational atheists argue that libertarians are nuts. So would teaching your children that libertarianism is sensible be child abuse, or would teaching them that it is asinine be child abuse?
7) Some rational atheists argue that vaccines are ineffective and the germ theory is nonsense. Some other rational atheists argue the opposite. So would teaching your children anti-vaccine, anti-germ theory ideas be child abuse, or would teaching them the opposite be child abuse?
Did anyone check out the Comments section? One individual posted the following (quoted verbatim):
Is this the level of education “Christian schools” are providing?
WOOHOO!!!! California number 1!!!!
-UCD Student
Heddle,
In almost all the examples provided you give no indication if there is any evidence to support either of your options. Perhaps you missed this:
(emphasis mine)
In which case it seems to me that only the antivax example would be child abuse, but for the act of denying proper care to the children. We still don’t know if in your hypothetical world there is evidence against the efficacy of vaccination.
I attended a school just like that during my junior high years. The week always began with a sermon delivered by the pastor in charge of the school. If that week contained a holiday, the sermon usually had the theme that the religious nature of that holiday had been usurped by the devil. We learned that Santa was just Satan with a few letters switched around, or that the Easter bunny was just Hallmark’s version of an ancient pagan deity. Sometimes the reason for the holiday was specifically to honor the devil. The pastor harbored a special hatred for Halloween. Costuming your children and forcing them to beg for candy was likened to devoting them by fire to Moloch. Keep in mind this was a K-12 school. There were five-year-olds in attendance learning that their parents were preparing to symbolically sacrifice them to a pagan god that evening. That afternoon, I served a lengthy after-school detention for failing to complete a homework assignment. During my detention, the pastor was visited by his grandchildren, whom were of course dressed for an evening of burning for Moloch. Grandpa praised his grandkids for the creativeness of their costumes, and hoped they would get lots of candy. It was hilariously hypocritical. I guess it is only OK to mentally scar the children of others. Luckily, that school has since gone out business, due in part to the fact that it could only obtain accreditation for its curriculum from a few Bible colleges and therefore could not attract more than a handful of students. It would seem that occasionally the system does work.
We need a new blog-law along the lines of POE’s law that states:
“Genuine questions from a deluded believer will be indistinguishable from that of a Troll until said believer fails to degenerate into pure ad hominem attacks using ALL CAPS within five posts.”
I call it Heddle’s law.
The first time we met up on Panda’s Thumb, I thought he was definitely a Troll, and it took several posts to come to the conclusion that he was trying to debate in good, if very strange, faith, rather than just trying to bait the rest of us with his strange presumptions and leading questions.
Even today, if I read the comment before the commenter’s name, every time, every time, I think it’s a Troll until I see that, oh, it’s just Heddle.
Schmeer, #30,
Take the “just Iraq war” example.
If there is no evidence for either position, then according to Jackal’s Premise:
puts you at risk whichever position you offer to your kids, unless, perhaps, you are careful to qualify everything you say to them with “this is my opinion on the justness of the Iraq war, which is not based on evidence, i.e., it is sort of a religious position.” Any dogmatic statement from parent to child, such as “of course the Iraq war is unjust” would be child abuse.
The Bible is largely a collection of sky-worship allegories and astrology. It is replete with references to stars and planets, and various natural phenomenon which are interpreted as being supernatural in origin. Jesus wasn’t a real person. The story of Noah’s Ark and the Great Flood was plagiarized from earlier Egyptian mythology. The fable of Jonah (the sun) and the Whale (the constellation Cetus) is another sky-worship allegory. Christians don’t have the slightest idea what they’re reading, or what’s being read to them. They happily and zealously perpetuate this nonsense like obsequious lickspittle.
One of my daughter’s homeschooled friends was shocked to learn that my daughter doesn’t own a Bible. This came in response to my daughter’s acceptance of gay marriages, which her friend said God rejected.
On one hand, I’m glad I never bought my daughter a Bible, because it’s a giant load of tripe. On the other hand, I kind of what her to own one so she can see for herself what a giant load of tripe it is.
As a UCSC graduate, I am relieved by this judge’s ruling. We just cannot allow California’s best universities to give fantasy an equal footing with reality.
But this is another reason Obama has to win the election. What will the US Supreme Court look like in 4-8 years if McSame is elected? He’ll get a couple more relatively young Clarance Thomases on the court. We just can’t allow that to happen, because we’re about 2 Supremes away from overturning this ruling (as conservative as it currently is, it’s still not quite conservative enough to overturn this ruling).
@heddle,
I think that, in all your cases, a dogmatic insistence on any of those propositions as actual unassailable fact in the instruction of a child would be a similar level of “abuse” as such an insistence on biblical literalism.
But I don’t think that occurs with the same kind of rigidity that characterizes literalist science-denial. Nor are the more abusive tactics employed by atheists of any stripe: opposing ideas as lies of the devil; fear of eternal damnation, etc. That’s where the psychological harm really comes in.
Ugh. Glad you survived, GuyIncognito. OT, but your comment “It was hilariously hypocritical” reminds me of this: The Only Moral Abortion is My Abortion.
“…what her to own one…” = “…want her to own one…”, at least in my corner of the universe.
D’oh.
This ruling is only over some of the courses they teach in which “Biblical truth” seems to take precedence over REALITY, but they still complain and seek justice from a high court. I am sure they’ll call the present ruling persecution.
Get this: They are afraid they may have to water down their Christian education! Didn’t they already do this to reality based education?
That said, I went to the school’s website. I checked out the high school drama. (Don’t ALL high schools have drama!) Seems they did Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest” last fall. One wonders if the teachers know about Wilde’s history? Did they teach the “controversy” about him?
That said, their next production is “Honk, Jr.” which is a musicalized version of the “Ugly Duckling.”
From their website: This show is full of characters including ducks, geese, a cat, a frog, fish, chickens, goats, pigs, and of course, swans.
WHAT!!!! No bacterial flagellum!!!!
Hooray for California courts insisting on rationality in our halls of higher education!
I knew too many uber religious kids (mostly Mormon, JH’s with a few muslims) when I was doing my undergrad. They had a brutal tendency (especially the mormon and JH kids) to cry when their beliefs were challenged in a logical and factual way. Perhaps this means that post secondary education has the legal backing to force students to learn, think and have a fucking backbone in the face of adversity and new information. I would have loved a tear free first two years.
After the second year, most of them changed programs to something safe or went to other schools (I knew a lot of Canadian Mormons that headed south to places like BYU). Makes me wanna puke. Let’s keep them sheltered, naive, and ignorant so it’ll all be good and the church can stay strong.
Why do they want to go to an evil secular university? Surely there must be colleges with an equivalent academic standing which teach their courses from a Christian perspective, right?
Right?
Anyone? Anyone…?
CJO, #36
Fair enough. However if you concede that dogmatic assertion of political viewpoints as facts would be the same type of abuse, I submit you are throwing a lot of people under the bus along with fundamentalist parents. You have offered a self-consistent viewpoint which I can’t attack, but I also think it is a dangerous viewpoint.
Alan Chapman, #34
If it were at all possible I’d challenge you to back that up. That is, I would happily debate you to see who “knows what they are reading.” I base this not on any special confidence in my own knowledge, but solely on the basis that you offered some of the most tiresome canards in the history of canards, as if statements such as “Jesus wasn’t a real person” and “plagiarized from earlier Egyptian mythology” are novel and revealing.
I would go a step further and Schmeer state that 2 out of 7 of his “examples” he gets ***wrong*** by being absurdly simplistic about what the stance of one side actually is, such as in the case of Iraq or Eastern religion, and that 4 out of 7 are examples of things that only people who later turned out to be theists “pretending” to be atheists ever pick the opposite side of (or where the percentage of those arguing the point is so absurdly small, such as torture advocates, that any attempt to claim that there is anything close to an “equal” split is absurd). The only one he almost gets right is the one with libertarians. I think they are absolutely, completely and totally batshit insane, but at the same time, their presumption that corporations tend to be better at finding solutions to problems, isn’t *that far* off. The problem of course being, their view **assumes** responsible corporations, against all evidence to the contrary, and fails to account for the fact that those solutions are a result of having 10,000 employees, all with different ideas, any one of which might get a good one, as apposed to committees, or individuals, as in the case of the guy who made a nano-antenna, but couldn’t think of any use for it other than a “boom box”. They fail to grasp the fact that its not the corporations that make it work, but ideas, and that, in fact, the corporations’ goal is “contrary” to progress, where ever a solution is “too good”, or, “won’t make them money”.
So, even when right, about rational people having opposite stances on things, the reason for that he gets wrong. Its possible, in another example, to be desperate enough to be willing to torture someone, and still know its a proven fracking useless method, which produces too many false results. This doesn’t make the guy that gets useful information right, or the guy that hates it wrong, it just means, in that *one case*, it was.. expedient. The next time, it might waste valuable time.
No, not a troll, though definitely given to steering the conversation towards theology (hence my pet name for him, ‘Twaddle’). Then again, we’ve all got our hobbies, predilections, and favourite subjects.
In any case, I agree with him somewhat on the ‘religion is child abuse’ issue. Religion may very well may be child abuse, but where and how would we draw the line between religion and other prescriptive systems, as in Heddle’s examples (which, despite some posters’ objections, do demonstrate the difficulty)?
Damn. I gotta leave for a meeting.
Curious how that would work in several situations, given that “rationality” is arguing on the basis of evidence:
Not as curious as you seem to think, if you follow the very definition you’ve offered. (There’s also no need to bring atheism into the argument – you can talk about rationalist education on its own.)
Some rational atheists argue for the efficacy of human torture. Some other rational atheists argue against it. So would teaching your children that it is OK to torture enemy combatants be child abuse, or would teaching them that it is not OK to torture enemy combatants be child abuse?
An ethical approach to torture, a rationalist would argue, must be based upon moral considerations informed by concrete realities. In this case, the supposed efficacy of torture has been shown to be a myth, and its negative effects on societies that use it have also been demonstrated (see the “Hitchens Under Torture” thread). Therefore, the argument that torture is an effective intelligence strategy is not a rational one. A rational educational approach would teach children to look at the history of torture and the arguments that have been made for and against it, the reality of torture in the past and present, the damage it causes, and the evidence of its inefficacy.
Some rational atheists argue for the justness of the Iraq war. Some other argue against it. So would teaching your children that the Iraq war was just be child abuse, or would teaching them that it was unjust be child abuse?
Teaching children to inform their moral views on the Iraq War, and any war, with concrete evidence concerning historical precedents and causes; participants and their positions; arguments that have been made for and against war in the past and present; and the human, social, and economic costs of war is the correct and rational thing to do.
Some rational atheists argue that, unlike western religion, eastern mysticism is on firm empirical footing. Some other rational atheists argue that eastern mysticism is as irrational as Christianity. So would teaching your children to practice eastern mysticism be child abuse, or would teaching them that eastern mysticism is nonsense be child abuse?
They should be taught to investigate the alleged empirical footing of eastern mysticism or any religion or truth claim scientifically, if they are interested (and should also be taught how to evaluate sources critically).
Some rational atheists argue that animal testing is ethical, some rational atheists argue that it is unethical. So would teaching your children that animal testing is ethical be child abuse, or would teaching them that it is unethical be child abuse?
Teaching them to form their own views based on an understanding of the history of animal testing and how and in what circumstances it’s currently done, the arguments that have been made in favor or opposition to it, the current state of public control over animal testing, and the consciousness of animals and effects on them of various procedures as far as these are known scientifically should be the goal of rationalist education.
Some rational atheists argue that libertarianism is the cat’s meow. Some other rational atheists argue that libertarians are nuts. So would teaching your children that libertarianism is sensible be child abuse, or would teaching them that it is asinine be child abuse?
Again, teaching children about past and present forms and theories of governance and how people have lived under them is the key. Libertarianism, like other theories of government, exists. Childrens’ views about it should be informed by empirical knowledge, and libertarianism should be subjected to the same critical evaluation as any other.
Some rational atheists argue that vaccines are ineffective and the germ theory is nonsense…So would teaching your children anti-vaccine, anti-germ theory ideas be child abuse…?
No one who argues this would be a rationalist. It’s the silliest example you’ve offered, but also possibly the most telling and the most on-point. Teaching children these ideas, which are lacking in and actually contrary to scientific evidence, would be, at the very least, grossly irresponsible.
(I’m arguing for rationalist education here, rather than for the teaching of unsubstantiated “knowledge” to be seen as child abuse, which I realize was in the comment to which you were responding. However, you seem to be implying that since people who call themselves rationalists or atheists [?] disagree on various matters, there cannot be a rationalist standard for education. This is wrong – that standard is encouraging kids to question and to judge and form views based upon their correspondence with observable reality.)
To heddle #42: There isn’t a whit of evidence that Jesus was a real person who actually existed. If you’re going to point to the Bible and claim that it constitutes evidence to the contrary then you might as well point to Lord of the Rings and claim that Bilbo Baggins was real too. The Noah’s Ark fable originated as an ancient Egyptian festival called the Argha-Noa (Ark of Noah).
Hooray! It’s a good day to be a Californian.
Heddle appears to be a genuine believer, unfortunately with no understanding of how science works.
On another thread (s)he claimed that science and religion are compatible, reasoning that there are scientists who are also believers. This, of course, ignores the alternative hypothesis that the human mind is rather good at simultaneously holding two or more mutually incompatible concepts.
Here (#27), Heddle seems to believe that labels or perceived authority can stand in for evidence.
A short course for the Heddles of this world:
A. Religion: There is stuff you must accept in the end, no matter what your doubts may be.
B. Science: Stuff is accepted on the condition that it is subject to doubt and test. If it fails a test, it will be modified or discarded.
A. Is incomatible with B. (except in electric monks and Heddle minds)
… UC standards require the course content to be largely reality based…
Would they disallow, say, history texts describing the United States as a peace-loving egalitarian nation working steadily to spread democracy, freedom and prosperity as it rescues helpless nations from evil dictatorships around the world and achieves internal progress through the benevolence of its own enlightened leaders?
That’s what was in the books when I endured California public high schools.
Is it just me, or is Heddle becoming more and more obtuse in his strawman arguments?
Not meaning to date myself, but there used to be a bumper-sticker that said “Frodo Lives” before LotR became mainstream.
I live in Florida, where there is absolutely no control over the curriculum of private schools. I was made aware of the California decision by Eugenie Scott and I am in the process of making a push to get the California law passed here. Anyone out there in Florida who wants to help?
I am a lawyer and writer with a strong interest in seeing this through. For one thing, I think we need a change in strategy: when DI loses a evolution/ID case, they don’t really lose, they live to fight again. I think we should be on the offensive, requiring religious schools to teach evolution.
If you can help . . .
Contact: Sam1027j@aol.com
And I’ll add to my previous post that, in a world in which children are going to face attempts, sophisticated and unsophisticated, to manipulate them in ways detrimental to themselves or to others, not to teach them the importance of critically examining other people’s views and of forming their own arguments and evaluating those of others on an evidentiary basis (and how to do so) is to fail them in a huge way.
Just a shame California also permits home schooling, permitting IDiots to raise more IDiots
As for political views taught without acknowledging the subjective nature of political value judgements, I think that qualifies as detrimental to a child, though political views tend to carry less potential harm than religious views. One is talking about programs dictated by fallible men, the other is talking about acting on truth ordained by god. So while both cases of indoctrination may commit the same intellectual crime, religion has the capability to produce more harm to society. Thus, we would be quicker to condemn indoctrination into a religion as child abuse than indoctrination into a political party. Though, I despise the idea of both acts.
But the main point of this post is that verifiable facts and not simply vague value judgements are what are being twisted. It’s not in claiming that Bush is the greatest president or Christianity the greatest religion that makes such schools dangerous. It’s that they’ll teach the earth is 6000 years old, or that evolution is a lie, or that the Jews really did wander in the desert for 40 years. All things we have conclusively shown to be false. That is without a doubt, abuse.
As for Jesus never having existed and the flood being a rip off, it may not be news to you Heddle, but you are not at all representative of the beliefs of the average christian, and so your flippant dismissal of such points is itself pointless.
Hellmouth Coven Wiccan Preparatory shall be in my next Buffy RPG game.
Does this mean a defeat for empiricism?
Hmmmmmmmm………… what part of “Don’t know the material, don’t believe in knowing the material, couldn’t pass the exam if someone gave you all the answers in advance, EPIC FAIL!” don’t these people understand?
@ #6 Whateverman:
My sentiments exactly. :-
@ #10 I am so wise
Disgusting. Absolutely disgusting, but true in most of the country AFAIK. It gets even more disgusting when you consider that in many states you can go to jail for up to a year and pay a sizeable fine for animal abuse and neglect, and have the animal taken away. Maybe we should rewrite the law to include children as animals. (No, waitaminnit – children are animals, as any parent of a Terrible Two can tell you. Sorry, couldn’t resist. =demented sarcastic grin=)
Vanity of Vanities, sayeth the Preacher’s Kid: All is Vanity.
This is directly from a Bob Jones University middle school Life Science Textbook
by: William S. Pinkston Jr. and David R. Anderson
Chapter 10 – Biological Evolution
10A- How Biological Evolution Supposedly Took Place
(concluding paragraph)
Why people believe in Evolution
Many scientists speak of evolution as fact. Many people believe what these scientists say and never really know why they believe in evolution. These scientists also give people the idea that everyone believes in evolution. For a person not to believe evolution, he must be willing to say that the majority is wrong. Some people believe evolution only because they do not want to be different or ridiculed.
Satan wants people to believe in evolution. This is probably the main reason that evolution is so popular. Satan is a deceiver (John 8:44), and he wants people to believe that God’s Word is not true. He keeps the belief in evolution popular because he can use it to lead people away from God.
And that, in a nutshell, is why UC is correct in not allowing credit for some courses taught at some schools.
I would love to know the answer to this.
By the way, has anyone else seen Walkout?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0452703/
I thought it was pretty good.
@#12:
I want to send you my CV to teach at the Hellsmouth! Just tell me where!
@28:
Do you have any problems reading? The issue is not with how rational something is, but if it’s reality based, or a belief system.
A discussion on torture would be ethical in nature, and now that you mention it, how about Inquisition torture? A discussion on the theme would be historical, and give a perspective of where comes from the people who also supported the war on Iraq, and who preached at Church that it was justified to go and kill others, and invade their countries.
A discussion on the Iraq war would also address the fact that the USA President hid factual evidence from public, obscured, obfuscated and manipulated the facts and used the media to get people on their side based on non-rational arguments, not on evidence. And that ex-president Bush senior used holy war allegories to call his little “Desert Storm” at the beginning. Teaching kids about the nature of the government decisions and the ethical consequences will help them decide how to respond later in life when the Government tries to move their opinions with no clear idea why. Specially when the government promotes a Christian-Right (not atheist or rational) agenda when going to war, isn’t it?
About religion, for starters we’re not talking about facts but religious systems. As a second point, Buddhism in particular is (to my humble knowledge) the only religion that a) does not require a god to function b) openly states that if its precepts are proved false, will change c) does not deny scientific data. Much better than most judeo-christian groups, than almost all of the Islamic ones, don’t you think?
About your so called problem with animal testing. What would be ethical would be to teach children to analyze ethical dilemmas rather than answer with a FAQ to every problem in ethics the children have to face. That way they will use rational thinking, ethical systems, and a logical backing to his decisions later in life. And animal testing is a very good example of an ethical dilemma that can be used in class. Also an argument pro-tests is religious in nature: God gave us all creatures on earth to find how to best use them, or did He not?
About gun control: Researching on the fundamental arguments of both sides of the discussion, and the actual facts (statistics, studies, etc) would be also a very healthy debate on ethics at school. Also worth mention is that the historical roots of the organization promoting lax gun controls (Rifle Asoc.) are interwoven with those of the KKK, a religious group. Wouldn’t you mind to include that fact in your exposition?
And what about teaching them the basics of economic science and decisions. That capitalism is founded on a mix of pseudo-Christian/Protestant ideas (Divine Right and the like) and pragmatism with little concern for ethics at all? Or for science, for that matter. The most basic tenet of capitalism is that there will always be new markets. But it doesn’t take into account that even the world has limits, and that resources are finite. A discussion on these topics should lead children into search for alternatives, or at least, moderation of mindless consumer life style.
It is a tough line to draw between what’s child abuse and what’s not. We all have or will impart our own opinions, prejudices and whatnot to our children. Simply doing this is not child abuse.
The reason religion is “child abuse” is because of the emotional torture it causes a child to believe he/she could be going to hell, or the guilt of original sin, or stuff like that. Forcing your child into a belief system that hurts him/her in a major way is wrong. Saying “the iraq war is bad/good” to your child, well, that in itself will not cause your child emotional harm. I don’t think that you could argue that what happens to the girls in the FLDS church is anything less than child abuse though.
Of course, there’s the matter of intent – I mean, all us sane rational atheists think that Religion is child abuse but those parents often think that they’re saving their children from an eternity in hell. Religion as a whole is the problem – the parents themselves are victims of the abuse and are not solely to blame.
Forty-years ago, yes, those were radical ideas in the mainstream. But no longer.
So, yes, you’re right, they are neither novel nor revealing ideas. They are, however, facts as mundane and prosaic as they have become over the past 40-years. Just like Exodus didn’t happen. Just like there were no miracles. Just like most of the bible and both Christian and Jewish belief systems have been shown to be changed, plagiarized or just plain wrong over the past 40-years of archaeology, etc.
Just like your Pavlovian denial of the truth is neither novel or revealing. Or that you’re still stuck in the mindset of an 18th Century monk and are making laughable arguments that have been repeatedly trashed for being demonstrably false.
All that divine power, and their god can’t stop one judge.
SC, #45
Let me state it differently.
For those examples, either there is sufficient evidence for one position or the other, or there isn’t. In the former case there must be rational atheists behaving irrationally, such as, perhaps, Hitchens on the Iraq war. That would be a clear case of potential child abuse as defined, were someone like Hitchens to teach his kids, in spite of the evidence, that the Iraq war was justified. If it is the latter, that there is no sufficient evidence to prove either side, then whichever side you assume is not evidence-based but something closer to religion. That is, you “feel” the Iraq war is wrong, even though you can’t prove it, or even convince someone else who is just as rational but with the opposing view that they are wrong. Again, the potential for child abuse as defined is great.
Your approach is a careful education where you never attempt to influence the child, just provide them with the facts. Admirable, but I don’t see that happening.
To me, as long as we have families of whatever type, you just have to accept that the children are going to be “indoctrinated” with the religious and political views of their parents. The hope is that they will learn critical thinking and make their own choices. Believe it or not, even in Christian families (I didn’t grow up in one, but my kids are) there is the acknowledgment that they will someday, almost without exception, challenge what they have been taught and will either walk away from the faith or “make it their own.”
Dubiquiabs, #48
That’s bad, considering I teach physics at a university and do research in a national lab. Please don’t tell my bosses.
And how did my science come into this–I agree with the decision in favor of the UC system. I do not think that public universities should have to give credit to creation-science courses.
Ah, I see you claim science is incompatible with religion. If so, if “incompatibility” actually means something, then religion should adversely affect one’s science. So perhaps you’ll take my challenge which I have offered many times: I’ll provide you with ten papers from first rate peer reviewed journals. Five from scientists I know are deeply religious, five from scientists I know are atheists. If it weren’t for the fact that Google would make it too easy I’d say: just pick out the five from the religious scientists. So I have to make it a little harder: your job is to pick out the five from religious scientists, and explain how their religion had a negative impact on their science.
If you don’t take this challenge, then I’ll consider it evidence that you acknowledge that “religion is incompatible with science” sounds good and right but in fact is meaningless in that it cannot be demonstrated.
Phaedrus, wouldn’t feeding xians to the lion be cruel? to the lion I mean.
“Not meaning to date myself, but there used to be a bumper-sticker that said “Frodo Lives” before LotR became mainstream.”
My personal LOTR bumper sticker was: “Frodo failed – Bush is still president”
This all goes back to something my granddad used to say:
“Somebody’s gotta pump gas.”
Christians, believe what you want, but don’t expect to get credit for actually *knowing* something when you substitute your version of Grimm’s for real knowledge.
T
Heddle, again you mistake the fault for being the teaching of value judgements. The fault actually lies in teaching lies.
In other words, to indoctrinate a child into an outright, verifiable, measurable, falsehood should be considered abuse. And that is why this church school has been rejected. Not because of the abusive nature of the teaching, mind you, but because Universities deal in the teaching of facts and this religious school is not interested in that. Thus, the University is not interested in them.
So, remember, to call the Iraq war “wrong” is inherently a value judgement and is much harder to prove or disprove, leaving it on the fuzzier side of what can be clearly called abusive treatment, not to mention OT from the facts of this post.
heddle, I think the key point here for all those ‘counterexamples’ is that, with the exception of the one about alternate sources of woo and the one about antivaxxers, is that you can make an evidence- and reality-based argument for either side. A given individual won’t agree with both at once, but two reasonable non-magical-thinking people might well be on completely opposite sides of all of them. The same can’t be said of religion, which defines itself as being based on faith, not evidence, and indeed has no evidence-based argument to support it.
Yes, it’s still detrimental to a child to be raised with, say, political dogma rather than religion. But there’s a fundamental difference between differing views of the observable real world and differing views of REALITY ITSELF, based on a complete LACK of observable evidence.
Heddel, there’s a difference between fact statements like “life on Earth evolved over billions of years” and value statements like “all people are created equal.” My comment was only adressing fact statements.
Go UC! Very stoked about this, as a UCSC Alum, I am well aware that the UC system has very stringent guidelines on what counts as a UC accredited course – and that’s why they are some pretty tough schools to get into. Totally stoked on the outcome.
The problem with your challenge Heddle is that it restricts the outcomes of what “incompatibility” should entail to the only one that works for your challenge. It ignores the human ability to compartmentalize contradicting ideas while holding both to be simultaneously true.
Instead, the claim of incompatibility stems from two contradicting ways of viewing the world. Science being based upon evidence, and religion, revelation. That one person can hold both and still function is not disproof of their logical incompatibility, only evidence of the complexity of the human mind.
To Peter Ashby @#66:
Not if the lions are Muslim.
From over the Atlantic, I’m relieved to see the shaft of light projected by this ruling.
It’s all too easy for us this side of the pond to think that America is fast sinking into a slough of irrationality, and we need reminding that sometimes the religious agenda for education is thwarted by sane and sensible people.
Heddle,
Wrong. My point was that you did not establish that your hypothetical cases lacked or had evidence. You did not give us enough to work with to give you a reasonable answer. You gave two opposing views and no indication of which view was supported by evidence. We can make assumptions about which view of the Iraq war you think is supported by evidence, but it was not explicitly stated.
Michael X, #69 (and applies Jackal #71)
OK, so if I understand you correctly, only teaching something that can be disproved scientifically is child abuse. I take it then that teaching a child about hell is not child abuse, because science cannot disprove the existence of hell?
What if I am a die hard String Theorist and the LHC finds no evidence for String Theory? If I continue to teach my hypothetical prodigy child String Theory–am I guilty of child abuse? Or would there be enough ambiguity remaining in the possibility of String Theory, as compared with young earth creationism, that it would not be abuse? And if so, where is the line drawn? What percentage of scientists have to say A is wrong before the insistence on teaching A to your kids is abuse?
Falyne, #70
Let’s assume you put Hitchens and Dawkins in a room and they pool their evidence. If they then work off the same evidence, and they both ruthlessly apply reason in the form of logical analysis and critical thinking, and yet they reach different conclusions regarding the Iraq war, then I submit part of their conclusion must be based on something other than evidence, on a “conviction” or maybe even a prejudice that is indistinguishable in type from a religious belief. The only other conclusion I see is that “rationality” isn’t all it’s hyped to be.
Michael X, #73
Again, we are scientists here, or science admirers at the very least. The theory is: science and religion are incompatible. What’s the experiment that demonstrates this? If there is none, then it’s just words.
This guy Tyler is lying. The usual tracks of a fundie. When he says Xian he means fundie Death Cults. These aren’t Xian schools, they are fundie xian schools. There are just as many or more mainstream xian schools, Catholic, Episcopalian etc. that teach a standard reality based curriculum including evolution.
FWIW, the available info from surveys is that kids from these schools don’t do well on SATs or at the universities. Parents have to be a bit stupid to send kids to expensive private schools that prepare them for a career in lawn mowing.
Especially when the history in question is “Modern American History” . . . .
“Teaching ideas about the world as facts when there is no evidence to support those ideas should be prosecutable as child abuse.”
Heddle, I went ahead and bolded the part of the above statement that shows how the writer’s viewpoint of teaching religious beliefs as facts differs from the examples you set forth.
The key word, NO, is that religious ideas (at least in the abrahamic/hindu/native american/some buddhist traditions/others) are not based upon differing views of empirical evidence. They are based upon beliefs only, without a testable method for someone to reason their way back out; moreover fear-based mechanisms are put in place that punish questioning minds – if not directly, then implicitly in the form of divine postmortem retribution.
Now, sometimes parents do things that might be similar to the ideas of religion; the easter bunny and Santa Claus being the most obvious examples. However, seldom do parents persist in encouraging these beliefs past a very young age – rather, they allow children to realize that the ideas are, while fun, not based in reality. Only religion seeks to deeply implant non-evidential ideas and immunize them against reasonable challenges.
Heddle, you’re confusing values with facts. Rationalism is useful for determining absolute answers to the latter. There are no absolute answers for the former.
Schmeer, #76,
Some repetition here but: Hitchens was for the Iraq war. PZ, I’m guessing, was against it. Does one of them have evidence the other lacks? And are you confident that if they shared evidence one or the other would change his mind?
(Aside: you cannot possibly make any assumption about which side I was on–besides I’m a Christian and so I am inherently irrational–this debate concerns uber-rational atheists who nevertheless end up on opposite sides.)
Not stupid, so much as believers. I was raised in a church that had its own schools, and constantly reinforced the notion that keeping your kids in the church’s schools reduced their exposure to “the world” (and therefore to the devil). Never mind that one kid (who I knew in 5th grade) never learned how to deal with his dyslexia and would successfully read “the cat sat in” before stumbling over “a” . . . .
Then the church’s schools acted far less than Christian in their treatment of my older brother, and I wound up going to public school for junior high and high school. I did better in public school than I ever had in the church schools, and had friends there.
A year or two later – the only time my mother *ever* walked out on a sermon – a guest pastor started in on how we must sacrifice to send our children to church school lest we lose them to the devil. Somehow, amazingly, neither she or I belong to any church anymore, much less that one . . . .
This is where you are off track. “Justification” is inherently subjective. Whether the Iraq war was “justified” or not depends not only verifiable evidence, ie. whether Saddam really was developing nuclear weapons, but also personal values. Hitchens and I probably both agree on the evidence behind the Iraq war. Where we disagree is on how we think our government should use military force. There is no rational basis to either side of that argument. Hitchens’s values are just different from mine.
Followed this case distantly. It looked like they were just going through the motions. Missing dealines by a year and half assed arguments that anyone could blow out of the water.
I think they did it just for the PR value and to look busy. There is no religious discrimination whatsover here. The kids can believe any strange things they want about history or science. They do have to also know what the mainstream academic findings are to get into UC.
Any of the parents that care about their kid’s futures and aren’t brain dead will have to rethink sending their kids to some glorified indoctrination center.
So they use different values to interpret the evidence, and place different weight on different pieces of evidence – so what?
In what way is that similar to the typical claim that Christianity is true because a book says so? That all failure to find any concrete evidence outside that one single oft-translated-and-revised book?
Christianity’s claim is less “the evidence adds up to . . . ” and more “well, I have a book that says that the Flying Spaghetti Monster created the world in 5 days, 6 months ago. Everything around you (and all that you think you remember) is an illusion. In order to complete his work, we must ALL chant ‘AAAargggh’ at the stroke of midnight tonight. Anyone who argues against this is an agent of BowTie, the evil one, and must be put into cryogenic chambers at once.”
heddle said:
Please recall the original sentence: “Teaching ideas about the world as facts when there is no evidence to support those ideas should be prosecutable as child abuse.”
If there is no evidence for hell, then its existance should not be taught as a fact. If there is no evidence for String Theory, then it should not be taught as a fact. However, if there is a theory with scientific evidence for and against, then, by the original statement, you could teach either side. Personally, I would prefer a class in which the evidence for each side is presented and the student is incouraged to research, reason and write a paper arguing which side they believe has the stronger evidence.
What a rational education should encourage children to do is to challenge people making truth claims (concerning, e.g., the efficacy of torture or the effects of vaccinations) to back them up with real evidence. The “justness” of a war is a not a truth claim in this sense, though, as I stated above, moral positions must be informed by reality. Where the immorality comes in, thus, would be in a school teaching any position without backing it up with substantive data, which would be irrational, and also in urging or teaching children that it’s OK do so. (Please see the parenthetical closing to my last post re the “child abuse” argument.)
I’m curious, though: What would you think of schools that taught that the germ theory of disease is nonsense? Do you think there’s sufficient evidence against that view?
My approach is providing children with information while encouraging them to approach all arguments with a critical eye and teaching them methods for obtaining and evaluating evidence. That is rationalist education. It matters not whether you see it happening. And all education should be careful.
First, the comment to which you initially responded was about institutions – “churches and church-sponsored schools” – not parents. There is a difference in that the indoctrination that occurs in these contexts is entirely conscious and formal. And no, I do not have to accept that, even in families. It certainly wasn’t the case in mine. While families are the most important site of socialization and children are of course influenced by their parents’ views and example, this does not imply active indoctrination. That is a choice that some parents make, and it is a bad one. It’s ridiculous to accept any form of indoctrination and then “hope” for children to develop critical thinking and investigative/scientific skills on their own (it happens, but we should not expect it). These are attitudes and abilities that are learned through practice and experience. It is precisely your sort of attitude that makes me glad of the emphasis – at this point, more in theory than in practice – on critical thinking at public universities where I’ve taught; it comes very late, though, for a lot of kids.
ndt, #84
Fair enough and a rather frank admission. Now I ask: how are these “values” any different from a religious presupposition?
Similarly, TheOtherOne, #86
Again, what are these values based on? We seem to agree they are not based on evidence, or we get back to square one: we could just pool the evidence and our values would converge. Let’s grant I believe in something because a book says so. Why do you have the values you have? If they are not based on evidence, what are they based on? And if they are not based on evidence, and your parents taught them to you, did they commit abuse?
Jackal’s definition of child abuse:
Heddle moves the goalposts:
Jackal merely required supporting evidence, not sufficient evidence. Such dishonesty does not become you, David.
“If you don’t take this challenge, then I’ll consider it evidence that you acknowledge that “religion is incompatible with science” sounds good and right but in fact is meaningless in that it cannot be demonstrated.”
Nope. The reason that they won’t take the challenge is that religion and science, when applied to the same question, are incompatible – or can only be forced into compatibility by excessive hand-wringing and dissonance. When applied separately, they don’t always infringe upon each other, which is why even a bible-banger can construct a bridge as long as they don’t think that “the hand of god” will be a substitute for proper statics formula.
A much better test is to have a scientist who happens to be christian hold strong and fast simultaneously to both their scientific views AND those views endorsed by their religion. For instance, Genesis – no matter how liberally read – is completely incompatible as a view of the development of the universe/earth when contrasted with the scientific viewpoint. That some scientists are capable of ignoring their beliefs long enough to do good work in many fields is not evidence that religion and science are compatible. Good religious scientists are good in spite of, rather than because of, their religion. Once they attempt to use religion to “help” them in their work, they become bad scientists, as surely as those who fabricate results or ignore evidence for secular reasons like money or fame.
That said, there might be some religions that would be compatible with science. Any religion who, upon receiving contrary information, was willing to quickly modify or discard doctrine based on that evidence, would qualify as such a religion. I know of no religion that takes this route, however. Another sort of religion that might qualify might be pantheism or the worship/reverence of the natural world.
In any case, it is clear that religion doesn’t of necessity make you a worse scientist as long as those religious views are ignored while researching. That’s why your test is invalid- Any scientist whose papers are published in a respectable forum will have been shown to have that ability to disconnect personal belief from evidence evaluation. Others have been selected out – you just never hear of the failures because….well, they failed.
The problem with Heddle’s original post in this thread is revealed by his expository style, the pounding repetition of the phrase “Some rational atheists argue …”
He’s not so much interested in what comes after that (which generally has no connection to religion anyways) as he is in trying to demonize us “rational atheists”. Since he presumably fancies himself a “rational religionist”, he thinks he can somehow score points for his side by his silly strawmen.
I guess “teaching physics at a university and do research in a national lab” doesn’t preclude someone from being a Christard, but then again, we’ve long known that from fools like Michael Behe who can’t understand how their superstitious beliefs sabotage their scientific credibility.
But maybe I’m just being too “rational”…
Heddle?@65 “I’ll provide you with ten papers from first rate peer reviewed journals. Five from scientists I know are deeply religious, five from scientists I know are atheists. If it weren’t for the fact that Google would make it too easy I’d say: just pick out the five from the religious scientists. So I have to make it a little harder: your job is to pick out the five from religious scientists, and explain how their religion had a negative impact on their science.”
So, explain how religion contributes to these papers, or fails to contribute to the atheists’ papers. I am unclear what “compatible” would mean in these cases. I would say that religion is orthogonal to science, not incompatible. Didn’t a rock and roll guitarist just get a PhD in astrophysics? But I don’t think his music contributed anything, other than paying the bills.
When making claims of fact about the world, they are either testable or not. If they are verifiable, then they are fit material for scientific study. If they are not verifiable, they are simply irrelevant to science. My workout buddy in the university was a devout Christian, and earned his PhD with a thesis on citrus tree viruses. He informally taught me a fair amount of evolutionary science in that time. But he never tried to convert me – he knew he had no evidence to support his religious beliefs.
I had to drop my first major of computer studies because I wasn’t prepared for the math, even though my paperwork said I was. There was no unfair discrimination involved; I just wasn’t qualified to go thru those courses without remedial work.
Anyone who makes statements of facts contrary to verifiable data should be prepared for the consequences – such as people disagreeing with them or schools not accepting their “education”. UC doesn’t care if an applicant is Christian, or Druse, or Wiccan. But they care if they’re prepared for the math and science and history and language they’re expected to take.
Let me see if I can break it down for you, Heddle.
If someone says “Saddam Hussein was trying to get yellowcake uranium from Africa”, that’s a fact claim. It’s either true or it isn’t. This is what people were discussing vis a vis child abuse. If a parent tells their child that all humans are descended from a man named Adam who was formed out of dust 6000 years ago, that parent is telling their child something that is subject to empirical evaluation and, in this case, has already been found to be false.
If someone says “The US should not invade countries in order to install friendly governments”, that’s a value claim. Each individual comes up with his or her own moral values. They are “should” statements, not “is” statements. There is no objective standard by which someone could say such statements are “true” or “false”. So when parents make such statements to their children, it’s categorically different from teaching their children facts or lies masquerading as facts. It doesn’t even belong in the same discussion.
This is the same thing I am wondering. There are countless private institutions that would gladly take the money of those from this school. See the aforementioned Bob Jones University, or Liberty, or Oral Roberts.
#34 Comments are not bad, however, secular history has proven the existence of Jesus the man through the writings of early Roman Historians and Jewish Hellenistic Historians whose writings still exist. Just as Christians (or other religious bodies) are called to keep their facts right, the same goes for atheists as well.
Heddle #77
“Again, we are scientists here, or science admirers at the very least. The theory is: science and religion are incompatible. What’s the experiment that demonstrates this? If there is none, then it’s just words.”
I truly don’t know the answer to this one sir, but I know who does. Ask Giordano Bruno–he knows.
Wow. Less-than-sickening news today. I call that a nice change of pace.
James #96:
There is no non-Biblical first-hand account of the existence of Jesus – no text, no testimony, no Roman tax record, no anything. While it is probable that a man named Jesus who led a religious movement existed in Palestine at the time, it is by no means definitively proven that there was such a man, and certainly no evidence for the claims of miracles found in the Gospels.
@ Heddle #42 –
I gotta give it to you, man. I’ve rarely come across someone who thought through his arguments from a Christian perspective, and you certainly do. Good job.
That doesn’t necessarily mean I agree, of course, but I can see where you’re going. I think with regard to the “child abuse” argument, what that commonly falls to is something along these lines:
“Teaching children to accept stories as fact that obviously contradict reality cripples them intellectually, and disables them relative to other children.”
Many atheists view the literalist interpretation of the bible as exactly that – an insistence on story in contradiction to reality. For example, in the book of Kings there’s a description of a pot being made that has a 3:1 circumference-to-diameter ratio. A literalist won’t bat an eye at it, but anyone with a modicum of geometry will recognize that such a pot is impossible, since the ratio should be 3.14, pi. If a child knows of the conflict and is taught to accept the bible over math, that’s a travesty.
As for the rest, there is enough controversy surrounding the identity of Jesus that one could legitimately say that such a man did not exist. To my recollection, the consensus among real biblical historians (as opposed to the John Dobson kind) is that the stories of Jesus do center around the life of a particular person, but that the stories are hung upon him in the same fashion as hillbilly folktales are hung upon Br’er Rabbit. He probably did exist, and was probably a somewhat dramatic figure of his time, but whether everything attached to his legend legitimately belongs there is another story.
Additionally, if you want to get nit-picky about it, you could argue that no, Jesus didn’t exist – because his name wasn’t Jesus. The letter “J” didn’t even exist until it was invented in the 14th century. The fellow to whom we are referring had a name that phonetically sounded like “Yesh-oo-ah,” and “Jesus” is an Anglican bastardization of that Hebrew name.
But of course, that’d upset the tighty-whities in Kansas, to think that they’re talking about a swarthy, liberal Jew, so that’s not a subject that comes up often ).
T
Except that’s not true.
JHJEFFEREY @ 52: I live in Florida, where there is absolutely no control over the curriculum of private schools. I was made aware of the California decision by Eugenie Scott and I am in the process of making a push to get the California law passed here. Anyone out there in Florida who wants to help?
Sigh. First, this wasn’t about a law granting the California state government control over the curricula of private schools. This was about an administrative decision by the University of California (a multi-campus state university system) to not recognize certain christian-viewpoint courses as equivalent to evidence-based-viewpoint courses. IE, for purposes of transfer credit or as prerequisites to University of California courses.
The christian school(s) sued U of C in federal district courts, and the court found for (agreed with) the university. The christian schools can continue to teach whatever they want, but the public university does not have to accept these courses as prerequisites or as transfer credits.
This decision can be appealed to the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which has jurisdiction over Arizona, California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska and Hawaii. Should the decision be appealed, the CoA’s decision will be binding on all those states. Important to note that the Ninth Circuit is the most liberal of the federal courts of appeals, thus the federal appellate court whose decisions are most often overturned on appeal to the US Supreme Court.
Good luck with your activism, but please educate yourself about the issues beforehand.
Beaten by others, but I suppose James is referring to Josephus, Tacitus, and the like. Someone has been reading too much Josh McDowell, since there isn’t a single reference to Jesus in any early text outside the bible that I am aware of – all that remains are references to his followers, and some references that were added into writings of other historians centuries later. Also: FAIL.
Waita go UC! Now that’s some uplifting news.
Kermit, #93,
Why should I do that? I’m not the one making any claim. I didn’t say: “their religion contributed favorably to their science.” The claim was religion and science are incompatible. The onus is on the one making a claim to demonstrate the validity of the claim. I have kindly offered an experiment to test the validity of the claim, but nobody will perform it.
My point exactly. There is no evidence that Rock ‘N Roll and science are incompatible. And there is no evidence that religion and science are incompatible.
Aesis, #91
Could you reword that–I cannot figure out what the test is. How would you administer this test, whatever it is? I provided straightforward simple guidelines for my proposal.
ndt, #94,
I understand–but again my question is, where does this value come from, this value that is not based on evidence but is instead a feeling or a conviction, and how is it different, in any substantive way, from a religious conviction?
W. Kevin Vicklund, #90,>
Yeah, maybe I moved the goalposts, but that was because the original argument was problematic. The original argument stated when there is no evidence, it is abuse. But at any given moment there might be a modicum of evidence supporting YECism. For example, it took a while to respond scientifically and definitively to the YEC evidence of residual Carbon-14 in diamonds. Thus, for a little while, there was arguably “some” evidence. Since this is a recurring happenstance, I didn’t think that Jackal meant it is not abuse as long as you could find some tiny shred of evidence that has yet to be explained.
I’m sure there was a man named Jesus back then – it was a common name.
But as for your inference that it has anything to do with Jesus of the bible, I will just note that secular history has proven the existence of Dorothy the girl who lived in Kansas and had an Aunt Em (“M”, as in Maude Gage Baum, L Frank Baum’s wife; little Dorothy from Kansas was his neice).
I guess we can start teaching the Wizard of Oz as true history now, right?
Allen Chapman @ #34:
“The Bible is largely a collection of sky-worship allegories and astrology.”
first misread “collection” as “cloaca”, and liked the statement even better
And religious faith does adversely affect one’s ability to do science, as we see with the creationists’ lame attempts. But I’d wager the paper’s you intend to site don’t mix science and religion. It’s just religious people keeping their religion out of science. Yeah, that works. It’s mixing them that’s fatal.
Heddle, if “compatibility” actually means something, then religion and science should be able to be practiced simultaneously, not walled off in their own “magisterium.”
Ah, the old argumentum ex incendia.
Again, we’re talking institutions here – not parents. But, from what I understand, it would be irrational for a scientist to be a “die hard String Theorist” at present, and irresponsible and wrong to teach it as fact. I’ve seen James Gates on more than one occasion remind audiences that it remains abstract and hasn’t been subjected to empirical testing. The scientists involved neither view it themselves nor present it to others as established fact or dogma. More importantly, though, even if it does become established science, it will still always be subject to challenge as new evidence comes in. Science isn’t religion. All real knowledge worthy of the name is based on evidence*, provisional, and open to challenge as new findings appear – this is what children should be taught. That said, you appear to suffer from a failure to distinguish between scientific knowledge that is well supported by evidence and cutting-edge scientific ideas that are not.
*Thus knowledge claims with noevidence to support them and much evidence against them are automatically disqualified.
My god Heddle, but you are incapable of following a line of logic. As a matter of fact, that is where this whole problem of “incompatibility” stems. It is, again, religion’s method of discovering truth and science’s method are logically incompatible. We also don’t experimentally test the law of non-contradiction Heddle, do you disbelieve in it?
As for your claim that totally unverifiable claims are incapable of causing harm, and only verifiable measurable ones are, I never said that was so. I simply stated that value judgements are not as easy to be clear on, where as measurable ones are. A claim that one will burn in hell for eternity if one doesn’t believe that which can’t be proven should also be considered abuse, not simply for the vile nature of the claim, but because there is not evidence anywhere that would lead one to believe this is true.
String theory on the other hand is thought to be possible because the math works out. At present, while we can’t get at it empirically, its evidence rests on its compatibility with the math. But are you really attempting to claim that teaching a child that string theory is perfectly true causes as much damage as teaching a child that burning for eternity is true?
Lastly, we base our values upon many things Heddle, and empirical evidence is one of those things, but not the only thing. Your muddling in subjectivism how we come to those conclusions to gain your views equal weight does your case no good. Such thinking simply undermines us all. I wish I had more time to explain to you how coherent and beneficial values can be established, but I would have hoped that you would be able to figure that our for yourself. Never fear though, I’m sure someone has more free time than me.
I think the difference between “supporting” evidence and “sufficient” evidence needs to be highlighted. Religion differs from pretty much anything ever validly argued in that it has neither. Many things with *supporting* evidence are lacking in completely *sufficient* evidence, which is why, yes, they’re open to differing interpretations by equally rational people.
A hard realist can make a valid and rational argument supporting the Iraq war quite easily: we’ve past the point of peak oil, oil is critical for the maintenance of military strength, and military strength is the primary determinant of state power; thus it is in the self-interest of a state that wishes to maintain hegemony to grab all the oil that it can, while it can. Strong do as they will, weak suffer as they must, Thucydides would be proud.
Now, there are many rational people, myself included, that feel that military hegemony for our particular state isn’t worth the insanity of the Iraq war. Even another hard realist theorist might note that our entanglement in Iraq actually *diminishes* our immediate strength and power to credibly project, which leads directly to other countries pulling shite that we can’t respond to militarily even if we wished (see Georgia, Russia In).
The point is, though, there’s a rational, reality-based argument for the Iraq war. There’s also many many rational reality-based arguments against it. There is thus *supporting* evidence for both sides, even if some might find that evidence insufficient. But it exists.
Religion doesn’t have that. There’s just no evidence at all, and it’s presented as a feature, not a bug. It can’t be refuted, it can’t be observed, it’s just plain not there. THAT’S the difference.
Michael X wrote:
If there’s one thing I learned debating theists it’s that you are probably underestimating just how ignorant and dishonest they are:
http://normdoering.blogspot.com/2008/08/dealing-with-abysmal-ignorance.html
No doubt Norman.
Tritium (3H) decays to helium-3 (3He) with a half-life of 12.3 years. Whether or not I believe in Jesus, Vishnu or Quetzalcoatl, tritium will still decay to 3He. If I write in a paper that tritium decay is caused by the direct intervention of Shiva, then religion has entered into my scientific life. Until then, my religious beliefs or lack thereof and my scientific beliefs have nothing to do with each other.
bm #102. Knew that–just said it wrong. Am in the process of educating myself. Eric Hovind got me started on this. Met with Dean of Science at UCF last week and local Christian school next week.
BTW, what was “second”? (sigh)
Kseniya #106–very good! Made me lol out loud (Monk).
Caio
Who made that claim? Are you sure you read it here?
I’m not saying it is. The issue we are discussing here in this post is when people, in this case the plaintiffs in this case, confuse religious convictions for fact claims. A religious conviction that people should respect human life is not a fact claim that contradicts empirical evidence. A religious “conviction” that the earth is 6000 years old is. The latter is the subject of the blog post we are commenting on.
>Hellmouth Coven Wiccan Preparatory
Oh, I so want to quit my job and found a school with precisely that name! Anyone want to join the faculty?
In a former life I was a high school math teacher (I even taught one amusing year at a Baptist private school), with a couple of MS degrees. Sign me up.
Can I teach via the internet?
“Tyler…fears schools will become afraid to teach from a Christian perspective.”
You mean schools won’t teach bullshit? How is that bad again?
No, you are being too much of an ass.
“Moses”
Go back to your bean-counting. Clearly, you lack the native intelligence to perceive that only cranks believe Jesus never existed.
Pull the other leg, Gomer.
Bitch please. The Rational[sic] Responders made fools of themselves, too.
Those sources (and the NT) are sufficient to establish the existence of Jesus. Incidentally, please, don’t bring your sorry ass to my state. I think I speak for the majority when I say we don’t want your kind here.
What’s particularly interesting to me is that religious people always seem to envision hypothetical institutions organized by atheists or rationalists as so similar to religious ones. So heddle simply can’t imagine schools in which children aren’t indoctrinated, in which values aren’t taught as facts, and in which children are actively encouraged to question and seek out knowledge for themselves. Thus, to teach something is always to teach it as a sort of dogma, never anything more complex. It’s fairly disturbing, quite frankly.
Ignoring Heddle who has CRTS (Can’t Really Think Syndrome), I applaud the California ruling. Christians, and other ‘woo-ponents’ should be challenged on how their ‘woo’ is superior to another’s woo- when there is no evidence to support either. However, I do occasionally have to employ someone to mow my lawn, does that make me a Christian charity?
—
A Christian and a Golden Bear,
A Lamp of learning shown the pair.
Said Bear to Christian, ‘would you care,
explain to me why I’m a bear,
and live in California fair.’
The Christian smiled and made reply,
‘what need of yours’ to wonder why?
Your far parents in the Ark did lie,
in waters adrift under rainy sky.’
You were born a bear and a bear you’ll die.’
This answer did the bear resent.
Devoid it was of true content.
‘You have failed to address the why,
I am a bear, not fish nor fly
and why I live under Californian sky.
‘The Ark aground on Arrarat,
Your parent’s cubs they did begat.
and traveled way across the earth,
to California, land of your birth.’
‘But lands are separated by sea,
To cross by water, too far for me.
Your explanation falls a wee,
bit short of known reality.’
The Lamp of knowledge chose to speak,
of Beringia and sundered peaks.
Of ice and time, progenitors,
The bear with a smile, let out a roar!
The Christian looked a bit bemused,
at length perplexed and more confused.
said a bear is but of animal kind,
only as different as he defined.
Dandelion, thought bear, with eyes aglow,
this Christianity’s a show.
a sham, concocted as you go,
and what if I choose to define,
what kind of being that is mine?
The Golden bear became a lion,
A Christian soul still bliethley lying.
Then, one bear, golden, in light divine,
The lamp of knowledge on did shine.
You do realize that there’s a difference between “I believe it’s bad to hit someone” and “I believe that Jane hit John”? Whether Jane hit John is something where evidence can be examined and an objective answer can be reached. Whether it’s wrong to hit someone, on the other hand, is far more subjective and depends on context.
As far as the question of Iraq, there is a lot of conflicting information about why we’re there and how well we are succeeding at our theoretical goals (which means that different people could look at the evidence and disagree about how valid or valuable a piece of information is). And even if we agreed on why we were there and how well we were doing, we could still disagree on whether it was worth it, whether it was right for us to go in, and whether we should get out now or stay there – none of those are simple questions.
That’s different from the not-complicated question of whether there is any evidence, outside the Bible, for the existence of Jesus Christ as he is described in the New Testament. And it’s different from whether “the Bible is the unerring source for analysis of historical events”.
Uh-huh. So you believe that if your eye offends you, you should pluck it out? You believe that a calf should never be cooked in its mother’s milk? Personally, my values are based on a personal decision that it is wrong to unnecessarily harm others. Do I still do some things because that’s what my folks did (or taught me to do) when I was a kid? Sure. But I don’t refrain from stealing because some book told me so – I do it because it’s wrong to take what others worked for. Sometimes following my own code rather than a code from a book is harder, because it means I have to think about the consequences of my actions – but it means I won’t be stoning any adulterers any time soon. Will you?
Oh look; a one-note troll. Haven’t seen any of those around here in a long time.
Stay in your state with your majority, asshat. Your bullying has no effect on the internet.
Gad, what a fucking tool. I’d ask the shithead if the Bhagavad Gītā is similarly sufficient to establish the existence of the Lord Krishna, but I don’t really need to see another example of Christard hypocrisy.
Stay out of my country. I know for sure we don’t want your fucking dipshit kind here, fucker.
Heddle #65,
“Ah, I see you claim science is incompatible with religion. If so, if “incompatibility” actually means something, then religion should adversely affect one’s science. So perhaps you’ll take my challenge which I have offered many times: I’ll provide you with ten papers from first rate peer reviewed journals. Five from scientists I know are deeply religious, five from scientists I know are atheists”
If humans were completely rational beings this experiment might prove something. However people, that includes scientsts, are capable of holding contradicting beliefs. Stating that there are competent scientist with religious beliefs does not show that religion and scientist are compatiable.
The Bhagavad Gītā is ahistorical, you clueless piece of shit. Also, if you are in the US, you sorry sack of shit, then you are in a distinct minority. We don’t want your dipshit kind here, fucker.
He probably did exist, and was probably a somewhat dramatic figure of his time, but whether everything attached to his legend legitimately belongs there is another story.
Until quite recently, this was what I thought, too. Where does such a legend come from, if not some kernel of truth?
The fact is, though, the ancient mind was different from ours, profoundly so, and the whole concept of “truth” was different, and perfectly able to cover events of an avowedly mythological nature. The key to my change of thinking was reflecting on Paul’s theology, his reports of travel to Jerusalem and meeting the “apostles” there. Nowhere in any of the Pauline literature is there any distinction made between Paul’s experience with Jesus (bolt out of the blue on the road to Damascus: a vision) and the experiences of Peter et al, who, according to the Gospels, knew a human being personally whose name was Jesus and who healed the sick and hung out with low-lifes and said some things about “the Kingdom” and why don’t we try being nice to each other for a change?
This indicates that they didn’t know such a person, that even to the Apostles of Jerusalem, Jesus was a figure of mythology of whom they knew through visions, just like Paul. The twist is that, later, the figure of myth became a figure of legend via the Gospel of Mark. What tipped the scales for me was The Jesus Puzzle. There’s lots more to say, but it’s all said better there.
Doherty is a crank.
…and the bible isn’t? Then why is it–and get ready for this, you moronic wank–SO GODDAMN FUCKING WRONG ABOUT SO FUCKING MUCH OF HISTORY?!
Brownian, do I have to resort to Dick, Jane, and Spot with you? Some parts are ahistorical, like the beginning chapters of Genesis, and others are not. I suggest reading the Bible. (Or, more appropriately, have it read to you.)
Thanks for the happy news, Danio!
Bill Dauphin @12: Will you be teaching science at Hellmouth Coven Wiccan Preparatory? If so, where can I send my resume?
Aterius, this blog deservs a better class of troll. Begone.
Asterius clearly remains in that tender age of 19-23 where he believes content-free opinionated one-liners fool others into thinking he’s well-read and educated.
Doesn’t really work past sophomore year in college, kid.
So fuck off, you preening idiot.
The Illiad is sufficient to establish the historicity of Agamemnon.
Read Doherty, at the link I provided, and show, in detail, why he is wrong. Otherwise, I will persist in my belief that Asterius is a crank.
And you’ll not get far here, assuming that we atheists haven’t read the bible.
Yeah, kid. Sure, kid. Whatever you say, kid.
(Definitely an apologist between 19-21 or so.)
Brownian, you low-rent, trifling piece of shit, perhaps Dr. Heddle can help you. He is an educator and is used to dealing with with the occasional low-watt bulb like you and the other members of the echo chamber here.
I have a question (I’m fascinated by this whole killfile phenomenon): If you have killfile, does it kill the comments based upon the name of the poster, the address the person’s writing from, or something else? If a troll assumes a new pseudonym, will its comments still be killed, or do you have to reset it for any new name?
Hooray for California! It makes me proud (as always) to be a graduate of such a fine institution of higher learning.
To be clear, there are Xtian high schools providing a quality education to their students (even if it comes with a dose of delusion). My closest friends from college went to a large Catholic high school (come to think of it, so did my father, another UCD grad), and none of them were any more ill-prepared for college than my self or any of the public-school grads (nor were they particularly religious). The key is that their school taught religion as a completely isolated class, entirely segregated from the actual knowledge being imparted.
-Proud UC Davis grad. GO AGS!
So… as regards to trolls, then:
killfile = sunlight
assuming, of course, that trolls have the qualities ascribed to them by those old-fashioned fantastists…
So I wonder who I should get to read the bible to me so they can explain which parts are ahistorical, which are historical and which are metaphorical. Aserious? Twaddle? Fred Phelps? Pope Ratzinger?
Y’know, if God really gave a shit about our eternal souls, he would have waited another 2,000 years to save the Jews and everybody else and sent a fucking email to each of us, rather than depending on fucks like Assholius to spread the good word. Christ on a cracker but they’re less reliable than a tweaking meth-head Purolator courier.
Whatever. Bring back Kenny! Bring back Kenny!
Investing a lot of time here debunking Doherty’s bullshit is on my list of priorities right after debunking Ken Ham’s bs on a YEC board. (They have the same standing in religious studies and geology, respectively.)
I suggest reading Shlomo Pines’ book “An Arabic Version of the Testimonium Flavianum and its Implications,” then Gerd Theissen’s “The Historical Jesus” then Alice Whealey’s “Josephus on Jesus” then Robert Van Voorst’s “Jesus Outside the NT”
Mothra @ #126:
. “A Christian and a Golden Bear,
. A Lamp of learning shown the pair.
. Said Bear to Christian, ‘would you care,
. explain to me why I’m a bear,
. and live in California fair.'”
That’s fantastic!
Did anyone else just throw up in their mouth a little bit when they read “Dr. Heddle”?
Nineteen who are you kidding? I would say 12-14 at best. The age where kids think using words like fucker and shit are what educated adults use and besides, it makes you sound really cool.
And it seems he skipped his nap and/or medication today. Asterius, take your zyprexa, grab your teddy bear, and really, you will feel better in a while.
Asterius wrote:
Fools? That’s a matter of opinion. I can’t share it until I see you or me trying to debate someone like Kirk Cameron or Ray Comfort. Sure, they made a few mistakes and they didn’t come off like Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris — few of us would. And frankly, I don’t think Dawkins or Harris would have realized just how comicbook Kirk’s and the moderator’s view of evolution was either, at least not right away. Hitchens would have just said – “lets underline that rejection of evolution and move on.”
I think that was Kelly’s and Brian’s first debate. It takes awhile to find one’s stride and properly arm themselves.
And Kelly and Brian didn’t need to be that good — Kirk and Ray destroyed their own arguments with no help from anyone.
MichaelX, #111
Dr. Heddle’s list of publications is far longer than that of PZ Myers. Do you throw up when you read Dr. Myers?
Oh, fuck. Not only are we dealing with an apologist (so how close am I on guessing your age, there Assy? Let’s call it a win if I do better than your bible gets historical facts), but a Calvinist apologist who actually buys Twaddle’s, er, twaddle.
You guys work harder at making your shit sound legit than film studies majors.
Incidentally, please, don’t bring your sorry ass to my state. I think I speak for the majority when I say we don’t want your kind here.
Can’t you FEEL the Christian love?
The dumb asses cannot distinguish among the three laws of thermodynamics. Nor do they realize that energy conservation was probably violated by the Big Bang. Their attempts to cite science they clearly do not understand is worse than crocoduck, IMO.
Asterius, please defend Heddle while calling us an echo chamber again.
Irony helps my anemia.
Heddle asked:
In your case Heddle, almost always. I no longer bother with engaging in your silly game and choose just to warn other people about what they are getting themselves into.
And you should read my blog too. It’s your only chance of engaging me:
http://normdoering.blogspot.com/2008/08/dealing-with-abysmal-ignorance.html
And it just keeps getting better. Keep it coming, please.
I wish I could buy Pharyngula hangers-on for what they are worth and sell them for what they think they are worth. I could make a damn fortune!
Brownian,
” Bring back Kenny! Bring back Kenny!”
Is this the blog equivalent of shouting “Party! Party!” while your parents are outta town?
Anytime you want to make an original claim Asterius, rather than recycling a hair from Heddle’s teabag you found between your teeth, be my guest.
In the meantime,
Echo!
Echo.
echo
echo
Asterius wrote:
If you think that energy conservation was probably violated by the Big Bang then it’s your attempt to cite science you do not understand that is worse than crocoduck.
Sorry. I freaked myself out even typing that. I remember the horror only too well.
I’ve known a few physicists. While they know physics far better than I ever will, they tend to have loopy ideas about everything else.
What taxes your cognition, dim bulb? The idea that energy conservation probably does not apply to the Big Bang? Or that the 1st law does not equal the 3rd?
No, and no one is claiming otherwise.
Facts are objective.
Values are subjective.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. They are not entitled to their own facts.
CHILDREN, PLEASE!
But the book to read if you want to be a Bible scholar, or even if you want to pretend to be one is Jesus, A Revolutionary Biography, by John Dominic Crossan. This is a shorter version of his tome on the subject. He is perhaps the greatest living Bible scholar.
PS: no one who ever saw Jesus alive wrote a word about it.
Wait, I thought I read you think it violated it, not that it just simply doesn’t apply. Interesting.
Wrong again, hayseed.
http://web.archive.org/web/20031106212441/http://www.astronomycafe.net/qadir/ask/a11609.html
Asterius showed up just in time, as whatever effect Twaddle has had on the poor kid is clearly some form of abuse.
The little guy never even had a chance to tell us what state he’s from that we should be wary of, but the state is obviously catatonia.
*gives up arguing, makes popcorn*
Hell mouth Wiccan School? Wiccans don’t believe in Hell, or Satan
[Lurch voice]You rang?[/Lurch voice]
Dr Heddel knows more than you that is my OPINOIN. You athiests just wont listen to reason. Research NDE’s yourselfs. The information is out there on the Internet. ALso quantum mechanics is very exciting with other dimensions. More than 3. If you dont beleive that Jesus existed then why would you beleive in Darwin and his stupid theory???
Pull the other leg.
That’s extant.
What taxes your cognition, dim bulb?
At this point, that you remember to breathe.
But do go on, you’re very entertaining.
By the way, have you found any original sources for Jesus’s existence yet?
After dealing with Dr. Behe, Dr. Dembski, and Dr. “I serve Rev. Moon” Wells, no.
It’s what they always warned, though. You get used to what once was intolerable.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
When I googled “big bang violation conservation” I ended up with some very interesting essays about conservation of baryon number being violated by the big bang.
We be so sorry, massah. We don’t wants no trouble. We po’ atheists, we knows our place, sah. Don’t beat us, please, we can’t hep who we is. We just be on our way down da road, we don’t wants no trouble.
“…while the laws of thermodynamics apply to the universe today, it is not clear that they necessarily apply to the origin of the universe; we simply do not know.”
Big Bang
LOL. You deserve credit for that reply.
Asterius seems familiar.
Which banned troll is he?
Nerd of Redhead wrote: “I’ve known a few physicists. While they know physics far better than I ever will, they tend to have loopy ideas about everything else.”
Right Alex. The p.o.s. Rational[sic] Responders claimed the “3rd law” (really the 1st law) of thermodynamics was proof against creation. They, of course, were wrong.
I’ll come teach at Hellmouth. Curses, Dirty Words or Hooch Making. Your choice. Only I don’t want to have the title Prof., Madame will do. :)
What the good attorney meant was that the time for getting the weasel’s nose under the tent is going away. Only under the auspices of Bush or Reagan did the craptastic diploma mills actually find work for their graduates. If they can get stare decisis on accredation for their skools, the courts will have to allow them to be treated on an equal basis with real colleges. The clock is ticking. Soon the troo beleevers will be out of office…facing indictments..and the replacements may not be as accomodating of Fudamentalist Beleefs.
Come Heddle, please. Moving goal posts? Lets review.
I stated early on that “In other words, to indoctrinate a child into an outright, verifiable, measurable, falsehood should be considered abuse.” This was a simple claim.
You then stated in 77: “OK, so if I understand you correctly, only teaching something that can be disproved scientifically is child abuse.”
I corrected that misconception by stating in 111 “As for your claim that totally unverifiable claims are incapable of causing harm, and only verifiable measurable ones are, I never said that was so. I simply stated that value judgements are not as easy to be clear on, where as measurable ones are.”
And so here we are. My claim has remain the same all the way through and you can feel free to read up.
My comment in 151 “But are you really attempting to claim that teaching a child that string theory is perfectly true causes as much damage as teaching a child that burning for eternity is true?” was in response to the idea that though unmeasurable value judgements are harder to pin down, there’s no way in hell you’re going to tell me that simply because they arn’t measurable currently, teaching the absolute truth of string theory is equal in abuse to the teaching of eternal hellfire and damnation.
Thus to bring this all full circle, indoctrinating children with measurable verifiable falsehoods should indeed be considered abuse. While value judgements are harder to pin down, we can still make such judgements, and the obvious case is String theory vs. Hell.
Is that clear?
@#92
“I had to drop my first major of computer studies because I wasn’t prepared for the math, even though my paperwork said I was. There was no unfair discrimination involved; I just wasn’t qualified to go thru those courses without remedial work.”
Spot on, that’s exactly the idea. If you go to a fundie school that does not lay the proper groundwork for the topics you’re going to learn, then there is no use in being in the class, you’ll just fall behind and have to withdrawal or take the big fat F. I bet if kids trying to get into the UC, who did not get the right accredited classes went ahead and took their rejection from UC, went to the local JC, took the classes they needed and did a good job, you’d bet they’d be accepted. It’s obviously not a religious argument, it’s about having everyone who’s in a lecture be on the same page so that the whole class isn’t held back while one or two students have to get explanations on the core ideas that are needed to understand a subject. In a lecture of 500 students, like the biology 100a b and c I took at UCSC (I was a Marine Bio Major), you needed to have a good grasp of high school level chemistry, biology (including evolutionary principles) and physics. If one or two or even 30 kids don’t have this, the lecture won’t slow down for them, and they’ll no doubt fail the class, and I’ve seen it happen on many occasions.
Good point. I have never desired to click on Heddle’s name , nor read anything prior to today about his vocation, so I had an uninformed mental picture of him being some upstart fundy undergrad at Baylor or something. Today’s revelation was a gut-churning shock, to be sure, but I’m well on the road to desensitization.
I see it’s idiot troll hour here at Pharyngula. School must have just gotten out.
CP(charge conjugation, parity and time) violations have been known since the 1950s. The “superweak force” has been proposed to explain CP violation. This force, much weaker than the nuclear weak force, is thought to be observable only in the K-meson system or in the neutron’s electric dipole moment, which measures the average size and direction of the separation between charged constituents. Another theory, named the Kobayashi-Maskawa model after its inventors, posits certain quantum mechanical effects in the weak force between quarks as the cause of CP violation.
Similarly, conservation of mass-energy may not be a law but only a guideline.
JoJo wrote:
I see what you mean.
Still, what Asterius said sounds like pure quack to me.
It sounds quacky when I consider this:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070628051241AAv69AR
This is semi-paraphrased for brevity:
Sorry, in my post #190 CP should only refer to charge conjugation and parity. I originally wrote something about CPT (charge conjugation, parity and time) but took the part about time out because it was confusing or, more likely, I was confused.
“Again, we are scientists here, or science admirers at the very least. The theory is: science and religion are incompatible. What’s the experiment that demonstrates this? If there is none, then it’s just words.”
First, religion is a broad term, as is science. We cannot say that all of religion is incompatible with all of science. But we can say that most Christian theories are incompatible with most scientific theories. In fact, this can be said about most theories dealing with the same problem domain. Take the age of earth as an example. One theory states that the age is around 6000 years and another theory states that it is a tad older. Those theories are incompatible. It’s simply impossible for a single person to hold both theories as true. Why? Because they are contradictory. They are not coherent. The earth must have a single value as its age.
To be able to answer our theory “religion and science are incompatible” we first need to define what is meant by religion and science. (Incompatible isn’t that hard to define heddle.)
So, if we can agree that religion is a belief-based system and science is a fact-based system we have short (and kind of inaccurate) definitions. Now, when a belief-based system tries to explain effects it does so by proclaiming how it happened. When a fact-based system tries to explain effects it does so by exploring how it happened and see if this is concistent with the facts. Thus, the systems cannot come to an explanation in the same way – although they might very well come to the same conclusion/explanation. But they do so in different ways. Those ways are incompatible since a single person cannot both proclaim the explanation (and accept it at that) and at the same time search for an explanation.
Maybe you’d like another take on it. What you say about a semantic discussion? Religion is used as a synonym for superstition in this context. So the theory should be “superstition is incompatible with science”. It would be great if we could agree that most religions share the following traits:
A belief or practice resulting from ignorance or a false conception of causation.
A notion maintained despite evidence to the contrary.
That is, can we agree that most religions are superstitious? If not, we’re only arguing semantics surrounding the word “religion”. If so, we might be able to agree on science not being superstitious and thus incompatible with something that is?
So you don’t buy string theory- fine, but then say the ‘reality’ of hell? None of which makes it less abusive to put into the mind of a young child.
It’s simple. If it exists it takes up space. It can be found. So using the ‘reality’ as a normal rational person would use it where is it? No apologist dodge answer the very simple 1st grade question as you would for any other supposed ‘real’ place.
The effect is otherwise smart men wasting enormous time and brain power on ideas that are unprovable and throughout mans history a dime a dozen.
The effects of the incompatibility can be seen by the diminished writings and scientific work of many who allow religion to overtake their minds.
Although I will stipulate many scientists although not the majority do hold these mutually contradictory ideas with little problem. But I think that just shows how segmented the mind is rather than anything about science or religion.
Per-Erik, good luck getting Heddle to agree that his Calvinist worldview is based on “ignorance.” I’m gonna bet that he’d deny the “superstitious” label as well, but he’s surprised me before. Like it or not, the guy seems to be taken seriously as a (primarily teaching) physicist. He’s got the compartmentalization thing down. I don’t know how he does it (nothing up his sleeve), but he really sees no conflict between his scientific dayjob and his apologetic avocation.
I never suggested that simply teaching ST should be the case. I suggested that being indoctrinated in it as absolute truth was the intellectual crime at hand. But teaching it as a hypothesis subject to verification is perfectly expected.
First off, the fact that you speak of a “reality” of hell is nonsense. To then in the very same paragraph discuss the metaphor that is hell seems indicative of that very human ability I touched on earlier, compartmentalization of contradiction. But worse, and more relevant to our discussion is the idea that this claim about hell is somehow not damaging to a young mind that truly believes it. Furthermore, what you would or wouldn’t teach, do, or say, is again, irrelevant, as you are far from representative of the majority of christians or the reality of what actually is taught.
Let me be simplistic here and state what we can all agree on. Emotional abuse is an accepted fact. What tends to cause it is fear, humiliation, intimidation, guilt, coercion, manipulation etc. All of these factors are present in the bald assertion of a hell that one will be sent to if one disobeys the dictates of god (interpreted by the ones in power). It is not only an abuse of a child’s emotions, but unending physical and/or mental punishment for a finite crime is also an abuse of their innate moral sense.
This surely qualifies as abuse. And only the unjustified belief in an unjust god would bring one to allow it.
heddle wrote: And I don’t think teaching on the reality of hell is abuse or damaging…
Hmm, you lost me there. You mean that telling kids they may well go to the very worst place they can imagine and suffer unimaginably there for eternity because they (e.g.) have lusted in their hearts (find me a human being who’s never done this) isn’t a quite nasty thing to do, and wouldn’t possibly be emotionally damaging to (e.g.) a teenager with a fertile imagination?
Posted by: TheOtherOne | August 12, 2008 4:10 PM
“Great ruling! The Bible is not inherently historically accurate book!”
Especially when the history in question is “Modern American History” . . . .
Nice post. I know that even the fundies admit that the Bible hasn’t changed since antiquity. What version has that American history chapter? Who wrote it: Mark? Luke? Paul? John? Peter?
OT: Nova this week on PBS – another rerun I haven’t seen before – is about the cuttlefish, and offers some amazing footage. (It’s on right now in Boston on Channel 2.)
asterius cited http://web.archive.org/web/20031106212441/http://www.astronomycafe.net/qadir/ask/a11609.html
If you had done the research you ought to have done before publishing that link, you’d have discovered the person from whom you got the horribly mangled verbiage about “violating” energy conservation loves to do two things: (1) Wax ecstatic about his own abilities to answer all questions great and small; and (2) Publish semi-drivel about how ancient Inca rituals, his personal experiences, and the Scientific Mysteries of The Universe are bound up together in one big fascinating package.
When one translates into English the terrible writing that appears on the page you cite, the clear meaning is (quel suprise!) that the law of conservation of energy didn’t apply to the Big Bang. Laws that don’t apply aren’t “violated,” are they?
Odenwald (the writer) just likes to say things like “badly…violated” because he apparently believes the creation of the universe in the Big Bang isn’t sufficiently dramatic to stand on its own without a little verbal dressing up from him.
And for the benefit of any future or present trolls: Both science and religion make truth claims about the world around us and how it functions. In this way they seek after the same goal in contrary ways, unlike Rock and Roll, which has nothing to do with the search for empirical truth.
Some common questions that both science and religion have an opinion on:
Was the universe created?
How old is the Earth?
Is there a higher being that answers our prayers and hears our thoughts?
Does Heaven and Hell exist?
Etc, etc, etc.
Science attempts to test these claims by searching for and examining relevant physical data. Religion attempts to answer these claims by introspection and revelation.
By the way, Religion answers those previous questions one way: through bald assertion. Science either states that no evidence has ever been found, or it has outright falsified religions claims. What’s important to remember is that in no case has positive evidence been submitted and tested that validates any of religions supernatural claims.
So, are religions methods of seeking truth incompatible with those of science? Hell yes.
[i]That textbook does sound like a bit of a fright. The sort of material you’d expect to see used by godbothering parents of “homeschooled” unfortunates, certainly not part of a scholastic matriculation process.[/i]
Back off the homeschooling unless you know the facts. Not all of us homeschoolers fit this bill and in fact, the majority of us DO NOT. We are not all ID/Creation belivers nor do most of us support this rubbish.
My kids are not unfortunate, nor are the 700 or so kids in my county. We are not all “godbothered” and our kids are not “unfortunate”.
I am a regular reader of this blog and I guess I half expected much better arguments out of intelligently educated people such as yourself; that do not denigrate to name calling and such out and out generalizations and lies.
Do your homework on homeschooling before laying the claim that we are “all” this bad. Some of us, you should be surprised to know, do not fit this bill and in fact, support measures such as this.
Toni
An Evolution-Based homeschooling Mom.
Oh, I know that the Christian fundamentalists are wrong but really it is the Elves who are running the world and even Cars are moving because of Elves and all Elve course criteria should be approved by all academics everywhere. No one is smarter than the elves!!! You doubt it well become enlightened and read below…
Cars move because Elves push them.
How come we can’t see any elves?
This post is not origional with me but is making the rounds on the Internet…
–Their magic makes them invisible.
How come they don’t leave any fingerprints?
–They wear gloves.
Elves are little aren’t they? They couldn’t possibly have enough strength to push a car.
–They work in teams.
I happened across this on a message board on myspace, all credit goes to this person: LINK.
–Geoff–Still… some cars can go over 200 mph. Nothing can run that fast.
–They’re magic, remember?
But humans invented cars didn’t they? It’s nothing to do with elves.
–The Elves INSPIRED people to build cars.
If Elves push them, why do they have engines?
–It amuses the elves to make us think we need engines and fuel.
Isn’t that a bit evil of them? I mean this is a multi-billion dollar industry that ravages the environment.
–The ways of the Elves are not our ways.
So all those engineers and scientists working on hydrogen
engines and electric cars are wasting their time?
–The elves will provide, but it amuses them that humans think they’re running the automotive industry.
But nobody’s ever seen an Elf.
–They’re invisible, remember?
Cars don’t run without engines or petrol.
–Because if you don’t play the game the Elves aren’t amused. They might help you along a bit further on the fumes in your tank though. If you believe.
I don’t believe, but I’ve made it just to the petrol station on fumes a few times.
–That’s them giving you a sign they’re real and asking you to believe in them.
But I’m sure people who do believe in them sometimes run out of fuel, even when they ask the Elves for more.
–Elves are capricious, sometimes the answer is no or they heed your call in a different way later on.
But look, fuel does burn and explode under the right conditions. Clearly it does relate to the ability of cars to go. Plus we make plastics and things out of petrochemicals. What gives.
–The Elves have evil rivals, Pixies, and they do everything they can to undermine Elf power and belief. Including using their magic to make it seem like petrol burns and explodes.
People die from it!
–Pixies are evil.
I don’t believe you, this is ridiculous, give me any evidence at all Elves exist.
–Prove to me that they don’t! They’re in lots of books. Take Lord of the Rings for example.
That’s just fiction and those elves can’t turn invisible.
–It’s a work by fallible, ill informed humans. You can’t expect it to be 100% accurate but the inspiration for Elves had to come from somewhere. That’s proof they exist!
So you don’t have a single shred of evidence for Elves, do you?
–Your car moves doesn’t it?
By internal combustion and human ingenuity, not elves.
–So you think, the Pixies have gotten to you, I know THE TRUTH. Still, you believe what you want and I’ll believe what I want.
What else do these Elves do?
–They speak to me in whispers.
Ooookaaaay… what do they tell you?
–That pixiess are evil, that we should stop solar cell research and that I should lobotomise your children with a chisel.
Ummm… then we can’t really each believe what we want can we? –Your beliefs are going to screw things up for me.
Help! I’m being persecuted by the A-Elfist! He won’t let me express my legitimate beliefs!
This material is not mine but is making the rounds on the net..I thought it might be appreciated here. I hope so…
**With bad html skills. :) Oh well, can’t win them all.
Toni
Yea, troll time! With old and new ones, goody.
We don’t want your dipshit kind here, fucker.
Jesus must be so proud of you right now.
Oh, waita go Danio! You attracted a troll. Nicely done :)
Funnily enough, I’m not a troll. I’ve posted several times on a few topics that PZ has done. :)
Sorry guys. No troll here. Though I must admit, I haven’t ever been called that. Bitch, Mean Bitch, Nasty Bitch–but never troll.
Toni
Hud,
You are arguing semantics. Either way the argument against the atheistic idiots stands. And I don’t care what Odenwald’s avocation is. He is certainly qualified to address that question.
Good post, Danio, and a correct ruling. Religion is indeed “compatible” with science, as long as it doesn’t make specific empirical claims which skip the usual peer review, because otherwise it’s contradicted. That’s when it’s not only religion, but bad science — and demonstrably wrong.
Personally, I’d say that the best evidence that religion and science are not compatible is that the wisest religionists are those who keep their religious fact claims and scientific fact claims on completely different systems.
But of course, it depends on what you mean by “compatible.” And “religion.” And “science.”
By the way, Dr. heddle is not a creationist; he’s a theistic evolutionist. And I don’t know, but suspect, he also agrees that this ruling upheld the academic standards of UC.
Wrong. He’s arguing that under certain conditions, and the Big Bang before Planck Time may be such a case, conservation of mass energy is not conserved.
Learn some physics and get back to us.
@ElectricBarbarella – I don’t think LisaJ meant you when she was talking about the trolls. Her following quoted line was froma different poster.
I agree with you on homeschooling. When done responsibly, kids may learn better than at traditional schools. You, I imagine, teach your kids the same way Atheist Homeschooler teaches hers.
Unfortunately, there is a large contingent of fundie homeschoolers who teach strictly from the bible or biblically based textbooks (and they are SCARY to me…I’ve looked at some of those textbooks).
#54 Hedgefundguy:
A blanket condemnation of home schooling is not called for. I am an atheist. My son is an atheist. I partially home school my son because the school system failed him. He is a junior in high school and I am teaching him ordinary differential equations. The school does not and will not provide this instruction (most of the math teachers are incompetent at basic algebra).
Before spewing nonsense, try asking some questions first. Yes the fundies are evil. Don’t put me in that category.
Dawn–I haven’t figured the HTML tags for this board yet, so I apologize to Lisa if she didn’t mean me. I hope not because like I said, Troll is one thing I’ve never been called. :)
Yes, there is a large contingent of fundieschoolers who speak loudly enough to make the rest of us look bad–I know plenty. :) But I also know that my “rest of us” are slowly(but surely) outnumbering them.
Believe me, when this case broke, it was all over the homeschooling boards as you’d suspect–“College hates Christians”, etc…But I’ve more than just a “faithful few” under my belt and we hit them hard with our Logic and truth. They didn’t like it and we didn’t care.
I just hate to see homeschooling lumped so harshly, is all. I’ve not been here long enough to know who Atheist Homeschooler is, but she sounds neat enough.
Toni
Hey, bigoted dumbass, not all homeschoolers are fundamentalists. Many of us homeschool because both private and public K-12 schooling sucks ass, not because we want religious education to dominate our children’s curriculum, even the majority of Christian homeschoolers are that way.
Somebody call Bill O’Reilly, who’s sure to follow up with an insane-o-rant. Secular progressives are unfairly imposing knowledge of reality on students. Discrimination against the reality-challenged, I tell you!
If these folks had the intelligence they were born with, they would realize that all they have to do is teach students reality, even though they don’t have to agree with reality, and can even tell their students as much.
ElectricBarbarella – I think the poster was referring to the troll called Asterius.
Bitch slapping generalisers doesn’t count as trolling. :-)
Lemme break it down for you, dumb ass. Saying that energy conservation may have been violated at the Big Bang is essentially the same as saying that conservation of energy does not apply to the Big Bang.
Learn English and physics, then get back to me.
Yeah. Bean-counting “Moses” wants to give his kids a shitty secular education at home as opposed to one in the public schools.
I disagree. I’ve read Dr. Heddles crap for at least six years. Dr. Heddle believes in the anthropomorphic universe which was created with the very specific properties that it has now so mankind could be created and live in the universe. That this universe, and life, is only one of, possibly, billions of possibilities is entirely shunned because, according to Heddle, this universe was specifically created for us.
It doesn’t get any more creationist than that.
Which is why I usually call him Mr. Puddle, because his entire line of reasoning is captured in this brilliant bit of satire by Douglas Adams:
…imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, ‘This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in, fits me rather neatly, doesn’t it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!’ This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it’s still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything’s going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise.
@Moses– Good one. :)
@KiwiInOz–love the name, love Australia. And I am glad to know that a good, old fashioned, Bitch-Slap is perfectly acceptable and expected. :) Makes me feel all warm and fuzzily inside.
Toni
Good for you. I recommend Edwards & Penny’s book.
That comment is appropriate to a mind of your caliber. You are, after all, just an accountant.
Yeah. Bean-counting “Moses” wants to give his kids a shitty secular education at home as opposed to one in the public schools.
********************************************************
You want to know what kind of stupid this comment was? So stupid, that stupid doesn’t even fit. You just double-dissed your own shitty public school education, double negatives equal a positive–thusly making Moses “shitty education” not so shitty when it’s compared to yours.
Moron.
(and for the record, not only do I have a public school education, but am also the wife of a public high school teacher. I don’t diss on them as I know what they truly have to go through to educate the masses. It’s hard.)
Toni
That’s just nonsense. Are you trying to make some sense? Obviously, the pos thinks the public schools in his area are subpar, else he would not be homeschooling his children. However, “Moses” is an idiot, so I doubt the education they receive from him and/or his spouse is much better.
Hey, dumbass Mk. II, my wife’s got a PhD in biology and was a dual-major in fine art and I’ve got an MS in accounting with enough electives in Philosophy, Geology and Economics to have added them as minors (though I never saw the point, I was interested in these to learn, not to hang on the wall). We both graduated in the tops of our classes and there’s nothing, save a foreign language which we hire native speaking tutors to teach, that a public school teacher could possibly teach our kid than we cannot teach her, only better.
In a week’s time, our kid will do the same amount of schoolwork that any public or privately schooled kid will do in a MONTH. Further, having pulled he out of one of the top magnet schools in our district in 5th grade, we accelerated her education to her capablities and our kid is already YEARS ahead of her peers. They’re still screwing around in 6th grade with multiplying and dividing large numbers. Ours is doing algebra and going into high school next year while her friend’s finally head off to Junior High and learn pre-algebra.
This is her high school curriculum. All of these are to be taught to the AP5 exam level. Which means, when she’s done at 16, she’ll be ready for her junior year in college while your kid is believing if fairies, whacking off to Internet porn while self-loathing and wondering why he’s such a loser:
Biology
Calculus AB
Calculus BC
Chemistry
Computer Science A
Computer Science AB
Macroeconomics
Microeconomics
English Language
English Literature
Environmental Science
European History
Comp Government & Politics
U.S. Government & Politics
Human Geography
Italian Language and Culture
Japanese Language and Culture
Physics B
Physics C
Psychology
Statistics
Studio Art
U.S. History
World History
So get over yourself, douche. You’re just a gadfly on the wall.
I don’t give a shit, you piece of shit. I am in mathematics. Beat that, bitch.
Math? That explains mostly everything about your condescending ignorance coupled with childish insults and inability to comprehend the universe. You guys are worse than engineers because they at least, at some point, have to actually deal with the real universe rather than their imaginary constructs they so devoutly hold…
You guys are just philosophy majors with numbers and no dates.
Asterius: I am positive that nothing gives Jesus more pleasure and delight than knowing that he has you on His team.
Truly it must be days, nay hours, before the mighty edifice of atheistic Darwinism crumbles before your wit.
@Asterius..
I, personally cannot beat mathematics. But my husband can:
Bachelors in Quantum Physics, Theater, with a Minor in Math.
Master’s in Space Aeronautics/Space Mechanics/Space Science. Currently qualified to teach: Physics, Physical Science, Earth/Space Science, Chemistry, Theater, AP Physics, AP Chemistry and Math.
Me, I’ve just got a “measly” AS in Criminology.
Likewise, your intellect is dizzying–and I don’t mean that as a compliment. Asterius, if you can’t fuck like the big boys, get out of the bedroom. K? Thanx.
Toni
Not that I want to get in the middle of the pissing match, but an MS in Economics beats Mathematics…unless you’re going for a PhD level. Are you?
Much as I’d love to stay up and continue this piss fest with certain people–I do have to sleep sometime. Tomorrow is a big day for me (2nd nephew being born), so I need sleep so I can be a wide-eyed cheery Auntie soon.
Toni
Moses #219 wrote:
The Fine Tuning Argument isn’t usually included under the label of “Creationism,” which denies evolution. I know the Discovery Institute likes the Privileged Planet book, but technically speaking Fine Tuning and Creationism contradict each other.
One argument claims that the universe was set up perfectly from the beginning, so that life would unfold from natural processes. The other argument says that natural processes could not have formed life — direct miraculous intervention would be required.
heddle is a theistic evolutionist. I think it can get a lot more ‘creationist’ than that.
And people who lived much closer to the dawn of Christianity than we do wrote things about their beliefs which sound, to put it mildly, heretical.
I already have an M.S.
There are no big boys among Pharyngula hangers-on, just big talkers and many penis pumps.
Sastra, OM (#232):
Since when has a little inconsistency stopped an antirationalist? Proposition A implies God; Proposition not-A implies God; Heads I win, tails you lose!
As Robert Altemeyer wrote of those who score highly on psychological measures of authoritarianism,
What’s up with all these avatars of Dr. Science?
It was this court case that really served as a wake-up call for me. Before I heard about it, I was content to point and laugh. But try to muscle your way into my alma mater in spite of your substandard education? Take places away from kids who won’t need remedial critical thinking? Drag down the value of my degrees–which I worked hard for kthxbye–with your stupidity? Nuh uh.
UC Davis; B.S. Y2K, M.S. ’03
What the heck is this? Argumentum ad diplomaeum?
You must be new around here.
Indeed. What religion seeks is not so much truth as it is self-validation; it asserts the former in service of the latter.
Please. There are plenty of flakes in the UC system from secular schools.
Nope. I was at pharyngula when it was still green acres.
Kseniya (#239):
Tsk, tsk! Any true Elitist Bastard should recognize that the English “diploma” is a Greek-derived word which entered our lexicon through Latin, that the Latin diploma is a first declension noun, that the preposition ad takes the accusative case, and therefore that the phrase should be argumentum ad diplomam. Priscian a little scratched!
Unfortunately, this does imply we lose the use of the ligature one would employ in “diplomæem” (the ligature being the mark of the true pædant).
For “diplomæem” [sic] please read “diplomæum”. Trust my fingers to spoil a joke. . . .
The bible is incompatible with science but, as we’ve seen, there are plenty of believers who don’t go down the literal path.
But it’s not just the the bible isn’t supported by evidence; it is, in many ways contradicted by it.
Which is still okay for a certain type of believer – it’s just god’s way of testing faith. Of course, this means they should (but rarely do) admit that their god is, at the very least, disingenuous – or, at the very worst, a deceitful monster.
Yet another reminder that, when it comes down to it, god is very unlikely – and, if he does exist, he’s nothing like who they think he is.
Well then, it’s a good thing that the biblical literalists are out of the system. Who knows what it’d be like if they were?
@245,
*were = weren’t….but you probably already knew that.
Biblical literalists are here, too.
Where’s ‘here’? Context matters, you know.
Asterius troll – and your point is?
I need to see the anthology, Classics for Christians. From what I have read, it seems perfectly acceptable for an English class. The biology textbook is not acceptable, however.
I am part of the UC system. That’s the context.
Nice of you to finally say so.
See how communication works when you don’t assume that everyone intuitively has your frame of reference?
While I agree with the UC system’s decision, I also think that they need to look at these kids as essentially disadvantaged or even abused kids. They didn’t have a choice where they went to school, and the reason that they are not prepared to attend a UC school is because their fucked up religious parents put them in an indoctrination camp for 12 years.
Honestly I think they should be judged by the same measure that minority and impoverished kids should be be given an extra leg up. Its not their fault that their parents are asshats.
My suggestion would be that they accept kids from the school and require them to do remedial courses on science and history, etc. It behooves us as a society and a teaching system to right the wrongs that their parents did. It would also send a message that kids from that school are substandard. So it doesn’t punish the kids, but it sends a message to the school and parents. Plus it would burn pretty bad to know that your kid has to read Zinn’s ‘A people’s history of the US’ and take a course in evolutionary biology to attend a UC school.
Arnold? Arnold Ziffle is that you?
I’d like to see you put in an indoctrination camp like pows have had to endure and then see if your bitch ass has the temerity to compare Christian schools with them.
And there is no evidence that I’ve seen to suggest the products of Christian schools perform worse than their public school counterparts.
F’ing loser.
Asterius:Incidentally, please, don’t bring your sorry ass to my state. I think I speak for the majority when I say we don’t want your kind here.
And:I am part of the UC system.
California is the state you advised AEGIS not to visit!?
CA is the state I advised him/her/it not to relocate to. Despite the liberal tilt of the state that is caused by shitholes like LA and (especially) San Francisco, this is not a particularly irreligious state. The Pacific Northwest states are known for that, not CA.
You call detention facilities “indoctrination camps”?
At what?
So… you’re saying that it’s now Petticoat Junction?
Yes, but that’s not exactly on-point, is it? Do secular schools teach that the Holy Bible is an inerrant historical text, and then proceed to request that the state recognize that curriculum as valid and equal to conventional scholarship?
Blake, you got me, but that’s fine – I would hope to be corrected in any case. (Haha.) Alas, I am no Elitist Bastard, but merely a lass, and so unschooled in Latin that I think of a ligature as an essential part of a clarinet.
Asterius @ #250: “I need to see the anthology, Classics for Christians. From what I have read, it seems perfectly acceptable for an English class.”
From what I understand, the problem is not in the anthology itself, but in the fact that they weren’t reading ANY complete texts, only excerpts.
NickG @ #253: “My suggestion would be that they accept kids from the school and require them to do remedial courses on science and history, etc..”
They have exactly the same options as any other kid who has not completed UC’s “a-g” requirements. These options include individual case-by-case application appeals, testing out of the required classes, or going to a community college first and taking the “remedial” classes there, which they could do while still enrolled in high school. Why should they be allowed to be admitted and take remedial classes at a UC when a kid from a secular school who is missing an “a-g” requirement is not?
If you are curious and would like to see an official guide to the “a-g” requirements, follow this link: http://www.ucop.edu/a-gGuide/ag/a-g/welcome.html
California may not be a particularly irreligious state but it is a fairly socially liberal and live and let live state. It’s no Alabama.
What was that Altemeyer bit Blake Stacy posted about authoritarians holding inconsistent ideas?
We’ve got a particularly spastic troll today. Lots of Gish Galloping at little to no provocation. He’s very proud of his intelligence and is almost desperate to demonstrate it. Somebody aim a laser pointer at the wall and watch him tucker himself out chasing it.
I don’t think NickG said all Christian schools. A careful reading suggests that he was referring only to the school involved in the situation addressed in the OP:
Your characterization of NickG as a fucking loser seems to have been somewhat inaccurate – or, at best, premature.
Bob Brashear @ #212: “most of the math teachers are incompetent at basic algebra”
You don’t want to be lumped in with all of the crazy homeschoolers. Fine, fair enough. As a math teacher (and the son of a math teacher), I don’t want to be lumped in with the people unfit to teach math. I resent the comment that MOST math teachers can’t do algebra, as most of the math teachers I have met (quite a few), are very competent, and could probable be teaching your son ODE’s right now without a problem.
Wow, Asterius is one stupid, rude fuck. He’s giving the inbred a bad name! And he probably IS speaking for the majority of dumb fucks here in Cali! Luckily there are lots of the nowhere near as fucking stupid as Asterius folks here, too.
How’s your Mom, er, sister? And your son, er, brother?
Is it politically incorrect to make fun of the inbred, like Asterius? If so, I apologize to the rest of the inbred world…
Anyone who calls San Francisco a shithole is clearly not worth listening to.
Bob Brashear @ #212: “most of the math teachers are incompetent at basic algebra”
You don’t want to be lumped in with all of the crazy homeschoolers. Fine, fair enough. As a math teacher (and the son of a math teacher), I don’t want to be lumped in with the people unfit to teach math. I resent the comment that MOST math teachers can’t do algebra, as most of the math teachers I have met (quite a few), are very competent, and could probable be teaching your son ODE’s right now without a problem. I don’t know what state you live in, but in California the problem is not the quality of math teachers, but the quantity (or lack thereof).
Yet another vapid atheist. Dude, if you are too brain dead to come up with a decent insult, then it is best to refrain from posting.
Grrr….stupid double posting….damn….sorry…
Then, by all means, listen to Gavin. The space betwixt his ears is as vacuous as yours.
It probably bore repeating, so don’t sweat it.
Ah, Asterius, the dumbfuck who apparently thinks his insults are “decent!”
Bwahahahahahahahahahaha!
This blog has found the dumbest fuck in the entire state of California. That’s an achievement!
Raven got it right with “Nineteen who are you kidding? I would say 12-14 at best.”
What a tool, what a tool!
(Who is “Gavin”?)
Moses @ # 225: “our kid is already YEARS ahead of her peers”
…and MILES behind them in social development. Read an Ed. Psych. book sometime. Slavin’s book is a standard, but there are lots out there. I’m NOT saying homeschooling is necessarily bad, but there is a very real danger of retarding your child’s emotional and “moral” development, which at that age are very closely tied to interaction with her peer group*. Again, for anyone who is contemplating homeschooling their children, preparing yourself to be their teacher should include at least basic knowledge of Educational Psychology (which is why it is a required course for EVERY credentialed teacher).
*Any good ed. psych book should have information on research by Kohlberg, Piaget, and Erikson, among others, to support this assertion.
“UC Davis; B.S. Y2K, M.S. ’03”
GO AGS!
(sorry to all those who could care less about Davis, I couldn’t resist. Well, not sorry to any Suck State grads. Fuck you.)
Kseniya @ #274: “(Who is “Gavin”?)”
I would assume he meant Gavin Newsom, the mayor of San Francisco, which is clearly the greatest city in this country, if not the world.
Someone is auditioning for PZ’s parrot.
Polly want a clue?
Kseniya,
As Wookster wrote, I was referring to the kooja Gavin Newsom. Incidentally, I have appreciated your comments in this thread thus far. You and a handful of others serve to remind me that not all pharyngula commenters are pieces of shit, just the overwhelming majority.
I am astounded Asterius that you make any claims to judge the worthiness of commenters here, as you yourself have committed every action you seem to so despise. Hypocrisy is unbecoming on one who puts on airs of being so high and morally mighty.
Keep in mind, you get what you give. If you don’t like people treating you like a jerk, be the bigger person, make the first move and stop acting like one.
C’mon, get it right. In California, Asterias would be considered genetically deprived or gene pool challenged.
And there is data that kids from wingnut death cult indoctrination camps (which is not the same as run of the mill Xian schools) do poorly on SATs and struggle a lot at the universities. UC doesn’t want to admit unprepared students who have been set up to fail becuase, DUH!, they end up failing.
There are many shots at the goal in the UC system. They can always take remedial courses and try again.
You’re a disgrace to elitism, my dear boy. Burn your corduroy trousers and rip the leather patches from your jackets. No Pimms for you!
I’m old enough that my Latin dates from days closer to when it was actually spoken, so I’d like to point out that meaning also matters. The preposition ad means “to”, “towards” and similar sorts of literal or metaphorical movement in that direction. This is not appropriate here, I would suggest that the more appropriate preposition would be a or ab, meaning “from”. Of course, a/ab takes the ablative case (that’s why the ablative is called that!), and I think we’re talking about lots of diplomas rather than a single one, so it’s probably argumentum a diplomabus.
Of course, better latin scholars might like to correct this; I don’t claim to be perfect despite having a list of qualifications that is as long as my dick and a dick that is as long as my list of qualifications, and neither college nor woman has ever complained about the lack of either.
I predict this kind of behavior out of Cali (which exports a lot of trends to the rest of us), will cause as much friction among people as the abortion issue did. Sad.
I went to a Catholic school in Florida for a couple of years. It was understood religion was a required subject to graduate.
Northwest Nazarene College in Idaho, boasts some Nobel prize winners, if I’m not mistaken. And they require a certain amount of chapel attendance per semester.
Many young people attend a private Christian high school or Jr. college for a few years before they move on to business college or law school. Some of those young people have indicated to me that they felt they were more grounded and disciplined in their pursuits for the experience.
This smacks of prejudice by the state of California and of course prejudice by U of C.
Heddle, while I frequently disagree with you, I do have to recognize that, from the comments I have seen, you are nearly always civil and that your arguments have a fair bit of thought put into them.
Is there any way you could teach your groupie the value of these qualities?
Asterius, if you could spare a moment from sharing Christ’s love and compassion with us, please present evidence for the existence of the Jesus described in the New Testament and for the accuracy of the words and deeds attributed to him in same.
When I was eight years old one of the nuns at Catholic Sunday school was explaining “inner” and “outer” heaven to us – a concept that I’d never heard of before or since. It went something like this: There is “inner” heaven where God, and all the angels, saints, priests, nuns, etc. reside and “outer” heaven for everyone else. The only way that anyone of us in class would get into “inner” heaven and be in the presence of God was to become a priest/nun/etc. Otherwise you would wind up in “outer” heaven and never be near God.
Then she pointed right at me and said, “But you don’t have to worry about that because you’re going straight to HELL!!” (Because my parents had gotten a divorce.)
Needless to say, I was completely traumatized and this served as the beginning of the end of my relationship with the Church since I was going to be eternally damned for something my parents did that I had absolutely no control over and about which I could do nothing.
If that’s not psychological abuse of a child, I don’t know what is. My dad and I talked about this many years later and he said that was the reason that he didn’t think children should be exposed to religion until they are old enough to be able to make their own informed decisions on the subject.
Ahh, No–Wookster. No, we and they are not. I don’t know which psych book you are reading from, but if anything–the socialization/social development skills of a homeschooler is miles ahead of that of their peers.
We aren’t locked in the same room with the same kids for the same amount of hours and days for the same year being taught by the same teacher and are not allowed to socialize within that structure.
We don’t get up, go to school and shut up either. We don’t follow a herd or pack, we don’t have stringent rules that govern any single amount of free time we have (a hall pass for the bathroom anyone?)
No–instead we are out in the real world doing Civics, volunteer work, some of us even have real jobs(wow!), we get our socialization from the real word and the people in it. Not X number of 9th graders telling us who we are, how we are to be it, or you can’t be like them.
I really hate that socialization argument. Anyone who lays claim to believe in the social retardation of Homeschoolers has never been around homeschoolers and has no fucking clue what they are talking about.
toni
Heddle, tell me who, lo these many years ago, said “Give to Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and give to God that which is God’s.”
Jesus Christ, that’s who.
Jesus was, if the New Testament can be believed, a firm believer in the separation of church and state as well as in the separation of the spiritual and material worlds. “My Kingdom is not of this earth” was his response to those who wanted him to become a political figure.
“My Kingdom is not of this earth.” Jesus said it, you should believe it, that settles it.
Let science be science and religion be religion. Keep Genesis out of high-school science classes, and we’ll keep quantum physics out of Sunday schools. Deal?
Ah, pardon, I have.
I worked @ a liberal arts college. The director of Educational Technology was homeschooled. He was an exceptionally bright fellow. Problem: he was socially retarded. He had no clue how to keep his emotions under wraps. Whatever popped into his mind came out of his mouth.
He got demoted. His lack of social skills outweighed his techie skillset.
Being a dependency court caseworker in a rural, inbred, ignorant, Jesus-soaked, redneck, backwoods county in central Florida, I have been exposed to only three cases (4 kids)where the children were home schooled. The first two kids were homeschooled for strictly religious reasons and they used the odious, YEC fundie “textbooks”. Both of these girls had been sexually molested by their father. Incest being a good Old Testament value, and all… The third child was pulled out of school by his mentally ill mother so she could “protect him” from those other nasty kids. By the time law enforcement forced the mother to re-enroll this otherwise bright 8 year old in publuc school, he was so far behind that he had to take remedial everything. The last kid was 6 years old with a speech impediment and the emotional level of a 3 year old. His mid-40’s flowerchild mother also didn’t want him being around “those kids”. This boy was so completely unsocialized that he didn’t know how to react around strangers. He desperately wanted to play with anybody and everybody who visited them way out in the woods with no neighbors, had no concept of personal space and boundaries, and did everything he could to keep visitors from leaving. This poor child was so smothered by his overprotective mom that I worry for his emotional and psychological well-being but there is nothing that can be done legally. I know that not all homeschooling is bad and parents like ElectricBarbarella represent all that is good and effective about it, but given the apparent state of homeschooling where I am, where idiots who don’t even have a high school diploma think they are better able to “teach” their kids than certified instructors, more regulation is needed. Just my $.02 from a purely subjective, anecdotal perspective.
Pheonix Woman,
1) I am a strong, very strong, unambiguous supporter of Separation of Church and State. I’m a Baptist. We (claim to have) invented it. I agree with the comments on separation by this famous American baptist. I could direct you to any number of posts on my own blog where I argue, as you say, that nothing in the NT indicates that church and state are to be entangled, and nothing in the NT argues that Christians should work to make sin illegal.
2) My one consistent position since I started writing on ID is that it is not science and has no place in a science curriculum in a public school. On other things my opinion has shifted, but on that point it has been unwavering.
So…Try either to ignore me or learn my actual position before you attack an assumed stance. Deal?
By the way, no need to keep QM out of Sunday school. We welcome it! I teach adult Sunday School, and have used wave-particle duality as an example of antinomy, a segue into a discussion of sovereignty vs. free-will. And just recently in Sunday School I discussed Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle and its (in my opinion, abuse) in various free will discussions. QM is part of nature, nature in theology is called General Revelation, and General Revelation clearly belongs in Sunday School. Bring it on!
This thread has well-illustrated Heddle’s Law in action:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/08/a_victory_for_rationalism_in_c.php#comment-1048571
At first, Heddle’s posts and Asterius’ were not too terribly far apart. However, while Heddle remained civil (if in my own subjective opinion nonsensical), Asterius quickly degenerated into insults and a very strange academic form of “Internet Tough-Guy Syndrome” where an pseudonymous poster goes on and on about his many degrees rather than his many martial arts achievements and Navy S.E.A.L.S. experiences.
To truly test a Troll all you need is time.
Sastra,
I have to take issue with you over your claim Heddle is not a creationist. He is: Not a YEC style creationists but he is still a creationist. He recently stated he rejects the scientific evidence for the evolutionary origins of morality as he believes morality comes from god. At the time I called him a pick and mix creationist as he accepts some science but rejects other parts of science based not evidence but on dogma.
Matt Penfold,
Of course I am a creationist. I actually don’t know what it means to be a theist and not be a creationist. I think the former implies the latter. Of course I believe that the heavens and the earth and life itself ultimately owes its existence to God.
About all I can can say is that I am not a YEC, not an OEC a la Hugh Ross, but something closer to Collins.
As to what that qualifies me title-wise, I couldn’t care less. There was some discussion that you were involved with on a previous Pharyngula thread about “clearly defined standards” that certify one as a True Evolutionist™, but so far I have yet to track down these standards nor the international consortium that developed them. I could use some help on that.
Um, read my post again. I never said anything about you being locked in the same room for hours or being forbidden from socializing.
Completely irrelevant to my point, but ok. Independence and social development are not equivalent.
I do believe I specified peers.
Slavin, Robert E., Educational Psychology: Theory and Practice, 7th ed.
Again, I never did say you shouldn’t be allowed to homeschool your kid. If you go back and read my post, you will see that I finished by saying (and this was the point) that IF you are going to homeschool your kid, you need to prepare yourself as a teacher. There is more to teaching than mastery of your subject matter, which is why there is a credentialing proces for professional teachers.
There are definitely two sides to the homeschooling coin. I have anecdotal evidence that demonstrates both sides. It’s all in the implementation, ladies and gents.
Unless you can be a weeeee bit more specific, I’m going to assume you’re mistaken. A quick bout of googlefu yields nothing.
Ah, K. that would have been the most bon of mots were it not for the fact (which, frighteningly, I knew without ‘kipedia) that PJ (1963) preceded GA (1965).
[by the way, double-checking ‘kipedia yielded this:
] Q: Who should play Lisa?
What makes you a creationist is that you reject scientific explanations not on evidence but on dogma. You cannot accept that morality has an evolutionary basis not because you do not agree with the evidence but because your religious faith prevents you from you doing so. That is the standard. Since you claim to be a scientist you should know that.
I just find it amusing that when it comes to biology you are so arrogant you think you know more than the real biologists. Clearly hubris is not something sinful in your faith.
I googled NN college and Nobel prize winners and didn’t come up with anything. This sounds like a flat out lie. Got any proof of this statement? A cut and paste will work. At any rate, it is irrelevant, the topic is California Death Cult kid indoctrination camps and their attempt to substitute lies for reality and then get UC to accept substandard courses.
The rest of your incoherent rant is bullcrap. UC accepts lots of courses from lots of religiously based schools. In fact, most mainstream xian schools, catholic, episcopalian, and so on have normal curriculums and no trouble from the UC system. This issue has nothing to do with religion.
What UC won’t accept is substandard and wrong courses from a few cult fundie schools.
Despite your anecdotal stories that not all cult kids end up mowing lawns forever, the data shows that these kids have trouble with higher education. Which however, is easily fixable if they want to take a few real courses.
Which you didn’t do. You have obviously drank too much fundie koolaid. Lies, irrelevant statements, conflating Death Cults with Xianity when they are a small subset, and then crying persecution where none exists.
UC discriminates all right. Against a few poorly prepared kids lacking basic knowledge and critical reasoning skills who are at risk of flunking out. Like you. Being ignorant is a choice, not a right.
See, here’s where you went wrong. You don’t speak for the majority. Just because you’re filled with fear and hatred towards people who aren’t like you doesn’t mean most Californians are.
Where you would get such a silly idea, child?
I killfiled Asterius two days ago.
He wasn’t worth the time then or now.
Heddle, you said this:
>What’s the experiment that demonstrates this? If there is none, then it’s just words.
As a self-proclaimed physicist, you should be aware that not all theories need to be tested via experiment, or, at the very least, tested directly. A theory that is incompatible with other known facts of nature can be immediately disregarded.
For example, a theory that claims gravity at non-relativistic speeds and macroscopic scales is ACTUALLY GOD*M/r^4, where GOD is an arbitrary constant, can be immediately disregarded, because empirical EVIDENCE shows that it is in fact GMm/r^2.
So far, so good. Why do we disregard the alternate theory of gravity without needing experiment?
That’s right: It is a claim to reality that is incompatible with all other physical theories.
Now for the answer to your question:
Is religion compatible with science?
The answer is not just “no”, but HELL no.
Why?
Because religion is an absolute truth claim; that is, religion says _everything_ it says is true.
And all religions require a violation of physical law, whether implicitly or explicitly, because religions deal, effectively, with the supernatural.
Therefore, science automatically rejects religion, because religion requires special pleading about things like “spirits” and “souls”.
You may personally BE religious, but do you believe in gravity or intelligent falling? When was the last time you tested your religion in the lab? When was the last time, in fact, your religion in any material way assisted your research? If you are unable to think of your answer, please choose any of your religious colleagues to answer on your stead.
Please answer, with the appropriate citations of your peer-reviewed study. Thank you.
You can’t, can you?
“Scientists” can mean “a person who does science for a living” or “a person working according to the scientific method”.
The fact that you have religious colleagues merely means that they are either not scientists by the second definition 24-7, or they are piss-poor scientists at all times.
Going to weigh in on homeschooling for once. Many of the few homeschoolers out here tend to be hippie/New Age or professionals.
If it is done right, the kids can easily be as prepared or better than run of the mill schools. Or vice versa. No generalizations on educational results can be made just on the basis of homeschooling.
I’ve met some bright, well educated homeschoolers that have gone on to get college degrees with no trouble.
What they all seem to lack is social skills and sociability. They tend to be awkward in social settings and a bit lost. Nothing wrong with that really, but it does make it a bit harder for them to get by. And they also outgrow it sometimes.
From this I take it that it is critical to provide a peer group and some outside activities so that they have a normal teen age life. We used to have “alternative” public schools for kids that didn’t fit in and a lot of the brighter kids ended up going there while also being home schooled. Don’t know if they still have those though, budgets have been tight.
Matt Penfold, #298
I don’t think I know more than real biologists. What you really mean by this is: some biologists and psychologists have suggested scenarios for the evolutionary development of human morality, therefore I must accept this preliminary work as definitive or I am not a True Evolutionist™. But neither Collins, whom I’ve read, nor Miller, whom I’ve heard, accept, at the moment, that the evolutionary explanation for human morality is in any manner ready for prime time. Are they real biologists? As I have written elsewhere, if I never believed in evolution, human chromosome fusing would have been enough to convince me. It is good, solid, hard evidence and the result of a prediction–science at its best. As good as a physics prediction. If there is something of that caliber when it comes to human morality, let me know. Until that time your asking me to accept it in order to receive my certificate of authenticity is simply asking me to trade one dogma for another. No. True. Scotsman.
And are you amused that many non-physicists on here, such as Moses, think they know more physics than I do, or is your amusement diode-like?
Another atheist homeschooler here. Locally, there are enough of us to have well-attended meetings around town; sometimes, the atheist homeschoolers joined up with other non-Christian homeschoolers. The kids got the chance to make new friends (we have about a zillion ways for our kids to get “socialization”); the parents got the chance to talk shop, commiserate, get some new pointers/ideas about homeschooling, and to make some alliances that might be helpful later.
Again and again, I heard the stories of non-Chrisitan parents who took their children from the system because the children were being harassed so badly that it was detrimental to their education and their well-being, or because Christianity had crept too far into classrooms unchecked. Who will naysay a Christaloon in Texas?
For some of the homeschoolers, the choice is temporary, until a move to a different district, or until the child is old enough for the next level of school. For some it’s permanent.
Either way, it can be a rewarding alternative to traditional school. It’s flexible, and, if your schedule and location permit it, you can take advantage of every learning experience a large, historic, ethnically rich and diverse city has to offer.
Neither Collins nor Miller specialise in evolutionary psychology so quoting either is rather pointless. I suspect you have not bothered to read those biologists who are.
Here is a simple test.
Do you accept morality can be explained as the result of natural processes ? Never mind you disagree with the current theories, do you think that there must be a natural explanation for morality or do think god(s) had something to do with it ?
Notkieran,
I don’t know what you meant by your God-gravity theory, but neither Newtonian Gravity nor General Relativity is incompatible with religion. (Considering who developed Newtonian Gravity, there very thought is absurd.) Perhaps an example of how it could be incompatible is illustrative: A religion that states “God moves the planets about, micron by micron, by tapping them with his little finger” is incompatible with science. The statement “God created the universe, and through secondary means (the laws of physics) the planets move in their orbits” is not only compatible with science but actually encourages its pursuit.
Very true, but so what? All that means is that religion proposes a domain outside the purview of science, the supernatural. You are, I think, confusing orthogonality with incompatibility.
Does this sound like a cogent argument when you reread it? Saying religion is compatible with science is not saying that religion is science. Do you actually think that a religious scientist is one who believes in “intelligent falling?”
Actually I can cite many peer-reviewed theology articles when I discuss religion, but not science articles because religion is not science.
If they are piss poor scientists then take my challenge–from ten peer-reviewed articles pick out the five by the religious scientists and explain in what manner they are piss-poor. If you can’t then, again, the statement “religion is incompatible with science” is impotent. It is no better or worse than if I claim “religion benefits science.”
But then, according to you I am but a “self-proclaimed” physicist, so what do I know?
Moses @ # 225: “our kid is already YEARS ahead of her peers”
…and MILES behind them in social development.
Socialization is notthe sole provence of a school system! People are socialized in dozens–HUNDREDS–of ways. If your child lives in a city, the chances are that he has neighbors, and there will be kids who are neighbors! DUH! There are kids at malls, at soccer practice, at video arcades, at game stores, comic book stores, Pokemon matches…
Are you getting it now? Barring some very severe barriers, kids will learn social interaction. They do not need school to learn the give and take of dealing with others.
Being home schooled didn’t mean my son became an anti-social misfit. Quite the contrary. All of his friends stayed at my house so much I thought about charging their parents rent. He got interested in girls without school, and he had girlfriends without school, and at the normal ages. He got interested in video games and D&D and Pokemon and anime outside of school.
And I’ll take my son’s more compassionate and respectful attitude toward others, and his substantially reduced materialism since leaving the abhorrent school system, any day. It took only six weeks to stop hearing about wanting the latest toy some kid at school had, or a certain kind of jeans, or sneakers, or whatever. He understands that he doesn’t have to like something, or want something, just because everyone else does. Except he learned that when he was 12. Most Americans educated in schools never get over it.
So don’t speak of things of which you obviously don’t know anything. You do not know the social development of anyone else’s child in this setting.
The home school kids who have problems are almost always the ones growing up in circumstances of extreme isolation, FLDS types and the like.
The rest of us are quite a bit more involved with the world around us. Don’t presume it’s lesser than your experience. I doubt that it is.
You need to expand your vocabulary, which necessitates you emerging from your parents’ basement.
Matt Penfold,#306
I see you have avoided answering the question of whether or not they are True Evolutionists™, and have moved the goal post. What was “biologists” has now become “evolutionary psychology.” Now I must accept whatever they postulate in order to get my merit badge. Show me the evidence from evolutionary psychology on the evolutionary development of morality that is of the caliber of chromosome fusing.
No. It obviously can not be explained–if you can explain it in terms of natural processes then go wait in Sweden for your Nobel. Maybe you meant this question: Do I accept that morality is manifested by natural processes? Then the answer is an obvious yes. If you suffer brain damage or take drugs, it can affect your moral behavior. I don’t believe that is because part of your soul leaks out.
Heddle, if (most) religion demands a “violation” of a physical law (which you apparently agreed with), then how can you claim that it is orthogonal to science, rather then incompatible? Breaking a law of physics, is sort of by definition something that I as a physicist find to be my interest.
I think religion can be compatible with science, but it requires a view of religion that very few religious people actually have. Essentially, that god, being an omnipotent/scient being can do whatever he/she wants and let’s say for example fool us into thinking that the earth is billions years old while in reality it’s 4000 or what have you. That god is in a way a trickster, although they wouldn’t put it that way, they would rather say that god’s reasons are unknowable. I know a bible literalist who is nevertheless an excellent scientist who sees things that way – and I can respect that (in a way). But to claim that this is the view of even a small minority of believers is just wrong. For anyone who can’t (or won’t) do mental acrobatics of this sort the incompatibility is clear.
But religion DOESN’T propose a domain outside the purview of science because every religion makes countless claims about the real world. Supernaturalism is nothing but the Wizard of Oz’s curtain, a feeble attempt to deflect questions about those claims.
So, no, there’s nothing orthogonal about superstitious beliefs and scientific inquiry. Religion and science are incompatible to the extent that science disproves claims made by religion about the universe. From an historical perspective, time and time again religion has been shown for what it is–a complete fabrication, false claims that are nothing more than the product of ignorance and wishful thinking.
Another atheist homeschooler here. Locally, there are enough of us to have well-attended meetings around town; sometimes, the atheist homeschoolers joined up with other non-Christian homeschoolers. The kids got the chance to make new friends (we have about a zillion ways for our kids to get “socialization”); the parents got the chance to talk shop, commiserate, get some new pointers/ideas about homeschooling, and to make some alliances that might be helpful later.
Again and again, I heard the stories of non-Chrisitan parents who took their children from the system because the children were being harassed so badly that it was detrimental to their education and their well-being, or because Christianity had crept too far into classrooms unchecked. Who will naysay a Christaloon in Texas?
For some of the homeschoolers, the choice is temporary, until a move to a different district, or until the child is old enough for the next level of school. For some it’s permanent.
Either way, it can be a rewarding alternative to traditional school. It’s flexible, and, if your schedule and location permit it, you can take advantage of every learning experience a large, historic, ethnically rich and diverse city has to offer.
They are indeed evolutionists. However they not, as you tried to claim, experts in evolutionary psychology. Why do you think Miller and Collins are the only two opinions that matter ? You do not have to accept what evolutionary psychologists tell us, but if you do not you had better come up with good reasons for not doing so. If you want to be taken seriously that is. The best you have come up with is citing two biologists, both of whom are Christians and thus have a potential conflict with the evolutionary origins of morality and their faith, and neither of which is an expert in the field.
No, I meant to ask the question I did. You answered it and in doing so showed us you are not a scientist. Note I did not ask if there WAS an explanation, I asked you if morality CAN be explained as natural process. You have said there is not, that there is no possibility that morality can be so explained.
As I have pointed out before, you may not be a YEC but you are still a creationist, and not just an ignorant one.
Just admit that you reject science in favour of your faith. I will still think you an idiot, but at least I will not think you a lying one.
I am really lglad you have reject an natural explanation for morality either exists, or can ever exist. It shows you to be what you are: Someone who claims to be a scientist but in fact rejects the whole basis on which science is based. I have no idea is you are a physicist as your claim, but I hope not.
Coriolis, #311
Well of course you can define religion to be incompatible with science by an axiom: Science is all there is. That is philosophical naturalism, and I agree with the statement that “religion is incompatible with philosophical naturalism.” But I hold to the definition of science that equates science to methodological naturalism. That is, when I do science I approach it only as if that’s all there is. I don’t approach it expecting the supernatural to intervene in my experiment, nor expecting that I have to invoke the supernatural to explain some puzzling data. If I were lucky enough to find myself “owning” and working on a seemingly intractable bleeding edge problem in science (alas, I’m not nearly that good) I would die looking for a scientific explanation before I claimed “God did it.”
They are also not experts in the four humors or haruspicy, which have the same explanatory power as “evolutionary psychology.”
Matt Penfold, #314
You have crossed over to being a garden-variety liar. I wrote nothing of the sort. I said quite clearly that something like brain damage demonstrates that morality results from natural process. What I said was I can’t (nor can you) explain it. There are also many effects in physics that I believe are the result of natural processes, but I can not explain them. If that makes me a non-scientist, so be it.
Even though most people on here dislike me, I suspect that many would agree that you have, rather troll-like, misrepresented my answer.
I don’t approach it expecting the supernatural to intervene
Huh. Why not? Didn’t you say you were a Baptist?
***
It’s sad watching these people try to dilute their deity and wedge it into ever-shrinking gaps.
“You need to expand your vocabulary, which necessitates you emerging from your parents’ basement.”
Let us know if your mouth ever leaves your mom’s diseased twat. I doubt it does, but one never knows for sure.
Ah, pardon, I have. I worked @ a liberal arts college. The director of Educational Technology was homeschooled. He was an exceptionally bright fellow. Problem: he was socially retarded. He had no clue how to keep his emotions under wraps. Whatever popped into his mind came out of his mouth. He got demoted. His lack of social skills outweighed his techie skillset.
**********************************************
Repeat after me: Anecdote does not equal data. Period. In no world, ever.
What you and others are failing to clue in on is that what you see as a lack of “social skills due to homeschooling” is not, in fact, due to homeschooling and like Aquaria pointed out–only exists in RARE cases like the FLDS.
Those kids that get taken by CPS and are forced back in to the public schools? The homeschooling had nothing to do with it. THey were unfortunate enough to have shitty parents who chose the easiest route to hide what they did.
Sorry–none of your points have any merit when you try to claim “But I saw them in my classroom, I taught them”, simply because you are laying blame for their actions squarely were the blame does not belong. The socialization thing is a MYTH with homeschoolers–we are far more social–with and without peers–than our public schooled counterparts ever will be. We are out in the world ALL the time, we don’t have classroom walls–the entire world is our classroom.
Nope, socialization is a myth and just does not make a valid argument against homeschooling.
toni
Well no heddle, the philosophy I subscribe to is essentially: if I can repeatedly measure it, then it’s real, and then I need to figure out what the hell happened. The notion that there are some boundaries where on one side we apply science and then on the other religion fails mostly because there is no way to guess where this supposed boundary is.
If I do an experiment and I get some wierd result, how am I to know whether god was messing with me or if I’ve found a new physics principle? What difference would there be?
I’m pretty sure you know the answer to that question is “none whatsoever”, but I just wanted to point that out.
Your way of thinking seems to be the major way in which smarter religious people deal with the inconsistency, which is basically by saying that in all practical cases, I act as a atheist. I.e. never assume god, and try as hard as possible to explain things scientifically. The only real difference that I see is that at the end of the day when the atheist fails he would say “I don’t know” whereas the religious person would say “God did it”. The problem I have with that is that saying god did it seems to imply that the issue is closed, when it really shouldn’t be.
I’m not clear how this position differs in practice from naturalism of a philosophical kind. If you are not willing to entertain supernatural explanations for physical phenomena, how is that different pragmatically from philosophical naturalism? Unless, of course, you want to argue that although the supernatural exists, it has absolutely no influence on the physical world, in which case you part company with practically all other religious believers.
Keep me and mine out of your incest fetish fantasies, you intellectually-inbred, low rent, trifling piece of shit.
The last part of this is certainly debatable, and is in any case an empirical question; the first part is a clear indication of how heddle wants to have it 82 ways at once. He says he’s a Baptist. But when pushed on the matter of the incompatibility of science and religion, he falls back on hypothetical religious claims that are those of deists, not of Baptists and other Christians. Then he proceeds to exclude morality from this vague deistic structure. If this supernatural realm and being are orthogonal to the natural world and do not intervene in the laws of physics, then you could make the same argument about the evolution of morality that he has about the movement of the planets (no need to cling to that alleged gap, either). But the Christian god is not a noninterventionist god, as heddle well knows.
Ummm… watch the gross, sweeping generalizations, there, Toni.
Respectfully,
Kseniya (a public school kid from K thru 12).
This response is disingenuous, as it seems plain that the comment to which heddle was responding was only using QM as an example of science in general. If heddle is claiming that he is representative of Baptists, who generally “welcome” science in Sunday school, well, I’m going to insist that he support that with some data. My own childhood “I’m no kin to a monkey” Baptist church / Sunday school / day camp / summer camp would constitute a clear exception.
“General Revelation”? Blech.
Tulse,
In doing science, there is no practical difference. The philosophical and methodological naturalist do science in exactly the same way. Which, to beat a dead horse, is precisely why science and religion are, to use a double negative, not incompatible. There is no difference in approach to science if the scientist is religious–and consequently no systematic effect on the quality of the science produced.
Coriolis,#322
But I already told you that I would never use “God did it” as an answer to a scientific puzzle I was working.
Matt Penfold,
Please do not respond to any more of my posts. Please kill-list me if you have the right browser and plug-in. You have crossed a threshold and I now consider you willfully dishonest. I have no further desire to have a discussion with you. If I want to debate people who purposely and obviously misrepresent my honest attempt to answer their question, I can find them (that is, your equivalent) on any number of YEC sites. Arguing with them, or with you, or in general with any run-of-the-mill liar who claims victory by semantic hair splitting is an utter waste of time. You are a troll; please stop bugging me. Let’s grant your claim: I am creationist and not a scientist. There, victory is yours.
SC,
The only data I have is that my last two churches were both biblical-inerrancy (along the lines of the Chicago statement on inerrancy) proclaiming, conservative Baptist churches. In both cases I taught/teach adult Sunday school. In both cases I brought science in. Last Sunday I talked about Collins and argued how a theistic evolutionist can obviously be a Christian. So far I have not been excommunicated.
If your point is that many Baptist churches have forgotten our heritage of supporting separation of church and state, I agree. If your claim that many have embraced YEC-ism dogmatically, I also agree.
Speaking as someone who went to 3 different preschools, 5 different public/private/magnet/gifted/experimental elementary schools, a private middle school with less than 30 kids, and a private boarding high school… it all varies.
Not all “socialization” is good socialization. I was largely thick-skulled and oblivious (or the new kid that hadn’t built up a bullyable reputation), and got by on that (switching schools was much more often my mother’s idea than my actual need), but I know many now-college (or young alum) kids who were throughly traumatized (in the really need professional help sense, even if not all got it) by their horrific emotional brutalization by other kids, in both private and public schools.
I also know quite a few that had good, even wonderful, experiences, again in both public and private schools. Your mileage may entirely vary.
I know a couple homeschoolers (for academic reasons) that had somewhat stunted social skills or emotional maturity. They’ve all pretty much grown up through college. I also knew a couple that were vivaciously well-adjusted from the get-go. Again, your mileage may entirely vary, and it depends on both kids and their parents.
Personally, I want to have my kids go to preschool/kindergarten at least, homeschool for middle school at least, and go to my boarding high school. Now, for this plan to work, I’ll need to find an intelligent, well-educated, stay-at-home dad. First things first, heh…
I see Heddle has no answer to the evidence he lied.
Very telling. He must think we are as stupid as his co-religionists.
On a related issue, why do people seen to so willing accept his claim to be a physicist ? He has never once provided any evidence to support that claim. In fact he has shown plenty of evidence that he knows very little about how science works, and has also shown himself willing to lie (as evidence by first his admission that the did not accept there ever could be evidence for the evolution of morality and then his denial he ever said such a thing).
He has denied he is a YEC or OEC, and has compared himself to Miller or Collins. Well we can leave aside the fact Miller and Collins are real scientists. Heddle has shown that when it comes to honesty he has more in common with Kent Hovind. Like Hovind, Heddle is nothing but a lying scumbug who deserves nothing but total contempt.
Note: Boarding school would of course be a choice the kid could make, or not. I found it worthwhile, and would’ve gone psychotic having to live at home during high school. This certainly isn’t a desire to “ship away the brats” or anything, but a desire to give them the same autonomy that I had and throughly gained from.
Ummm… watch the gross, sweeping generalizations, there, Toni.
Respectfully,
Kseniya (a public school kid from K thru 12).
***********************************************************
I could request the same be made of the sweeping generalizations being made by several posters regarding homeschoolers. Is what I said empirically a sweeping generalization? Not quite.
There have been studies done that show the kind of socialization one receives in school is very similar to negative socialization. **Your** school experience may have been pretty good, but you would be in the minority.
My only point in making that statement was to say that the issue of socialization(whether it refers to public, private, or home schooling) is really a non-issue. Everyone will have a different experience and one simply can NOT and should not make a generalization based on that experience.
You(the general you, not YOU) should not say “All the private schools in my state are catholic, therefore all private schools are catholic” because that’s not true. Nor can one say “these people abused their kids, and they homeschooled, therefore all homeschoolers must be child abusers”.
Slippery Slopes do not apply to arguments, especially invalid ones. No, those “homeschoolers” who abused their kids would have abused their kids in or out of school, they just got lucky and were able to hide it. Does that mean, then, that ALL homeschoolers should be punished because a few decided to abuse the system? No. Emphatically no. But people call for it everyday. And they lay on the “socialization” myth all the fucking time.
If one truly had any real interaction with homeschoolers, one would see that we are well above and beyond socialized and have social skills that attain higher levels than most–simply by virtue of being out in the world more than most. Like I said, we don’t have to spend 8 hours a day locked in a classroom (and here in FL, all classrooms are locked once the bell rings), with 25-35 of our peers, getting no outside time to interact with anyone beyond our age group. Even now, high schools are separating Freshman from everyone else–putting them in different buildings, segregating them by age/class, etc..
How is this “social” but what we do, not?
toni
Well Matt, I find no reason to dispute that – physicists are just people at the end of the day. I’m afraid the claims of our godhood have been greatly exaggerated :).
Heddle, you seem to be agreeing with Tulse’s point, but then ignoring the last thing he said. The fact is that if your view is what you claim it to be – i.e. we always assume natural explanations and as you say to me, we never say that “god did it” to a question about reality – then you are not a normal religious person. Practically no religion would agree to never making supernatural claims about real, physically measurable phenomena. It’s a fine attitude to have, but I don’t think it has much to do with religion as it is practiced normally.
My point is that you are making very broad claims about Baptist churches and their stance on science – “We welcome it!” – that are based on nothing but your own personal anecdotal experience. That isn’t data. And it seems to be a tendency of yours to generalize from your own thinking and experiences to Baptists, Christians, or religious people more broadly. Given your admissions in your second paragraph, this is dishonest on your part.
Vapid Atheist,
Get over yourself. Dr. Heddle is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon and he teaches physics at a university in Virginia.
Toni:
You probably already know the origin of this bias, but ‘homeschooling’ has, unfortunately become somewhat interchangeable with ‘Christian homeschooling’ simply because the Christian types seem to get more publicity in this country. That doesn’t make the generalization fair or accurate, though, and I have noted a recent trend toward homeschooling by more secular families who don’t want their kids in the fundy-infiltrated public schools, particularly in the ‘bible belt’ states.
second:
citation, please?
Prove it.
Heddle has claimed to be a physicist, but is a known liar.
Did you miss the bit where he first admitted no evidence could exist for the evolution of morality ? When asked if nature can explain morality he said no. Then he denied he said that, and tried to claim he just meant at the moment. Totally dishonest. He got caught lying and just dug himself a hole. He even lacks the decency to admit as much.
He deserves nothing but total contempt.
Corilos,
I am not sure I am parsing that correctly, so this may not address what you wrote. What I have been trying to say is that those of us who are scientists and theists approach science the same way as our atheist colleagues. We assume or are at least optimistic that whatever phenomenon we are investigating will, through hard collaborative work, ultimately lend itself to a scientific explanation. That is the normal approach of scientists/theists. Or scientists/atheists. I do not know of any practicing scientist/theist who has ever given up on problem and said “god did it.”
On the other hand, all theists or even deists (or mostly all) agree that the supernatural exists–after all being a theist implies believing in a deity. Most of us probably believe that God has, at sundry times, interacted with creation directly and supernaturally. What we do not expect is that we will be eyewitnesses of such direct supernatural intervention in the laboratory, on the playing field, at the mall, or in church.
Vapid Atheist,
Dr. Heddle is a physicist, not a liar. I am sorry that he poo-pooed your favorite woo (i.e., “evolutionary psychology”) but that is no excuse for you to wax choleric.
I suppose he could be both.
However I asked you to prove it, not just to reassert the claim. I take it from the absence of such proof you cannot.
That he lied is pretty much undeniable, except to you and him. I suspect you are the same person.
Dr. Heddle has made no secret of his university affiliation in other venues but, even so, I will not reveal it to your sorry ass without his permission.
@Danio: I am aware of how this whole thing started. Homeschooling was a movement started by a non-christian–John Taylor Gatto–in response to the lack of actual educating going on in schools. Christians then took up this as their “cause du jour” and made it their “own” and out of that, was born “Christian Homeschooling”. In the last 10 years or so, there has been a significant rise in the number of homeschoolers doing so for secular reasons and in fact, a number of Christian Homeschoolers doing so secularly, as well.
As for cites, I can give you a couple. Some of them are OP-ed pieces done by homeschoolers, so bias is admitted there, and some are not.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/zysk1.html
http://www.steelonsteel.com/articles/myth_socialization.html
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/10412/public_school_vs_homeschool_socialization.html?cat=4
http://www.articlecity.com/articles/education/article_294.shtml
http://eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/custom/portlets/recordDetails/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED064182&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=ED064182
Forgive the length and my lack of HTML here. I can’t figure out which codes to use. The last one, actually has the research on the negative social/political norms taught in public schools, but I don’t know how to actually fully access it.
:)
Toni
Danio,
I wanted to let you know that I did post some links just prior to this, but that comment is being held for “moderation” right now. I’m not ignoring your request, it’s just sitting in a queue somewhere…
toni
Then I ask you withdraw you claims of such affiliations in this venue. If you cannot support your claims here, do not make them here.
Jeez, Matt, quit digging. Like it or not, Heddle is a real live physicist, OK?
He’s tenured at a decent public liberal arts college and the proof is here.
His pubs are easily found here.
He’s a nutty Baptist Calvinist and a real live physicist. Argue about something else.
Penfold,
In spite of myself I will address you one more time, only because in all the years I have commented on blogs you have achieved the status as the most dishonest sleaze I have ever encountered, and that’s saying a lot.
Now some people on this blog I just ignore, like Browinian. Is that because he is dishonest? Not at all. It is because Brownian only insults me, he doesn’t pretend to engage me. That is his right, and in its own way perfectly honest, and perfectly fine–but if Brownian ever did ask me a straightforward question I would answer it, and I have every expectation that he would respond to what I answered and not willfully distort it, even if the ambiguity of the language permitted it, because he seems to have some brains.
Let’s review your lies.
You asked:
This is an ambiguous question and it can be taken either as do I accept that morality can be explained now or at any time in the future. To avoid the ambiguity a clever person would have asked something like: Do you accept morality can presently be or will ever be explained as the result of natural processes?
Now my answer was clear, that I thought there was no current explanation but that yes I agreed that morality “works” by natural processes in the brain:
That is, the answer fairly clearly ties morality to natural processes as evidenced by the acknowledgment of the effects of brain damage or drugs.
And even if my answer was not crystal clear, only a stupid person declares victory by demanding that the person arguing be held to the most unfavorable interpretation that his answer allows.
Sven,
Thank you.
I was wrong, and he does indeed seem to be a physicist. Not a scientist though as he he does not accept the importance of evidence.
I can only hope he is more honest as a physicist than he is here. I caught him in a lie, and he just tries to claim it was “semantics”. The man lies like he breathes. I pity his students who have put up with such a wanker.
He gives science and scientists a bad name and shows the bad side of tenure. A man with ethical standards not much better than Hovind is allowed tenure ? How the fuck did that happen ?
I see Heddle is now trying to weasle out of his lies.
I hope no one is taken in by his pathetic attempts to do so. His best argument is that he did not lie, he is just so fucking stupid he cannot understand English.
Just admit it Heddle. You lied. You got caught. You had a hissy fit. You are just pathetic Hovind like pond-life.
By this argument a religious scientist could never admit the existence of miracles, a position that would be incompatible with almost all religions. For example, the historical claim that a Jewish carpenter came back to life after being executed would, without further physical evidence, be rejected outright.
Really? Doesn’t that conflict with the notion of God as being capable of intervening at any time? Why on earth would you privilege naturalism, even methodologically, if you weren’t also committed to it philosophically? Why not argue that “Goddidit”? What is the principle you are using to reject that as an explanation?
People like Penfold make me think the old blood is all but spent in Britain, leaving only the Anglo-Saxon dross.
@ Heddle #65 ff
Let’s distinguish 3 uses of the term ‘science’:
1) Application of stuff found out by scientific work.
2) Stuff found out by scientific work.
3) The method for finding stuff out.
Your ‘challenge’ is empty. What you claim is that a religious person can use or teach 1) and 2) without a problem. Of course you can, but at a price. Those who manage to neatly separate the two magisteria of science and religion, need to keep a conceptual barrier contraceptive in their minds, where different rules apply on either side of the membrane. The price is that you must be intellectually dishonest. IMHO, this intellectual dishonesty is quite excusable re 1), a little less re 2) and not excusable at all re 3).
So long as you maintain the conceptual barrier contraceptive you can, on the one side, fervently believe that there exists an identity of 3 and 1; that there is an uncreated creator who manifests himself in the form of compressed wheat flour; who, being omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent, manages to fuck up big time; that there are flying horses; resurrections from the dead; and on and on and on, all without infinitesimal shreds of smidgens of evidence. And then, on the other side of the barrier contraceptive, you can teach and learn and apply and use all the stuff that comes from ideas that were rigorously tested and survived, while the ideas that failed the evidence tests were discarded.
But what happens when you remove the barrier contraceptive and let 3) and let the method for finding stuff out get across to the religion side? Let’s see you rigorously test and then discard religious ideas that fail the evidence test. Let’s see what’s left. Let’s see how compatible your religion then is with science.
Simple–just like many others, he keeps his christianity out of the lab and classroom , same as PZ and I and many others keep our atheism out of the lab and classroom (I admit it’s probably easier for us!). Much as I’m puzzled by Heddle’s beliefs, he’s correct that the only requirement for solid science is methodological naturalism. You make your observations and you draw your logical conclusions, period. What you believe is happening in the universe outside the lab is entirely irrelevant to the actual day-to-day practice of good science.
Me, I find naturalistic explanations sufficient for everything I can observe in and out of the lab. I don’t understand the Big Bang nearly well enough to judge, but smarter and more mathematically inclined people than me seem to think some sort of naturalistic explanation is sufficient there too. I apply Occam’s Safety Razor and accept that hypothesis provisionally. (Evolutionary Psychology, however, is at present a noxious mixture of almost-certainly-true and ridiculous-just-so-speculation and everything in between, IMO.)Heddle, on the other hand, apparently believes that he has been granted some special revelation of supernatural truth that is not directly observable. I don’t get it either. But the point is that one really can do science of good standing while also harboring some strange beliefs about other stuff.
[Not sure why I always seem to be defending people, like Heddle and Ralph Nader, that I don’t entirely agree with, but I happen to know that Heddle is intelligent, has a sense of huhmor, is a Stillers fan (big plus), and–as far as I can tell–is actually not a liar. Again, I find his theological beliefs silly and deluded, but he is always willing to discuss them in a relatively rational fashion and I hate to see unjustified abuse of anybody.]
Yes, and you misrepresented his question. Now settle down, you two.
Heddle:
So the supernatural never makes an appearance?
What does that say about your god?
Do you ever take a step back and look at the amazing mental gymnastics you go through to keep your theism separate from your science and thus still viable?
When will you state something about your god or religious beliefs that is testable and falsifiable?
Aw, you’re making me blush. But the feeling is mutual.
At any rate, Heddle appears to be who he says he is–Dr. David Heddle–and cdesign proponentsist or not, there’s no reason to impugn his doctorate or the quality of his work in his field. He’s no ‘Dr. Dino’.
Argue all you want with him, but the man appears to have earned his PhD honestly, and he expresses his religious convictions on this and other atheist blogs and on his own personal one, which is appropriate.
Tulse,
I myself am an exception that disproves your claim. I do science just like an atheist, while at the same time I believe in, say, the resurrection. Just because I don’t expect to encounter a miracle in the lab doesn’t mean I don’t accept that they occurred.
That would require a complicated answer. Let me try a thumbnail.
The principle is that of General Revelation. It is that God said the heavens declare his glory, no need to sit about waiting for miracles. On the contrary, get to work studying the heavens. It is that creation (nature) is so awesome as it leaves men without excuse. I believe that and live by that.
I also believe that the direct supernatural interventions of God were a) exceedingly rare and b) occurred at important, critical points in his redemptive plan. They were not randomly or uniformly scattered parlor tricks. I believe that now God’s redemptive plan is complete, so I don’t expect (maybe I’m wrong) any supernatural events before the end of history. And even if I did, I don’t expect that my research (or anyone else’s) is playing a pivotal role in redemptive history and is worthy of a supernatural intervention.
The little that I read in the bible that can remotely be tied to science tells me: go ahead, study creation (do science), you’ll find God’s attributes therein. It does not teach: go ahead and study creation and I’ll pop in now and then with a miracle to spice things up.
Dubiquiabs,
This “price” you describe is meaningless if it has no effect. The only way you can prove there is a price is to demonstrate that an actual payment as opposed to a virtual payment has been remitted. Like I said before, arguing “religion and science are incompatible” is just like arguing “religion enhances one’s science.” Either claim is meaningless if all you can do is produce arguments that “smell” right. The test I described is a test of either argument. You could not pick out the religious scientists and demonstrate how their science was adversely effected, and I could not pull them out and demonstrate how their religion was some sort of enabler. Just saying it over and over doesn’t prove it.
Sven,
At the risk of tainting your good name here, thanks. If we ever meet, the first IC is on me. Hell, make it the first six. Like I said elsewhere, get your Super Bowl tickets early.
5keptical, #354
Actually I never said that, see my response to Tulse in #356. To reiterate: I will die believing that when I am doing science God will not intervene supernaturally in any way that causes the data to deviate from that expected by natural causes. If I’m wrong, then I’ll die wrong.
Actually, all the time. I would think that most people spend time examining their views and making sure they are, to their own satisfaction, self-consistent.
If I could that I wouldn’t be spending time in blog comments. That would at least get me on the morning talk shows. The best I can claim is that I can make a pretty good but not irrefutable defense of my theology from scripture.
But he doesn’t.
He may keep it out of his lab, but he is very clear that he is happy to shove it into his colleagues lab. Did you miss the part when he stated there is no possibility of a natural explanation for morality ? It is a piss poor scientist, and human being, who treats his colleagues with such contempt.
Most creationists are simply ignorant. Heddle does not have that excuse. He knows he reject the scientific method, at least in biology. What I fail to understand is why so many are willing to believe him when he says he does not. To my mind that makes him contemptible. The thought of someone being allowed to teach science is a horrible one. Unlike PZ, Heddle does put dogma before science.
Let me rephrase that — a religious scientist could never consistently both admit the existence of miracles and the efficacy of methodological naturalism.
Even if rare, miracles are an existence proof against methodological naturalism. If miracles can occur, however infrequently, there is no grounding for any scientific knowledge — what we believe is actually the case can be pulled out from under us as God (or Satan, or angels, or various supernatural deities) choose.
Belief in miracles is simply inconsistent with methodological naturalism (unless, I suppose, one is a Deist).
damn, to reiterate, physicists’ claims of godhood are greatly exaggerated. The only thing you can infer with certainty from someone being a physicist is that they have a rather large ego, otherwise you don’t survive being wrong as much as you’re usually wrong in this job ;). I’m only a graduate student but I’ve already learned that one.
Ok Heddle, I think you’ve made your own views fairly clear, although they seem to basically lead to the conclusion that you are functionally an atheist. I.e. you believe that the supernatural exists either in days gone by or in some abstract sense, but you do not expect it to have any impact on the real life of you or anyone else. This is certainly what I think most religious people who do science believe. However, it’s also clearly *not* what most religious people outside of science believe.
So you’re certainly free to say that your religious views and those of other people who believe the same (what I personally call functional atheists, although I’m sure you’d disagree) do not really have a conflict with science. But to say that “religion” doesn’t have a conflict with “science”, you’d have to show that most religious people share those views (or something similarly innocuous) and that’s just not the case.
Matt Penfold, #358
If I were like you, if I argued by demanding the most disadvantageous interpretation of a person’s response be the one they were held to, even if there is reasonable evidence that that is not the way they intended it, then I could have fun with your sentence:
Why? Because your method of arguing is in the same class as “arguing by typo.” So I could say: that Luddite Penfold thinks someone teaching science is horrible!
But I’m not like you, so I’ll acknowledge that what you meant to write was probably something like “the thought of someone like Heddle being allowed to teach science is a horrible one.”
Tulse,
As you say you are rephrasing it or stating it. I don’t see the proof. I understand that a religious scientist could never consistently admit the existence of miracles and proclaim the truth of philosophical naturalism–but I don’t see how you are supporting your claim regarding MN beyond stating it.
There are a good number of religious scientists who believe, at some level, in miracles– and yet work under the umbrella of MN. You can say they are all inconsistent, but that just gets us back to the “religion is incompatible with science” argument. If it’s true, show me, don’t tell me.
Again, why? MN as I understand it means to do science as if that’s all there is. We have faith that it will continue to work, but no guarantee. I would view it more of an acknowledgment: what else can we do? supported by a large body of evidence that it works really well.
If I were like you, if I argued by demanding the most disadvantageous interpretation of a person’s response be the one they were held to, even if there is reasonable evidence that that is not the way they intended it, then I could have fun with your sentence:
You yourself said: “I would die looking for a scientific explanation before I claimed “God did it.”” That seems to rule out the miraculous as an explanation, which seems to be inconsistent with the claim that miracles exist.
More to the point, if your position is indeed methodological naturalism, I don’t see how you could ever know that a miracle occurred. Sure, something that is seemingly inexplicable by modern science could happen, but in the past inexplicable things happened all the time for which we now have strong scientific explanations. If you provisionally take a position of methodological naturalism, how would you ever be able to tell if an event was a miracle, or simply a natural phenomena we don’t currently understand?
Indeed, if you are a methodological naturalist, and as you say “would die looking for a scientific explanation before I claimed “God did it””, then why don’t you think there is a scientific explanation of the Resurrection, or the loaves and fishes? What is the principle by which those events don’t require a naturalistic explanation, whereas others do?
But you don’t believe that’s all there is, and I am trying to understand why you would ignore that belief when practicing science.
Coriolis,
Well, I have been called a heretic, and a creationist, and a fundamentalist, and a nutter (very British) and virtually everything else, but I don’t think that before today I was ever called any type of atheist (excepting, of course, when I was an atheist.)
Good luck in the grad studies. There is not much in life that is more of a privilege than grad school–those were very, very good times.
I wrote a novel about physics grad life. If you are interested, drop me an email and I’ll send you a copy.
Matt Penfold,
All you had to do was ask for clarification. Namely:
1) Yes. I believe that God is the source of human morality.
2) No, I don’t think there is any compelling evidence for an evolutionary cause, just some preliminary scenarios, but I am willing to examine evidence–although it will take evidence as “good” as human chromosome fusing to convince me.
3) No, I don’t think that there is any current explanation for it’s operation via natural causes.
4) Yes I think it does operate by natural causes, hence the comment on brain damage and drugs.
5) I don’t find (4) incompatible with (1) because, like gravity, God, to me, operates by secondary causes.
I honestly think that anyone following my arguments would agree that this was/is my position, and if poor wording in one comment obfuscated it, the overall collection of my comments made it pretty clear.
I don’t care if you think I am “lying for Jesus.”
Danio-
I was so delighted to read this! The last paragraph said it perfectly!
Various species of organisms will risk their lives to protect their young, and work to feed them. Eusocial insects such as bees will give their lives defending their queen. Many animals will alert others of their grouping to danger from a predator, even though it may increase their own risk of predation.
In what way are these kind of behaviours different in principle from the behaviours seen in humans? Do these behaviours arise because of supernatural intervention?
In some human cultures, it was accepted to kill and eat one’s enemies. In some human cultures, killing weak infants was seen as the proper thing to do. Various societies have practiced polygamy. Many societies accepted homosexuality. In some cultures, even incest was seen as proper (e.g., Egyptian Pharaohs). If morality is dictated supernaturally, why do these moral systems differ so radically from our own? How do we know these systems are wrong?
Tulse,
Am I not being clear? Short of Jesus riding down on the clouds, or the oceans parting, or the Pirates winning the 2008 World Series, I would not ever, ever, invoke a miracle as an explanation–except I might slip up doing it as a figure of speech (It’s a miracle I am not in the Pharyngula dungeon.). This is both for practical and theological reasons, some of which I have already described: miracles appear at critical times in redemptive history. They serve a clear purpose in that plan. Furthermore they are never disguised or subtle–they might as well have big neon arrows pointing to them stating: Yo, Miracle, Here! A miracle in the lab just doesn’t fit the pattern, in time, intent, or style. But this does not mean that I completely rule them out–certainly If God wants to perform one I must allow that he could. I just don’t expect to encounter one, and therefore I do science just like an atheist.
And the reason I don’t think, say, the Resurrection is explicable by science is because I read it as being presented as a miracle, not a trick of advanced technology.
Heddle,
So you reject the evidence for the evolution of morality.
Why ?
What utter tripe. Do you have any idea how asinine you sound, how breathtakingly arrogant to claim that humans at this point in time on this small planet are the penultimate achievement of your God? Do you really think this sort of mental gymnastics to reconcile your ancient superstitions and modern science are anything but a mindboggling rationalization of that which cannot be reconciled?
Look, I know you have attempted to present your views in a reasonable manner, but the *content* of your views is completely unreasonable. While I don’t condone the attacks by Penfold and others, I certainly do understand the frustration at how an otherwise seemingly intelligent person can claim to believe such drivel, and furthermore, who cannot recognize either the inherent falsity of it or the danger such absurd beliefs lead to in society.
That’s just circular reasoning — it’s a miracle because it’s a miracle. Why couldn’t an Thorist scientist say the same thing about lightning: “Oh sure, I’m a methodological naturalist in the lab, except when the Thor uses his hammer during a thunderstorm.” There seems to be no principle, beyond religious dogma, which separates the events you designate as suitable to natural explanations and those which are “miracles”. Which brings us back to the fact that, in principle, belief in the miraculous is incompatible with methodological naturalism.
To be clear, I am quite willing to grant that in your everyday practice of science, or even your everyday life, you don’t invoke the supernatural to explain events. So sure, you can do good science and still be religious (as most scientist have historically been). But just because one can do that in practice does not mean that the beliefs you hold are compatible — it just means that you can compartmentalize your beliefs.
I followed the link and read the article, then scrolled down to the comments. This one may be an example of the fine education that the writer got from his Christian School;
News[-] wrote on Aug 9, 2008 10:15 AM:Is it necessary when editing to use descriptives like, “thrown out” and “on their face”?
How a tale is covered relects the publishers spin and intent for the overall community at large.
Choice words like, “sued” as opposed to challenged, defended, acted to self-preserve, uphold the privelege, or constitutional right were deliberatly overlooked for sensationalism?
I’m aware that there are people that druther in our society that are complety vicariously programed at both ends of the social scale. But, at what point does the media play at offering unbiased reporting?
http://www.sebts.edu/prospective_students/what_we_believe/articles_inerancy.cfm
Tulse,
Understood, but for it to be equated to human morality it would, it seems to me, require several components. 1) Self-awareness 2) recognition of one’s mortality and 3) a free-will decision that, in spite of #2, the individual risks his life. Otherwise I could view it as hardwired behavior. I simply would never equate an ant dying to protect the queen with a soldier jumping on a grenade. But I understand others may see them as the same thing.
As for other cultures having different morality there is nothing in what I believe that precludes human degradation. I don’t think you want scripture support for that claim, but I think you recognize that most Christians find that the bible supports both the idea that God provides all men with a moral compass (common grace) while at the same time it acknowledges that some cultures/nations/people more wholly adopt degraded behavior.
So everyone says, over and over.
Fergy, #369
You didn’t really mean penultimate, did you? Well, in any case I don’t think they we are the penultimate or the ultimate achievement. But I do think the universe was created by God in part so we would have a habitable environment, which is probably just as bad in your mind.
In other words, the principles of affirmation and denial.
But I do think the universe was created by God in part so we would have a habitable environment
And in response to that I’ll repost a comment of mine from 28 May:
In other words, only humans can have morality by definition. That seems to limit naturalistic explanation simply by fiat, rather than from any principled reason.
Care to respond to my specific point about miracles? I bothered to provide what I think is is a fairly reasonable argument that shows such compartmentalization — are you just going to concede it?
And how much of this universe has an environment habitable by humans? How much of the trillions of cubic light years of nothing at 3K can humans live in?
If God created the universe just for people, He was incredibly inefficient at it. What possible explanation is there for such inefficiency?
Would it have been reasonable for a genetics professor to express serious doubt that humans evolved, right before the chromosome fusion was discovered? Incontrovertible “smoking gun” evidence is nice, but is not required for evolution. For instance, feathered dinosaur fossils are extremely cool, but the case for birds being the descendants of dinosaurs was already very strong without them.
Your position seems more reasonable than Collins’, actually, since Collins has claimed that “Agape, or selfless altruism, presents a major challenge to the evolutionist”. On this one issue, his position is indistinguishable from the ID’ers, and no more defensible. I think it’s unfortunate if you choose to align yourself with Collins, since I am guessing that your faith is in no way dependent on the lack of an evolutionary explanation for morality. If the strong evidence you ask for is one day discovered, we will no doubt be treated to some infuriating Calvinist explanation for it ;)
(I don’t mean to say that morality does not present a “challenge to the evolutionist”, but only in the same way that human bipedality and language do: a scientific challenge. But I don’t think this is all that Collins meant)
I’m going to invoke the “No True Atheist” fallacy. I simply cannot believe that our own Heddle was a “real” God-denying, woo-bashing, how-the-hell-can-you-believe-in-a-magic-man-in-the-sky-you-religious-moron atheist at any point in his life. Sorry. Just doesn’t ring true. I have found that every god-botherer that haunts these science and/or free-thinker sites, claiming to have once been an atheist but has since seen the light and found the Lord, is full of shit and uses this ploy in an attempt to lend their position false credibility. “Gee, that smart guy used to think like I do but is now a flaming Jesus freak and since he’s smarter than me, maybe Jesus really IS The Way”. I’ve seen it too many times to buy it…
5keptical #354 wrote:
heddle #357 wrote:
And this I think is really the only area where belief in both God and science are necessarily going to be “inconsistent,” and come into conflict. Theists will not examine the concept of God as a science hypothesis — lest it become pseudoscience, or falsified, or cut as unnecessary. That’s it.
Since there is no practical need to scientifically examine or explain the existence of God, there is no reason a theist can’t be a perfectly excellent, legitimate, decent scientist (which I suspect heddle is.) As long as heddle can say that, “like gravity, God, to me, operates by secondary causes” then God can always and forever be placed as some vague sort of entity in the gaps behind nature. You can’t pin it. Heddle could, in theory, become an evolutionary psychologist exploring the neurological and developmental roots of morality, and still believe that “morality is instilled in us by God.” Through an evolutionary process.
Faith in God is not falsifiable because faith is a commitment to believe. In the case of theistic scientists, it is a commitment to believe that “the existence of God” is not a science claim, can’t be understood as a science claim, and should not be treated like a science claim. It’s very different.
We, of course, make no such commitment — and we don’t have to.
Wolfhound #378 wrote:
Heh, that’s funny. Those are the kinds of atheists I secretly suspect will some day “find God.” There’s too much emotion.
So you pick and choose those parts of scripture that don’t contradict your knowledge of reality? (Such as genesis?)
Does this picking and choosing produce own version of god – a “Heddle god” that few others believe in?
Just answer the first question… leave the second and such things as – Which version? What language? What makes you think scripture is not fiction? — for later.
Sastra,
With all due respect, the discussion hasn’t been about whether a belief in a god and science are inconsistent, but whether religion and science are inconsistent. Heddle isn’t a deist – he’s a Baptist.
Yes, I did mean penultimate. After his crowning achievement here on Earth, your God can kick back, crack open a beer, and take a well deserved vacation–FOREVER. That’s essentially what you claimed, ridiculous as it sounds. Do you not understand the breathtaking inanity of this, the absurd arrogance? It’s unfounded anthropocentrism on a cosmic scale.
That’s just more of the same homocentric twaddle. You think Goddidit is a reasonable explanation for the universe, and that man is your God’s greatest creation. I think you’re a fool who turns a blind eye to the most basic facts of evolutionary biology, human psychology, and physics in order to safeguard your mythologies and delusions.
No, Heddle@#307, you are dodging the issue.
You cannot say “religion is compatible with science because religion posits something external to the world dealt with by science”, because science is not a subject or a body of knowledge.
Science is a way to approach problems in the world, and one of the basic rules of that approach is that anything that cannot be falsified is not scientific. Hence, the theory that you mock, where:
>”God moves the planets about, micron by micron, by tapping them with his little finger” is incompatible with science.
is no different from your argument.
Why?
Because you cannot test it, you cannot falsify it, and you cannot make any claims about it.
THAT is what I mean when I say that religion is incompatible with science.
But let me make it clear to you:
1. Religion makes claims that are incompatible with the working of science, because it requires you to abandon all knowledge-and-evidence-based forms of thinking to accept its premises.
2. As a result, scientists can, in their spare time, be religious. But that is religion being compatible with scientists-being-human (ie. fallible and credulous), but religion being compatible with science. Until and unless you address this point, you are not answering me; you are obfuscating and blowing smoke.
3. I have already shown you how you can refute my point: show me a science paper by you or any of your religious colleagues that has passed peer review AND can be shown to be materially assisted by your religion. I maintain that you cannot do so, and if either you or your colleagues are doing science rather than the trappings of science, this will remain true forever.
I would have more respect for the fact that you have actually admitted this, if you had not tried to blow smoke later by talking about th publication of theology papers WHICH IS COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT TO THE QUESTION AT HAND.
Let me put an analogy to you, who are so fond of analogies:
There is a beautiful woman, and a truly handsome man at your workplace. You notice that they never talk to each other except when absolutely neccessary. You notice that they do not spend any more time in each other’s presence than total strangers. You notice that they are icily, chillingly polite to each other when forced to interact.
Do you then conclude that since they are never in the same place at the same time, they are compatible?
Is that an absurd conclusion?
Is it not the same as YOUR conclusion that religion and science are incompatible? If not, why not?
SC #382 wrote:
The word “religion” is too vague here. Clearly, science can exist happily in tandem with singing psalms, giving to the poor, feeling joy and gratitude, and putting on a new roof. Even saying that heddle’s a “Baptist” doesn’t tell much, because some Baptists are Creationists (in the common definition of ‘denies evolution’) and some Baptists are creationists (in the broad definition of ‘God created everything’). Traditional, mainstream Christians are perfectly capable of believing in miracles and making God as scientifically behind-the-scenes as any Deist.
Where religion and science can come in conflict is any time the religion makes fact claims. Which they all, at some level, do. All I’m saying is that the tactic of insisting that these claims of fact are not science claims, can’t be understood as science claims, and shouldn’t be treated as science claims effectively insulates the way you do science, from what you believe in religion. And allows you to be a good scientist, in every sense but one.
You don’t subject your belief in God to scientific scrutiny.
Fortunately for the good theistic scientists, that never comes up in their scientific study of the world. Ever. Which should arouse their suspicions, but doesn’t. Why? Because God’s actions in the world are not science claims, can’t be understood as science claims, etc. etc. etc.
We can certainly argue that this is inconsistent, or an abdication of inquiry, or a lack of epistemic integrity. And I do. But I don’t think we can go on to argue that it’s inconsistent with being a legitimate scientist. It’s not.
Religion is consistent with science as long as your criteria for “consistency” is pretty loose. If you’re using the scientific definition — meaning religious claims should be the result of scientific investigation, then it’s not. But they don’t use that. Because it’s not a science claim, can’t be etc. etc. etc.
Fergy #383 wrote:
I don’t think so: penultimate means “next to the last.” That means there’s some crowning achievement other than humanity. You probably meant “ultimate.”
The word “religion” is too vague here.
Heddle has made specific claims about his beliefs on this thread, he is a member of an established church, and I have linked above to the statement on biblical inerrancy by the Baptist church in which he says he teaches or has taught. He can’t redefine his religion as it suits him, and he can’t have it nine ways from sundown. (Frankly, I’ve been saved more times than a guest star on Baywatch, and I’d appreciate if he would stop insulting my intelligence concerning actually-existing Baptist churches.)
Honestly, it doesn’t seem to me that you are engaging fully with all of the comments that preceded yours on this thread, including heddle’s.
Sastra @ #386:
I don’t think so: penultimate means “next to the last.”
Fergy @ #383:
After his crowning achievement here on Earth, your God can kick back, crack open a beer, and take a well deserved vacation–FOREVER.
SC #388:
So God’s crowning achievement is to kick back with a beer and take a vacation? You know, I think I could really respect that…
So God’s crowning achievement is to kick back with a beer and take a vacation? You know, I think I could really respect that…
So could I. Well, maybe a rum & Coke… :)
SC #387 wrote:
I’ve been looking to see how heddle compartmentalizes his religious beliefs from the methods of science. I think he’s doing a pretty good job.
We can argue that he shouldn’t be doing that — but as long as he’s making sure that everything he’s claiming in religion is completely untestable and for all intents and purposes irrelevant to the larger “naturalist” picture, it’s not interfering with his practice of science.
To borrow an analogy from Dave Barry, theistic scientists usually have their science ‘compatible’ with their religion the same way a dead bat on the table is ‘compatible’ with a nutritious breakfast. It’s on the same table.
I’ve been looking to see how heddle compartmentalizes his religious beliefs from the methods of science. I think he’s doing a pretty good job.
But that’s exactly the argument that people have been making, and exactly the argument that heddle has been evading. The need for compartmentalization itself implies the incompatibility/inconsistency.
SC #392 wrote:
I think heddle’s moving the argument to “religious claims are not subject to scientific analysis, because they are not scientific claims.” If he is correct, then there is no incompatibility/inconsistency between religion and science, any more than science being inconsistent with ethics, or music appreciation.
My (our)argument is that he’s not correct. But he’s successfully removed his religious beliefs from any interference with his practice of science. Which is what I’m willing to grant him.
Right.
Any religion that posits a supernatural/natural interface and/or the intervention of supernatural forces is amenable to scientific investigation. Heddle has at times tried to present his faith as something vague and deistic, but this is clearly absurd as he is a Baptist and his real supernatural beliefs have seeped out left and right. I’ll grant him, theoretically, that in practice, in physics, his religious beliefs have not interfered with his scientific work; but, of course, he’s not a biologist, or an evolutionary psychologist, or a cognitive neuroscientist… If you believe in an intercessionist supernatural realm, there is simply no way, ultimately, of separating this from your investigation of the natural realm other than via mental contortions and trickery.
Where have all the theists gone? We’re like half a degree apart, and their absence makes it seem like we’re fundamentally in disagreement. :)
My guess is they’re watching Project Runway. But I’m a lousy guesser…
Wolfhound #378,
That’s good because I wasn’t. I was more of a “I’m afraid to say I am an atheist because everyone will look at me weird so I’ll spew some enlightened sounding bromide such as ‘I think all religions lead to God'” kind of atheist.
One reason I like the “new atheism” is I think it s good that people don’t feel any stigma about proclaiming their atheism.
5keptical
No I accept all scripture as the inerrant, infallible word of God, in the sense of the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, which SC linked to above.
Notkieran, #384
Exactly. That is why religion (or ID) is not scientific. That is why religion and science are largely orthogonal.
I don’t understand your analogy about a beautiful couple. But your demand:
is not relevant, for I have never claimed that my religion materially assists my science. On the contrary, I have claimed that I do science just like an atheist. It is others who claim that religion and science incompatible, so the onus is on them to prove a claim they did make, not on me to prove a claim I didn’t make.
SC:
It’s Wednesday night. I’m a Baptist. That’s almost like our Sabbath. I was at church.
Sastra,
No, that’s good insight! My wife is, in fact, watching Project Runway. Occasionally she’ll call me to see something she thinks is particularly hideous.
My guess is they’re watching Project Runway. But I’m a lousy guesser…
Perhaps they’re staying up for this:
Has anyone done a story on her yet? One of the strangest things on cable, to be sure.
Indeed. Heddle made the absurd statement that, “I believe that now God’s redemptive plan is complete, so I don’t expect (maybe I’m wrong) any supernatural events before the end of history.” Sounds to me like God has retired, which to my way of thinking is quite an achievement. By my watch, He’s been playing shuffleboard for, oh, about 2,000 years now.
Of course, this begs the question as to why anyone would bother idolizing Him anymore if He’s moved to a condo in Miami Beach…
SC,
Given that philosophy, like religion, is not falsifiable in any sort of scientific sense, I could substitute philosophy for religion in your construct and arrive at:
Exactly. That is why philosophy is not scientific. That is why philosophy and science are largely inconsistent, incompatible, antithetical, opposed, antagonistic,…
Do you believe that?
And physics and genesis don’t contradict each other? Since you’ve thought about it, you must have a big list of apparent contradictions (between scripture and reality) that you’ve reconciled in some way. What’s the one that gives you the most trouble?
Eww… now the other questions…
Bible: Which version? What language?
What (non-scripture) evidence leads you to believe that scripture is not fiction?
Was the Resurrection a miracle? Was/is it amenable to study by methodological naturalism? The answer cannot be “yes” to both of these questions, meaning that, in this instance (and any instance of an event you believe to be miraculous) religion and science are incompatible. (Perhaps you missed when this argument was made several times earlier.)
Given that philosophy, like religion, is not falsifiable in any sort of scientific sense,
I have no idea what this means. Philosophy, as I understand it, makes no claims to supernaturally inerrant truths. Any given claim about the natural world is falsifiable. Point to a specific claim, and we can discuss its evidentiary basis. I’m happy to do so.
Political philosophy is informed by history. The philosophers I read – Camus, Arendt, Sartre, Foucault, Agamben – base their ideas in concrete history. On those grounds, I can argue with them and challenge their findings, which I have done on numerous occasions. Their factual claims are falsifiable, as I argued, for example, with regard to Arendt towards the end of the “Hitchens Under Torture” thread. Modern philosophers make arguments. These are debatable. I debate them, and encourage others, including young people, to do so. Where’s the indoctrination there?
Listen, I’m all for for debating these questions, else I wouldn’t be here. You want to convince people that Baptist churches, or religious people in general, are the same. HAH, I say.
PS: Don’t think I haven’t noticed how many questions of mine you’ve ignored, heddle. :)
Once again, you avoid answering my point, Heddle, in your post #397.
Let me make my analogy again:
Two people get along by dint of never speaking to each other. Can you therefore claim that they are compatible? If yes, why? If no, then why can you claim that religion is compatible with science when they don’t talk to each other?
You say that science and religion are compatible because they have nothing to do with each other.
My point is that the fact that they have nothing to do with each other PROVES THEIR INCOMPATIBILITY. If you disagree with that, please explain how your alternate viewpoint works.
Your other argument is that because there are scientists who are religious, science is therefore compatible with religion
Let me try another analogy, since you love giving them out but seem to have difficulty taking them:
A right-wing fundamentalist preacher who preaches against sex (outside of prescribed and approved methods between a husband and wife) as a sin according to his religious moral values is found dead in a closet with a sex toy in a delicate place and dressed in two latex suits. Does this mean that the religious moral values that consider homosexuality to be a sin is therefore compatible with homosexuality?
(As an aside, I quite like this analogy, simply because it actually happened.)
Aquaria @ #308:
Of course I don’t. How could I? The point really wasn’t to pick on any particular kid (how can I judge the homeschooling of a kid I’ve never met (and who am I to judge another person’s education anyway)? In retrospect I may have overstated my point a little. What I was trying to get at was that while the parents who are homeschooling were listing all of their academic credentials, not a single one of them said ANYTHING about having taken any education classes, or even done any research or reading into things like Educational Psycholgy, Pedagogy, or Metacognition (all things that professional teachers learn about before being allowed to teach, at least in California). The point, as I said in my previous post, is that there is more to teaching than academic mastery.
I don’t presume anything, never having been a homeschool kid. You, however, seem to presume that my public school experience is lesser than your homeschool experience. Not everyone has horror stories from public school. Not all teachers are bad, and to try and say that homeschooling is IN EVERY WAY superior to public schooling (as both you and ElectricBarbarell seem to be implying) is just as bad as saying the opposite (of which I may be guilty of implying above, even if it wasn’t my intent — sorry).
Lest you wonder about my analogy of the couple, let me put it to you:
You claim that you have and will never have a scientific paper where your religion assisted you in any way. You say that this is BECAUSE your religion is compatible with science, by having nothing to say.
That is like saying two people are extremely compatible with each other because they have nothing to say to each other, and hence never argue.
So…. you’re not single, are you?
Correction: I changed the analogy in #405 from a priest found having homosexual affairs to the one mentioned, so the stated contradiction should be between his morals and sexual deviance.
I just thought it was a helluva lot funnier.
Alas, I’m falling asleep. Goodnight, all, and I’ll see you tomorrow!
ElectricBarbarella @ #320:
Any evidence to support this assertion? I fail to intuitively see how homeschooling would make someone MORE “social”. What is the mechanism? In what way do homeschooled kids spend MORE time with their peers than public school kids?
Again, any evidence? Or is it just because you don’t WANT it to make an argument?
Not to put words in heddle’s mouth Notkieran, but I think he was trying to answer you in #401… basically with an argument along the lines of: Music and physics are completely unrelated and have nothing to do with each other – but that doesn’t mean incompatible.
This is the problem with both your analogy and heddle’s (and my own that I just made up). Can we consider that there *ought to be* a relation between science and religion, a couple, physics and music or physics and philosophy? The validity of your analogy hinges on the fact that a couple needs to communicate and act normally for the partners to be considered “compatible”. Not just be around each other without killing each other. The same is not true of physics&music let’s say – they just don’t have anything to with each other.
Do we have a necessary connection between religion and science? I think that the way religion is usually practiced, the answer is yes, because religions usually demand that science be wrong in certain cases. However I do think there one can formulate his belief in ways that mostly get around that, and heddle seems to be doing a decent job of it, to a point ;). I don’t like his answers on the question of morality although since that is probably the biggest sticking point for religious people it’s not surprising. After all admitting that morality is an inherent human characteristic independent of belief in god destroys the most common argument that all religions make.
The problem I have with religious people who do these mental acrobatics is the that they seem to imply that most religious people see things the same way – which isn’t true. So even if in theory science&religion can be completely separated, in practice, it doesn’t work that way.
5keptical, #402
Well, personally I like the ESV. I am assuming you understand that I don’t claim any particular bible translation is either inerrant or infallible?
The fact that mathematics works. The fact that science works. Or, to combine them, the fact that the mathematical formulations of physical laws a) exist, at least in many cases and presumably all, and b) are simple enough to be understood by humans to the extent that in many cases we can make detailed predictions. If none of the laws of physics were representable as linear differential equations then, in my opinion, we’d be screwed, science-wise.
Tulse #403,
The answer is yes to both meaning that the Resurrection was a miracle and had you been there you could have subjected the resurrected Christ to a full battery of medical tests and would have concluded “he is alive.” You would not have been able to confirm any scientific explanation–you probably would have concluded that he had been in a coma or the whole affair was a hoax or something like that.
SC,
Not with malice aforethought. Remember the position I’m in, it’s N on 1. I have to read all the posts directed at me and prioritize the questions–I simply cannot answer them all. So if you have questions that you think I am avoiding ask me in a comment that along the lines of “these are the questions you haven’t answered” an enumerate them.
Notkieran, #405
First of all I don’t think religion and science are completely orthogonal, just mostly. The bible does say the universe had a beginning. Therefore the steady state model was incompatible with the bible. More about that in a moment. But to try to answer your question, I will give the example that I love NASCAR. I bet most people on here hate NASCAR. There is no scientific argument I could give you to convince you that you should love NASCAR. Science has nothing to say about my love for NASCAR. It could not have predicted it nor explain it unless you resort to strict determinism and argue that my love for NASCAR was actually an initial condition of the universe. Thus my love for NASCAR is, at least more or less, outside the domain of science and yet not incompatible with science.
As for religion and science they must be strictly compatible only in those areas where they do overlap–which aren’t many, but aren’t zero. I think they are arguably compatible in those cases. Now if we were to pursue this, I can already tell you how it will play out so hopefully we can avoid the exercise:
1) Some will demand that I defend a YEC-like interpretation of Genesis–as if the one case where the YECs are not to be regarded as idiots is that they are exegetical savants. This will be the “argument by enforced literal hermeneutic” or sometimes called the “YECs are dummies but at least they interpret Genesis correctly” argument.
2) Others will point to the miracles, and when I counter that miracles are called miracles precisely because, by definition, they defy scientific explanation– and are thus irrelevant in the discussion of science-bible compatibility, they will howl that I am stacking the deck with a giant loophole. This is in spite of the fact that the miracles are well-defined and isolated. If the bible made an explicit scientific statement that the earth was the center of the universe such a statement could not reconciled by the “it’s a miracle” loophole.
3) If I appeal to possible translation error or ambiguity, or figure of speech arguments, then again some will cry foul. This is a corollary to #1, it is the argument by “its your translation and your language so you’re stuck with it.”
4) Then there will be the ever-popular family of arguments that “bats are birds,” “pi is 3” “rabbits chew cud” etc. These are a subset of #3 but a special case that I call the “arguments that assume the ancients were idiots.”
That’s how it will go–it will take some path through those four points. Been there, done that, not terribly interested in doing it again.
So why do you believe otherwise, that the event was not a hoax and he hadn’t been comatose, but that he defied scientific explanation and actually “rose from the dead”? Doesn’t that indicate that, when it comes to certain events, you don’t ascribe to methodological naturalism, and thus science is not compatible with your religious beliefs on these matters?
What I was trying to get at was that while the parents who are homeschooling were listing all of their academic credentials, not a single one of them said ANYTHING about having taken any education classes, or even done any research or reading into things like Educational Psychology, Pedagogy, or Meta-cognition (all things that professional teachers learn about before being allowed to teach, at least in California). The point, as I said in my previous post, is that there is more to teaching than academic mastery.
*************************************************************
First, I have given cites to my claim, if you had read my previous post to Danio, I did say that my post is sitting in moderation queue right now. I don’t know why–it’s got links, all the links you and she/he asked for. I’ve got the proof, trust me.
Second, I don’t know if you are a teacher or not, so if you are-ignore the question but pay attention to the content. Are you a teacher? Where did you earn your credentials?
As my DH will tell you (he’s a tenured teacher who earned his degree in what he teaches first, then took “classes” so the state can say “Yes, he can teach), the “teaching classes” you refer to are a joke. There are none of the things you mentioned–taught. The most they teach is how to herd 30 students, how to make your classroom multi-cultural, and how to write lesson plans for spanish speakers. There is no fancy dialog, only in-services that show them how to incorporate computers in their classrooms.
This is not an exaggeration. This is what is taught to teachers in order to be labeled a “teacher”. They have to take a subject area exam in their chosen subject, then they get a certificate (NOT a degree) that says “Can teach Math”. Only this and nothing more.
So yes, I most certainly can teach my two children what they need to know. I teach exactly what is required for them to graduate and they are doing just fine. While I may not be able to pass a subject area exam for Phsyics, I HAVE passed subject area exams for Math, Science, English, and History. I’ve taken practice teacher exams. I’ve passed them all with grades high enough to get me hired by the state in that field.
And what’s sadder still is that I COULD GET HIRED. Without this coveted degree you speak of. They’d hire me, send me to a few inservices and call me a teacher. By the following year, I’d be certified.
And you want parents to have this level of “training”? Gosh, sign me up. Ain’t nuthin’ but a thang, to me. :)
Toni
Tulse,
Maybe you should just say (or maybe you did) “if you accept miracles you cannot claim to accept methodological naturalism” and we can agree to disagree. But my understanding of MN is that it is not a claim that all must be explicable by science. It is a claim that the natural world is amenable to science or, as I like to put it, when I do science I do it as if that’s all there is.
Other’s (even Eugenie Scott) have put it in more classic terms, more along the lines of “science has nothing to say about the supernatural.”
Thus if I were a “real” doctor and presented with someone who claimed to have risen from the dead, I would use every scientific technique at my disposal to investigate. If it were a true miracle then I would be doomed to fail, but that’s beside the point.
I thought I had pretty much said that. But while we do indeed disagree, I don’t think you’ve made a case as to why that position is wrong.
I’m not sure how on earth one would have a commitment to MN otherwise. Again, as I pointed out earlier, if you are not committed to the proposition that all is explicable by science, then what is your scientific criteria as to when to invoke MN, and when to abandon it for the explanation of “miracle”? In other words, how do you actually recognize a miracle when it occurs, rather than something for which we currently have no explanation? You danced around this point by, as I read it, saying “miracles are what we’re told are miracles in the Bible, and they don’t happen today anyway, so I don’t have to worry about them in the lab”, but that argument is problematic on so many levels, and boils down to special pleading, such that it seems ludicrous for someone as intelligent and thoughtful as you to advance it.
Right, but if you were a “real” doctor in that case, and truly committed to MN, you wouldn’t recognize what had happened as a miracle. So I’m not at all clear why you think that this case differs from hearsay accounts of an alleged event 2000 years ago. Why do think that miracles happened in the Bible, when if you saw them today and were genuinely committed to MN, you wouldn’t recognize them as such?
Again, the point is that one cannot be committed to MN and recognize miracles. Ergo, science and religion are incompatible.
From the Chicago Statement:
To put Tulse’s point in simpler terms which I think even I mentioned way before:
If you’re going to claim that sometimes miracles happen and in those cases science doesn’t apply, you’re going to have to have some scientific way of deciding when something is a miracle instead of a hoax or a currently unexplained real phenomenon.
I don’t know what state you live in, but my program (in California, where you have to major in your subject field, you can’t major in education like other states) entailed a bit more than that. Maybe your DH was just in a crappy credentialing program, or maybe he had crappy teachers. Again, I don’t know what state you are in, but if there are programs (or whole states) that are churning out unfit teachers, that’s a seperate issue, and has nothing to do with whether individual parents are fit to teach their children. You don’t like the state of education? Don’t want your kids in school with these teachers? That’s your business. My point was that if someone is going to homeschool they should learn some of the skills and knowledge associated with teaching.
Yes, that’s exactly what I want. If you’ve already read up on that stuff, awesome. Good for you. But not everyone who homeschools has.
Tulse,
Then what do you think is the difference between philosophical and methodological naturalism?
I think I answered this–it is because I’m a Christian, and as Paul wrote, if Christ is not resurrected then we all (Christians) are fools. That, and as I’ve tried to point out, the fact that miracles are rare, not subtle, and play a significant role in redemptive history. As far as what I know from the bible, God doesn’t go about turning the occasional bottle of Deer Park into wine. So at the moment I never expect to see any miracle, ever. In fact the only miracle I am certain will be witnessed by people, sometime in the probably far distant future, is the 2nd coming. So I will never treat anything at all as a miracle.
I think we have long reached diminishing returns.
SC,
I might be wrong but I think what you are getting at is the statement contains the line:
I have no problem with that at all. First of all you will note that the Chicago statement contains no mention of one’s interpretation of Genesis. It does not say that “we deny science done properly can be used to overturn a literal six day creation view, some thousands of years ago, and a global flood.” As it stands I have no problem because it simply says that science and the bible must ultimately agree–even though at any given moment, scientists and theologians, both of whom are obviously prone to human error (with theologians having the worse track record), may be in disagreement–both across and within their respective camps.
Coriolis
Why do I have to find a way? I will always assume that anything I encounter is not a miracle. So what if I am wrong?
You’re the one who said he die before he offered a non-scientific explanation — what do you think is the difference?
For myself, in pragmatic terms I don’t think there is a meaningful difference. I suppose a Deist could claim to be a methodological naturalist while believing in the existence of a supernatural creator who got things going then stepped aside, but in all other cases I don’t see how one can be committed to MN and not in practical terms also be committed to PN. Once one grants that the supernatural can intervene in the physical world, one abandons both PN and MN. In almost all cases (with the possible exception of Deists) they are co-extensive.
How is this not just special pleading? How is this not religion being incompatible with science?
You may feel so — I certainly feel frustrated that some basic questions have been posed that remain unanswered (such as “how do you know a miracle, even an historical one?”).
Tulse,
That’s some furious handwaving there, heddle. The first two sentences read: “We affirm that Scripture in its entirety is inerrant, being free from all falsehood, fraud, or deceit. We deny that Biblical infallibility and inerrancy are limited to spiritual, religious, or redemptive themes, exclusive of assertions in the fields of history and science.” It asserts – from authority – that the Bible in its entirety and including supernatural-natural events is infallibly accurate with regard to history and science. (This is, of course, impossible given the internal contradictions, but that’s another matter.) If you think that article “simply says that science and the bible must ultimately agree,” then you have read the point right out of it. It says the Bible is historically and scientifically correct, not to be challenged by historical/scientific findings to the contrary. If you don’t think this belief is – and has in practice been – incompatible with the scientific practice of, say, Middle-Eastern archaeology, then you are fooling yourself (though no one else).
Glorious, glorious, glorious. Something in my country I can hang my hat on…rather than the ignoramuses who normally make the news and blogs (read: backward school boards, Louisiana).
SC,
What they are saying is meant as a frontal assault on liberals. They are saying that the bible is not only accurate in what it teaches spiritually, but also in what it teaches historically and scientifically. While they are making an all-or-nothing claim, they are not making a specific all-or-nothing claim. That is, the intent of the Chicago statement is compatible with either of these polar opposite statements:
1) I think Genesis teaches a young earth, and I am sure science done right would confirm that.
2) I think science teaches an old earth, and Genesis interpreted properly is in agreement.
But it disavows the statement from some biblical liberals:
3) The bible is not a science or history book, so we don’t have to hold its feet to the fire when it says something on science or history. Only its spiritual teachings are to be considered accurate.
They are also not saying you cannot challenge the bible (or rather, a biblical interpretation) from the fields of history and science, they are saying that if you do, and you do it right, you will find agreement with the bible (if it is read right.) Again, they are arguing against liberals who would say “who cares if the bible is in error in history or science, that’s not its domain.”
I am fairly certain this is what they meant, because I have heard some of the signatories talk about it.
Heddle, I don’t deny that you’ve spoken with some of the signatories and have a fairly good grasp of what they claimed was their intent. However, the wording here:
with specific mention of the flood, suggests that they are either bound to reject scientific findings when they conflict with biblical interpretations, or massage their interpretations to such a degree that they become meaningless. Sure, it’s fairly easy to tweak one’s interpretation of the creation of the earth in Genesis by suggesting a ‘day’ doesn’t actually refer to a twenty-four hour period and so forth, but the evidence for anything remotely resembling the global flood just isn’t there, and so the amount of reinterpretation required to make the Bible ‘fit’ the data is massive.
The problem is: if one is willing to reinterpret the bible to such a degree, how is that in any way holding its feet to the fire, especially if your response to issues like the truth/falsity of the resurrection of Christ is to say, “I’m a Christian, therefore I must believe the Bible on this?”
I recognise that I’m jumping into a conversation that you and Tulse and SC and Coriolis are having, so I don’t expect you guys to derail to deal with this issue. But I had to toss my two cents in on this one.
To be more precise, what you’re really saying is that you wish they were actual miracles.
You desperately want to live in a world where fantasies come true, where miracles happen, just like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. This is the genius of religion, spinning this fantasy world as being real, promising a warm, comfortable, eternal life. And all you have to do is believe! Say it with me! “There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home…”
That’s not what you’re proposing — you’re proposing that one can believe miracles happen and ascribe to methodological naturalism, and it is that claim that I dispute. And so far, you haven’t defending that claim, merely done handwaving about belief and redemptive plans and the alleged rarity of miracles, such as:
…which is nothing more than special pleading. I know we aren’t doing lab tests on Jesus, but the point is that you both say that, because you are committed to MN you would do such tests, and “die” before you offered a supernatural explanation for his revival, and at the same time you believe that the resurrection was an actual miracle. These two things are simply incompatible, and hence a commitment to MN is fundamentally incompatible with your religious beliefs.
And if I asked a Thorist scientists if lightning was supernatural, he’d say yes, he believes that, even though he is otherwise firmly committed to MN. And if you asked a Muslim scientist, he might say that yes Mohammed did indeed ride a winged horse, even though he is otherwise firmly committed to MN. And my response to them, as to you, is that they are not committed to MN, because they believe that such naturalism can fail, and that they have no principle for identifying such failure other than their religious beliefs (for example, I presume that you do not believe that Mohammed rode a winged horse, do you?).
To be clear, I am not asking why are you a Christian, I am simply asking how you can assert that you are a Christian, and believe that there are non-naturalistic events that occur in the universe, and at the same time claim that you are committed to rejected such non-naturalistic explanations. I don’t see how you can hold such inconsistency, and I certainly don’t see how you can claim that overall MN and religion are compatible. Sure, you can pretend to carve out areas where they don’t overlap, and thus don’t contend (such as your lab studies), and I don’t think anyone has said that one can’t be a good scientist in one’s chosen field and be religious. But one cannot claim to be fully committed to MN in all domains, and at the same time believe in miracles. So MN and religion are, at base, incompatible.
Heddle, the starting assumption, that this book is historically and scientifically accurate, based not on evidence but solely on authority, is fundamentally incompatible with a scientific approach to history, archaeology, paleontology, etc.
Second, you’re suggesting that the authors of this statement are saying that they are open to challenges from the sciences that will show that people have been misreading the Bible, and will in the face of them reinterpret its meaning. So the Bible is infallibly accurate, but none of the claims made therein are really falsifiable – just open to reinterpretation. How is this “holding its feet to the fire” in any meaningful sense? By your logic, it has no feet – it makes no testable historical or scientific claims at all. Can you imagine if physicists worked this way? (Also, I think your reading of what they’re saying in this article is a lot closer to the liberal view – that the Bible is not to be read literally as a concrete historical account but to be interpreted metaphorically and so forth when its factual claims are successfully challenged – than to what they are really saying, which is that they deny or reject by fiat challenges from history and the sciences.)
Fortunately, some who have worked in these fields have not let religious beliefs interfere with their scientific investigations. Since Ichthyic’s not around, I’ll link to this talk myself:
http://mnatheists.org/component/option,com_seyret/task,videodirectlink/Itemid,61/id,16/
Folks, this is extremely instructive! Many of us have wondered how the compartmentalization process works and the good Dr. Heddle is, in a calm and thorough manner (for which I am very appreciative), providing wonderful insights. Be civil.
Just for clarification, Dr Heddle, the quote above seems to imply that you take scripture axiomatically, i.e. that scripture simply is the truth and everything flows from that?
I draw this from the apparent sidestep to the direct challenge of the veracity of scripture and your restatement of a quote:
Which seems to imply that you believe that the more science we do, the closer to the scripture our world view becomes.
Is that a reasonable conclusion to draw?
Brownian,
Actually it is a fair point in one regard. The established position of a majority of the signatories is a young earth view, and the way it was written is somewhat biased in that regard, hence the mention of the flood. The wording smells of a compromise between the dogmatic YECs and others on the committee. I can easily imagine an argument like: “no, we can’t agree to a finding that the YEC view of Genesis is correct, but we can agree that Genesis talks of creation, and it talks of a flood and we can agree that science can not overturn its general teachings.”
And I can tell you for certain that there are some on the committee who are not dogmatic YECs, and who never would have signed to a statement that was a backdoor endorsement of YECism. They definitely believed they had crafted a document that old-earthers could support, providing the old-earthers also agreed that they can/must reconcile their view with scripture, and not just adopt the position that scripture’s text related to creation and the flood is inconsequential. You could argue that they could have devised a better wording and I would agree. But that is consistent with the stated intent, that the bible and science and history must ultimately be reconcilable while the details of the reconciliation are not specified.
At any rate, I think it is clear that that is how I understood the document and it is on the basis of that understanding that I support it.
Tulse,
They are not incompatible; you must take the “as if” as very substantive: while acknowledging miracles exist I would examine any data as if only science mattered. You are bringing up a hypothetical test case–what if I were around during Jesus’ public ministry? Let’s run with that.
Suppose you and I were there as scientists. Suppose I was a disciple and you were not. Suppose I believed in miracles and you did not. Not suppose we are presented with an alleged miracle. We could both investigate. It might be that, as a follower, I privately hope the investigation fails while as a skeptic you hope it succeeds. But the only important thing is that we would investigate using the same scientific method (MN)–our science would not give away our positions–only if we chose to expose our going-in opinions would anyone know. An interested observer who did not know that I was a believer and you were not a believer could not, purely from our science, determine which is which.
To summarize this thought experiment:
1) I believe in miracles
2) You don’t believe in miracles
3) We both investigate the claim of a miracle
4) Our science is indistinguishable
My conclusion, given #4, is that there is no substantive way in which my science is incompatible with by beliefs, since my beliefs led me to the same science as your beliefs.
SC,
The bible is not “off the hook.” It makes a lot of claims about history, all of which can be and some of which are being challenged–probably the most serious of which that I know of is the lack of evidence for the Exodus. The Chicago statement is not that those challenges are blasphemous, but a statement of confidence that the bible will withstand and should withstand. As for science, it says little but what it does say can also be challenged. Yes some, but not all discrepancies would be resolved with a different interpretation, but that is not a silver bullet. Had the bible stated: “And God put the earth in the absolute center of the heavens, absolutely fixed in its position, and it its shape was that of a flat circle, and all the hosts of heaven marched about it pushed by the fingers of God, and retrograde was purely for the aesthetical pleasure of God, and God saw that it was good,” then it would have made a statement that no reinterpretation could have rescued.
And in the little it says about science, it does make some testable claims, well at least one–it claims our universe had a beginning. That was actually a disputed claim at one time, and yet I have no knowledge of anyone in the early 20th century reinterpreting the bible to fit a steady state model.
5keptica,
No, I love NASCAR. Scripture is silent on that and many other truths. Scripture is authoritative and sufficient but not exhaustive.
Hmm… why do I suspect that this is bait on a hook? This is what I would say: at the moment I cannot easily imagine any science that would cause me to question my current view of scripture. One possible exception that comes to mind is the discovery of intelligent alien life. That would certainly rattle my cage. The detection of a parallel universe would also throw me for a loop. But other than that, I don’t expect new science to confirm or refute the bible, but only to contribute to general sense that the beauty of science confirms the awesomeness of God.
Heddle, I did not mean to imply that I thought the Chicago statement was some kind of back-door sneakery, and I suspect, as you suggest, that many of its authors think very similarly to you; that science and scripture are generally compatible.
The problem lies in what you define an intractable inconsistency between the Bible and the evidence as science has discovered, such as your hypothetical, “And God put the earth in the absolute center of the heavens…” example, and what others would describe as an intractable inconsistency, such as the lack of evidence for the global flood as described. It’s convenient for apologists to describe hypothetical bits of scripture that would freak them out, if they existed, but in reality there are many such bits of scripture that cannot be honestly interpreted as describing real events–the Genesis Global Flood is one such example.
Further, when one claims that they believe in the miracle of Jesus’ resurrection because they are a Christian (presumably, they likewise don’t believe in the miracle of Ganesh’s head-swap because they are not a Hindu), how likely is it that any piece of scripture, no matter how unsupported by the evidence, would be rejected by that person? For instance, if the Flood was not global but in fact local as some claim (given a fairly loose definition of ‘all flesh in which is the breath of life under heaven’), then I have no doubt apologists would be studying their brains out to create an interpretation in which “And God put the earth in the absolute center of the heavens, absolutely fixed in its position, and it its shape was that of a flat circle, and all the hosts of heaven marched about it pushed by the fingers of God, and retrograde was purely for the aesthetical pleasure of God, and God saw that it was good” did not conflict with overwhelming evidence.
No, you choose to ignore what your religious beliefs tell you regarding the event, that it is supernatural in origin, and act instead on what you think is actually false, which is naturalism. It would be like an historian approaching Star Trek “as if” it were historically accurate, as if there were Klingons and Vulcans with actual histories and languages, while believing that such a notion is complete bunk. I suppose that one indeed could do “historical” research that would be just as solid someone who thinks Star Trek represents a real universe, but that would be at best profoundly perverse, and certainly such practice would be in conflict with the historian’s actual beliefs.
I guess I’m left with a more profound question of why, if you really believe in miracles, you would doggedly stick to naturalistic explanations of them. It seems bizarre to me, and to require a phenomenal degree of compartmentalization.
As a matter of housekeeping, thanks for addressing my questions honestly, Heddle (as you said you would), even though I’ve been openly contemptuous and insulting to you.
Frankly, I still don’t buy a lot of what you claim, and it seems to me that a significant amount of compartmentalisation must occur for you to hold some of your ideas simultaneously, but you seem to me to be a pretty honest inquisitor when give time to chat with a few in a relatively quiet thread, and I do appreciate your contributions to this blog.
I apologise for my previous behaviour to you (I make no excuses; I’m prone to being spittle-flecked on occasion on the intertubes and even in real life) and pledge to be more respectful of you (if not always your arguments) in the future.
You are of course, free to ignore me or engage me as your conscience dictates.
Thanks.
Taking your example of you and tulse being there at the time when jesus was preaching – if you both did the same science which let’s say led to the conclusion that it was a hoax, then wouldn’t that clearly be a conflict between your religion and your science?
It seems to me that the only reason you can claim that you can follow MN, while being religious at the same time is that you have no expectation of ever examining something that your religion considers a miracle. And hence there is no chance that in examining that miracle, applying MN, you would find that infact it was either a hoax or a new scientific phenomenon. Which would of course lead to a conflict with the religious interpretation of the same thing.
Don’t you see this as a lucky coincidence that still leaves open the question of how you would deal with a miracle, which you sidestep when I asked before? Hell, if you happened to be catholic let’s say, this would all be a moot point since they dig up new saints with supposed new miracles quite often.
I’m a bit surprised actually that your arguments haven’t taken you in another direction of basically claiming that an omnipotent being has no problem changing physical laws as he/she sees fit. This is what a very good friend of mine who is a baptist bible literalist goes to which I find rather more consistent, but let’s see ;).
Could Tulse et al explain what the difference is in their view between Methodological Naturalism and Philosophical Naturalism? The way the argument is going, it seems to me that they’ve become synonomous.
You must have missed this comment.
It is a statement that the Bible is infallibly right and that contrary evidence from science and history is (and is to be) rejected…other than, according to your interpretation, in extreme situations in which this evidence can no longer be ignored or denied, which then necessitate a creative reinterpretation. Honestly, heddle, you haven’t said anything new in this comment, and certainly haven’t made a case that this is in any way compatible with a truly scientific, evidence-based approach to these questions in the relevant disciplines.
Indeed.
http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/science/long.html
So at what point do you acknowledge that it is not inerrant?
What Brownian said.
heddle #432 wrote:
But since science didn’t, doesn’t, and couldn’t lead to your beliefs, this suggests an underlying incompatibility (though not a substantive one, perhaps, if by ‘substantive’ you mean ‘practical.’) The divide I think comes in how you are classifying God.
We are classifying it with other factual claims, as a hypotheses like the Big Bang or mind/body dualism. You are placing it in the same category as values, feelings, and tastes — like enjoying NASCAR. God isn’t a fact like NASCAR: it’s like enjoying NASCAR. It’s as if Enjoying NASCAR was a disembodied person you meet or ‘experience’ when you go to the races.
Frankly, I don’t think there is any such thing as “methodological naturalism.” There are only the methods of science, which strive to be as objective as possible, and there’s nothing in their descriptions which make any distinction between the natural and the supernatural. So of course you can be a perfectly good scientist and believe in God — as long as you exempt God and other religious beliefs from scientific scrutiny, by re-framing them rather implausibly into different categories.
I suppose the issue is whether a ‘perfectly good scientist’ would make an exception like that. Maybe it depends on whether that means ‘good enough’ or Perfectly Good.
Brownian,
That is why most of the old-earthers believe the flood was local and also believe that we can reconcile a local flood without doing violence to scripture. Obviously not everyone would agree–in fact a strange-bedfellows collection of YECs and atheists would argue that we are taking outrageous liberties. But of course in that game we don’t have to convince YECs or atheists, just ourselves.
Maybe. The only test case I can think of is the one I mentioned–when the steady state universe model held sway. It would be interesting to see if there is any history of attempting to reconcile “In the beginning…” with a steady state. If there was, that would be good evidence that not matter the discrepancy people would simply morph scripture.
Tulse,
Sigh. I honestly think I answered this a number of times: based on the history of miracles I never expect to see one. Call it statistics–I am willing to bet that every piece of data I ever encounter is due to natural causes and that is how I will approach it.
Coriolis,
Of course, if it was demonstrated that the resurrection was a hoax it would be fatal to my religion.
SC,
You are free to interpret the Chicago statement differently, but the issue is not whether you or I interpret it correctly. The only question, relevant for my claiming that my religion and science are compatible, is how I interpret it. To be explicit: in the manner that I interpret the Chicago statement, I affirm biblical inerrancy. I do not believe the statement means that the bible trumps science. I think it means that the bible and nature are both infallible forms of revelation, and their fallible methods of study, theology and science, can only, at most, give an illusion of discrepancy–a signal that one or both of the human investigations is in error.
When I encounter a critical mass of discrepancies that I see no hope of resolving.
Ok then, so science and religion being compatible is only because of the lucky coincidence that miracles no longer happen in an age where science is often rigorously applied. And it’s much easier to twist scripture or twist scientific evidence about what happened a long time ago.
I guess this does work as far as claiming that religion and science are compatible, but really, only on a technicality based on your interpretation of your sect within christianity. And even that is debatable as some here have done, although not knowing better I’ll grant you that maybe there isn’t a neccesary conflict between your interpretation of the bible and current scientific knowledge.
However, still the vast majority of other religions and sects within christianity do make claims about miracles which are much more recent and/or obviously go against scientific principles. And certainly none of them would say that if we could scientifically demonstrate that the resurrection was a hoax that would end their religion. They would just say science is wrong – and hence the conflict.
Are you even trying to argue that religion (or christianity specifically) as it is practiced by most people is not in conflict with science? Or are you only arguing for your own biblical interpretations.
Yeah, I caught your comment, Tulse. You say
but in all other cases I don’t see how one can be committed to MN and not in practical terms also be committed to PN. Once one grants that the supernatural can intervene in the physical world, one abandons both PN and MN. In almost all cases (with the possible exception of Deists) they are co-extensive.
I guess I’m hung up on “in practical terms.” Does PN have practical terms? IOW, call it (MN) “practical naturalism” and the qualifier is redundant. If they’re co-extensive then the term MN has no utility. I’m not wedded to the idea that it must have utility, but if it doesn’t, it should just be scrapped.
Further, if we’re scrapping it for well and all, then it seems to me that we’re stuck with the position that a commitment to theism, in and of itself, impairs scientists’ ability to do science, and that seems absurd to me, in that I know (personally) and know of many more accomplished scientists who are avowed theists.
Coriolis,
I think that you are trying to nail this down to cleanly. You mentioned Catholics. Let’s grant that, compared to me, they believe that miracles are common. Yet clearly there are examples of devout Catholic who are good scientists. I think you suspect that they might pull an “I see the Blessed Mother in that histogram!” but it just doesn’t happen. It is a theoretically possible problem that in fact never occurs. At least as far as I know.
The bottom line for me will always be that the proof is in the pudding: if a religious scientist, not matter what their beliefs, can do science that passes peer review and is indistinguishable from their atheist colleagues, then there is no implication of the alleged incompatibility. All you (that is, anyone) can say is “I don’t see how they do it, it requires compartmentalization, they can’t be scientists 24/7 (I wouldn’t want to be) etc.”
This stuck me as particularly funny for some reason (I suspect its because I happen to be playing demographer at the moment and creating life tables for a sub population here in Alberta, and have been creating all sorts of histograms while trying to assess the quality and feasibility of using the input data I have available.)
and
I’m not sure if this is a theme that has been weaving its way throughout this thread, but I think my questions and your responses have highlighted a miscommunication between us. When you describe such a ‘critical mass’ of discrepancies, I’ve been wondering what criteria you would use to define such, as opposed to a discrepancy here or there in which you would feel comfortable reinterpreting scripture in such a way that would be not ‘doing violence’ to scripture. Specifically, I’ve been wondering what criteria you would use that could be considered objective, so that other scientists or scholars (including YECs, atheists, or Hindus) could agree upon and thus conclude that while a local flood doesn’t spell a death knell, the claim that God pushes the planets with his fingers does.
However, you’ve stated plainly that you need only convince yourself. While I personally have no problem with that (hey, we’re all trying to figure things out here), it fails the definition of of science that I and others here may hold: that the underlying evidence is objective, and that methodologies for analysing such evidence should lead to similar conclusions no matter who is using them.
So, maybe it’s an issue of compartmentalization, pro and con. Con says ‘while you may not be truly impaired as an investigator by failure to adhere to PN, you have to do these unnecerssary mental gymnastics not to be,’ and pro says, ‘not that big a deal,’ or maybe even, ‘hey, I like doing gymnastics.’
@Wookster
Ignoring your glaring misunderstanding of what entails homeschooling, I will say this:
My point was that no we do not need to be “certified” in any area or any field if I, and the majority of homeschoolers like me, can walk in and take a test geared for educators, un-studied, pass it and be offered a job with nary an “education” to back up the fact that we passed.
In my state, one must only have a Bachelor’s Degree in their chosen subject field and then they get 3 years to test for the certification. By then, damage is done.
And don’t throw those fancy subjects around either–not all students take physics or higher math or AP classes even in public schools. And since I and the majority of homeschoolers do not teach to the test or to what public schools require–we are free to fully tailor a 4 year program for each child based on his/her learning curves, desires and wants.
That’s the beauty of it. You don’t like it? Too bad. Your “desire” to see us “certified” will never happen. :)
toni
CJO:
In principle they are indeed separate — PN is an ontological claim about what actually exists (only the natural), and MN is an epistemic approach (act as if only the natural exists when explaining the natural world). But I think that in practice both PN and MN have the same observational consequences — if one is truely committed to MN, then the way one conducts empirical work, and the explanations one can offer for the physical world, are identical to those of PN. If that is not the case, then one is not committed to MN — if one thinks that there indeed are things that are inexplicable through natural means, then that is a rejection of MN. That is not to say that one can’t be a naturalist about limited domains (which is what is going on with most religious scientists), but such does not entail a full commitment to MN.
So in almost all cases where there is a genuine full commitment to explaining things via natural principles, MN will fully overlap with PN. The only possible place I can think of where one could see divergence and still maintain full MN is if one were a Deist, who argued that the supernatural may have had a role in getting things running, but that supernatural influences are no longer observed, and thus methodological naturalism as an approach holds, even though philosophical naturalism as a claim may be false.
So yes, I think that if we are talking about the practice of science (i.e., “practical terms”), methodological naturalism as an approach and philosophical naturalism as a belief will produce the same exact outcomes. And when they don’t, it means that one isn’t actually committed to methodological naturalism (perhaps unless one is a Deist).
Consistency and compartmentalization are not the same thing. As I noted, one can certainly compartmentalize inconsistent beliefs — people do it all the time. A physicist may believe that demons cause illness, but if they only study the behaviour of materials, these supernatural beliefs needn’t impact their work. That doesn’t mean that their supernatural beliefs are consistent with methodological naturalism, just that they have compartmentalized those beliefs away from their work.
heddle:
See above — their religious beliefs are not compatible with a full commitment to naturalism, it’s just that they are able to compartmentalize their beliefs. Let’s not conflate the two. To be both a committed Catholic and a committed methodological naturalist, a biologist would both believe that at one point in history a female human gave birth to a human male without being inseminated, and that such explanation is not consistent with his naturalism — in other words, that he cannot be a methodological naturalist about the conception of Jesus. In other words, his religious beliefs are inconsistent with holding methodological naturalism.
Now of course one could be a chemist and believe in the Virgin Birth without that impacting much on one’s actual research. But that was not the argument — the claim was that, even if one does naturalistic science, such is not compatible with religious beliefs (or, more precisely, belief in the supernatural). All of your special pleading about the infrequent nature of miracles doesn’t address this in the least.
Heddle, you like to hand wave off accusations of compartmentalization as if it is inconsequential, but what you continuously fail to grasp is that compartmentalization is evidence of the incompatibility between religion and science. The challenge you keep trotting out only shows the extent to which you’ll go to ignore this point. Yes, religious scientists can do good science, but only if they keep their religion separate. If religion and science were so damn compatible, why is this “never the twain shall meet” separation so absolutely vital to maintaining the integrity of the science? The answer, of course, if because faith is fatal to the process of science. The Scientific Method and religious faith are “compatible” in the same way oil and water are compatible–you can put both in the same jar, but they’ll never mix.
So far from you demonstrating any sort of compatibility, your stated goal, you’re describing a kind of methodological lycanthropy. One can be a scientist by day and religious apologist by night–just never both at the same time.
I look forward to you ignoring this point once again.
Everyone,
Thanks for the discussion, but I reckon it is time to move on. I always think a post falling off the front page, as this soon will, is a natural cutoff. See you next time.
No, but emulsified science, cooled and stirred to prevent the formation of large religion crystals, can be a refreshing treat on a hot summer afternoon.
Yep, ignored again by Heddle. I called it. I look forward to seeing his utterly meaningless “challenge” pop up again when this topic resurfaces, and Heddle will once again think he’s made a relevant point. Amazing how selective his vision can be when it suits him.
H.H,
Since our posts crossed, I’ll give you the courtesy of a reply.
I would just say what I said to the others, phrases like “compartmentalization, and oil & water, you can put both in the same jar, but they’ll never mix, methodological lycanthropy (that’s a new one)” are just words. No different that if I said: “my theism makes me appreciate nature even more because I know it came from a loving God–it makes me work harder, it makes me a better scientist.”
It is just battle of the platitudes. You have to do better than words or you will not convince me that “religion is incompatible with science” means anything. Words are cheap. Sho’ me the evidence.
Heddle, and now you’re moving the goalposts. You’ve stopped arguing that science and religion are compatible, and are now arguing that people can dabble in both without apparent difficulty or harm. That’s not the same thing.
No, that isn’t the only relevant question. Again, you cannot claim that your own self-serving interpretation represents your religion. You pointed out above that, amazingly, “The established position of a majority of the signatories is a young earth view, and the way it was written is somewhat biased in that regard, hence the mention of the flood.” The majority of signatories are YECs. YECs, heddle. As Richard Dawkins put it so vividly in a recent interview: “In a Gallup poll 44 per cent of the American people said that they believe the world is less than 10,000 years old. It’s a massive error. I’ve likened it to believing that the width of America from New York to San Francisco is 7.8 yards – that’s the equivalent error if you scale it up to the true age of the Earth, which is something like 4.6 billion years.”
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/tv_and_radio/article4331024.ece
You say that “the intent of the Chicago statement is compatible” with the statement: “I think Genesis teaches a young earth, and I am sure science done right would confirm that.” It doesn’t get much more antiscience than the discounting of evidence from numerous scientific fields or the suggestion that it hasn’t been “done right” because it conflicts with their reading of scripture. That the majority of the statement’s authors maintain an error of that magnitude in the face of extensive scientific evidence clearly does not support your claim that they are not saying that the Bible trumps science.
One should do. I provided a link above that lists scientific and historical errors and inconsistencies in almost every book of the Bible. If even one of those is indeed an error, then the Bible is not in fact inerrant. Simple as that. And this steady-state universe business you keep bringing up is seriously lame. That the universe had a beginning (one of two options, which happened to fit roughly with your religion’s mythology) says nothing about its having been created by any god. Are you seriously suggesting that as scientific knowledge advances and we understand better the history of the cosmos and of life on earth, we are coming closer to the scriptural account? Get real. You persist in believing that the universe was created in part so that we could have a habitable space. When I and others point out to you the billions of years of the universe’s existence that preceded our appearance, the fact that even on earth we are relative latecomers evolving after the extinction of many species, and that the vast universe as a whole is not hospitable to us, you simply ignore it as though it has no bearing on the question.
You seem here to be very clearly acknowledging that there are no observable consequences for your science (and I agree with others that this requires mental tricks on your part that you’re stubbornly refusing to admit) because your field doesn’t deal directly with areas that intersect with the Bible or supernatural claims. My point was that there are scientific fields that do, and that in those fields the conflict is much more clear. You haven’t shown otherwise.
Oh, but I see heddle’s moved on. His denial and evasion had become extremely tiresome. Can’t say that I’ll miss him, or be likely to engage with him in the future.
Heddle @426 You’re a champ I’ll give you that. And inspiringly polite.
“They are also not saying you cannot challenge the bible (or rather, a biblical interpretation) from the fields of history and science, they are saying that if you do, and you do it right, you will find agreement with the bible (if it is read right.)”
This strikes me as copying the scientific method all together. A challange of [the bible][evolution by natural selection] will either show the challange wrong or we will change [the bible][evoltuion by natural selection]. That’s not religion on any part. It is not a conviction or even a belief. It’s just a “Meh, let’s test it and see”. Unless you’re really saying that you’re biased towards the bible and that it would take an overwhelming amount of proof for you to change even the slightest morpheme in the bible. If that is your position then you’re actually saying “Do science in such a way as to agree with the bible or you will be doing it wrong”. On the other hand, if there is no bias at all, you’ve just copied the scientific method and somewhat redefined the word religion. Are you sure you’re a believer? ;)
Can’t stop myself from a parting shot so..
Ok Heddle, either I misunderstood you or that was a bit disingenous at the end. Up to now I thought we were arguing as to whether religious claims conflict with scientific claims, in a sort of philosophical sense.
And in the end you moved the argument to basically an empirical claim that whatever their religion religious scientists clearly produce good science so it can’t have such a big impact. Which is kind of true in an absolute sense – religious people can be good scientists.
But since we’re talking about what empirically happens, the fact is that although about 10% of this country is nonreligious, about 10% of the NAS *is* religious. Being religious lowers your chances of being a NAS scientist more then almost anything else. Furthermore, I know of no great physicist who wasn’t an agnostic at least (except newton, who lived in a time where atheism was much less acceptable, and had rather crazy notions about religion anyways). So while a religious person could be a good scientist, it’s clearly a large obstacle, especially towards becoming a *really* good scientist. It’s not an absolute thing, but it’s a large effect.
Coriolis, you may be touching on a causation/correlation thing, there. Being religious may not be an impediment to becoming a scientist – but being a scientist may become an impediment to staying religious.
EB/Toni:
Yes, you could, and should – and should have, instead of countering with a few of your own and proclaiming that “we are far more social–with and without peers–than our public schooled counterparts ever will be.” Such statements increase the risk of alienating your allies on the public side (i.e. – people like me).
(Perhaps you could clarify whatever idiosyncratic definitions of “we”, “far more”, “social”, “counterparts”, and “ever will be” that you’re using in this context.)
Lazy and irresponsible homeschoolers give homeschooling a bad name, just as underfunded and apathetic public education give public schools a bad name. Funny how people on both sides with an axe to grind smear the bad examples over the entire system.
For kicks, read this.
Kseniya: I read your “for kicks” link and umm, I don’t know if you know this person, personally, but umm, I am doubting the veracity of his “story”. Everything he quoted was taken out of context and it is likely he did not hear the full discussion taking place between parents.
That much I can pretty well bet on.
There are close to 1,000 homeschoolers in my county. I have met and know 3/4 of them. I can say, with confidence, that they are NOT like this (how he observed). So what if we start school at 10 am? I start at 9. We can still accomplish a full load of learning in 3 to 4 hours at home, than the PS’s can in 8. That’s fact. We don’t spend our time in lines, bell to bell, etc.. We simply sit (here it is at our table) and learn. And so what if we spend a week doing nothing but library reading? He makes it sound like that’s ALL we do, ever–which is simply not true.
I know you meant the link as somewhat humorous, but I doubt this guys claims.
And my links, the ones I said I had for Danio, are still not showing. I don’t know why that post is still in queue. I’ve reposted it twice and received the same message: In queue for moderation. All I posted were links to OP-ed pieces about homeschooling/socialization.
ugh..
toni
They’re in moderation because iirc more than two links in a comment does that on SB.
They’re still in moderation because our tentacled overlord is in the Galapagos.
So ElectricBarbarella, judging by the poorly-socialised stick up your ass, can we assume you’re a product of the awful, just terribly awful public school system?
No no, Toni’s links are there. Scroll up. (#343). I guess Skatje let’em through; she’s got the keys to the castle. The post with the links was showing when I posted my last comment (#439, six hours ago) so the the claim that they’re still not out of moderation as of 55 minutes ago is in error, unless she’s posted another linkful comment that hasn’t been released.
Kseniya–no not in error, I simply did not see it. I refreshed several times and when I had posted that they were not appearing, they were not there. :) They must have been put there just some bit ago–as when I made that claim, they were not there. Honest. I did go back and look and yes, they are there. But I kept refreshing and they just were not showing up.
And Brownian–what crawled up your ass and died? *I* have a poorly socialized stick up my ass? Well, I suppose it is big enough (my ass that is)–is this stick straight up or sideways?
Toni
Oh. Then clearly, as in all things, You Are Unimpeachably Correct, and I am a clueless git with liars for friends. I must have hallucinated seeing those links twelve hours ago.
Whatever. It was a trivial point. “Error” as in “mistake” – I was not casting aspersions on your intelligence or honesty.
I am not sure why you would say that as I wasn’t intending for anything other than they did not show up on my browser, even 12 hours ago. That doesn’t mean they were not there and I did not say as such. I simply said that they were not there for me. I had been refreshing, I could have missed them, but when I went to check (by ctrl-f and searching my name) it didn’t show.
I’ve cleared my browser and as I said last night, they are there. Nothing I said was in any way said to invoke the kind of comment you just made.
toni
E-Barb:
You really don’t get it, do you.
You wrote: “They must have been put there just some bit ago–as when I made that claim, they were not there.”
Well? How am I to take that? You’re denying my experience. You’re telling me that what I saw wasn’t really there, and that they “must have” just appeared.
What an incredibly stupid and trivial thing to argue about – but these things do have a way of coming up when one party is incapable of admitting a mistake, or when one party is certain that their speculation is more reliable than another person’s real experience.
Meh. It’s fruitless to pursue. Forget it.
Feel free to answer any of my other questions – at your leisure, of course, and only if it doesn’t make you uncomfortable, or in any way reveal a chink in your well-defended position, to do so.